There is an aura surrounding Clark Williams that seems not so much timeless as just plain old.
With his lean, wiry frame, broad grin and out-sized ears, the 30-year-old Chattanooga singer/songwriter wouldn't look out of place in a Hooverville tent during the Great Depression. On stage, his performances of original material and traditional string band music exude a period-appropriate authenticity that seem a fitting accompaniment to a Dust Bowl-era western exodus.
"People don't really sing as freely as that anymore. I love that [older] sound. I love the rawness of it and the informality of it," says Williams, who performs under the moniker "Big Kitty" as well as comprising half of local string band duo The Old Time Travelers.
Staff photo by John Rawlston/Chattanooga Times Free Press
Photographed Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Chattanooga, Tenn., Clark Williams is a local singer/songwriter and an old-time musician. He performs his original music, both solo and with a band, as Big Kitty.
Discography
2015:"TR-002"2013: "Recordings of Ferns"2012: "Little Kitty's Christmas Harp"2011: "Florence"2009: "Birds & Birds & Birds"
What's next...
In September, Clark Williams will move from Chattanooga to Sebastapol, Calif., to be closer to his wife's family. He also is nearing completion of his next project, a 7-inch vinyl single featuring two songs about the Scenic City: "Chattanooga" and "Chattanooga, Tenn." The single should be available this fall, he says.
At times when he sings, Williams' wide mouth seems barely to move, the lyrics emerging - clipped off - through barely parted lips and clenched teeth. The resulting sound has a rhythm that's like a modern echo of early 20th century troubadours like Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston and Hank Williams Sr.
Clark Williams' voice is a kind of homage to those artists, the result of careful study and worshipful respect for an era of music he describes as distinct and worth preserving.
"I feel like there's so much of the style they used to use that is totally lost," he says. "When most bands play old-time music, they play with more modern techniques, and I think it was a really interesting and addictive challenge to go back to the recordings and piece together techniques to play like the really old recordings."
Originally from Maryville, Tenn., Williams moved to Chattanooga 12 years ago to study at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. In the years since, his vintage style and country and folk-inflected music - original and traditional - has built a following outside the city.
From his home in St. Elmo with his wife Yuriko and their 18-month-old daughter Naoko, Williams leaves at least twice a year on tours to New York and San Francisco, among other locales. About a month ago, he traveled to Europe, where he performed in Paris and Berlin.
His frequent forays into the Northeast, in particular, have generated a great deal of respect among members of the city's burgeoning scene of independent neo-folk artists.
"[He's] one of our favorite musicians making music right now," says Nick Panken, the lead vocalist of New York City-based string band Spirit Family Reunion, which headlined the Nightfall concert series on May 29.
Williams was the evening's opening act - performing as Big Kitty - but the way Panken describes it, he deserved at least equal billing.
"Every record he puts out, we love and just listen to it all the time," Panken says. "Every time he comes up to the city to play, there's always a contingent of people who follow him around.
"When he's playing music, it seems like he's in another universe. I don't know if we could hang with him."
Away from an audience, William is quiet and reserved. Despite the enthusiasm of the following he's attracted beyond Chattanooga, he shrugs away Panken's praise with goofy-grin humility.
"[The Spirit Family Reunion] have been friends and huge supporters of me for a long time. I owe a lot to them," he says. "I definitely wouldn't say I've taken New York by storm, though. It's much more humble than that."
Williams says he hopes eventually to play in all 50 states and has managed, so far, to hit 26. Much of his time on the road occurred during a sprawling, seven-month tour in 2009, during which he and his girlfriend - now wife - slept in his car and gigged to keep gas in the tank.
Behind the mike and wielding his care-worn 1913 Gibson arch-top guitar, Williams exudes a dramatic flair and enthusiasm, sharing jokes and poetic monologues, imitating a menagerie of animal noises, occasionally dancing and yodeling with bellow-lunged, high-pitched boisterousness.
Online
For more information, visit his website at bigkitty.co.
Clark Williams is a local singer/songwriter and an old-time musician. He performs his original music, both solo and with a band, as Big Kitty. He says he can't remember a time when music wasn't a part of his life. He learned to love it as a child through his brothers, who introduced him to artists such as The Beatles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Led Zeppelin and Queen. By 10, he was writing his own songs and, as a teenager, he began performing at venues in his hometown as a member of a procession of bands with names like The Chimney Sweeps, Dewey & The Decimal System and - curiously - a metal group called Twist the Blade.
"We weren't super-talented," Williams admits, laughing. "It was mostly about having some extreme lyrics [that were] violent and obscene stuff that our parents would tear up and throw into the fire."
He also has a long history of association with the theater as both a fan and a performer and has embraced a lifelong love for vaudeville and slapstick comedy. His approach to stagecraft is as informed by singer/songwriters as it is by comedic song-and-dance troupes such as The Sweet Fanny Adams Theatre in Gatlinburg, Tenn., which he and his family visited frequently while he was growing up.
There is a distinctly humorous, occasionally bizarre streak to Williams' music. He once penned the chorus to the song "I Am a Moth (That Lives in Ireland)" after the line came to him, whole cloth, out of the ether.
Williams says he often is inspired to write songs based on the absurdity that abounds in everyday life but which slips by most people unnoticed. Among the sources he turns to are the confused language found on posters for missing pets or the signs at fast food restaurants. The KFC on South Broad Street, he says, is a particularly rich vein to mine.
Whatever wellspring he draws from, however, he says his ultimate goal is to create music that is relatable, funny and all-encompassing, embracing the joyousness of life while acknowledging the inevitability of death.
"I think all of those things have a place in there," he says. "I kind of see [music] as part of life - as a journey - so I want to express the things that are going on in my surroundings, and in the world and universe and really to make as much of a total artwork as I can."
Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.