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Not to put too fine a point on it, but Sam Williams is part of a lineage without parallel in American music.
As the son of Hank Williams Jr. and grandson of country legend, Hank Williams Sr., he’s once again proof that apples don’t fall far from trees. But in this family’s case, that means creating something uniquely your own. After signing to major label Mercury Nashville a few months back, Williams’ album debut, Glasshouse Children, arrived on August 20. And although it stands on some of country’s core building blocks, curious fans will soon realize: This Williams is on to something else entirely.
“I love to be unexpected,” the young artist said, speaking by phone just before the project’s release. “It’s very interesting for me, to try to be conscious of my lineage when making music. I mean, I feel that pressure in my blood stream. But when I’m making music, I don’t really think about all of the Williams music before me. Luckily, I just stay in the moment and try to do something I really enjoy.”
A small-town kid at heart, that may be because Williams grew up pursuing music on his own terms, well out of the spotlight in Paris, Tennessee. He’s most comfortable playing the underdog, he admits, scraping together old clothes for photo shoots and recording on shoestring budgets. But now, he’ll have a powerful machine at his back—even if his tunes stand apart from his family legacy on Music Row.Glasshouse Children features 10 songs with a familiar gift for weary-soul poetics. Yet its diverse sound exists a long way down that lost highway. Pulling from Top 40 radio, R&B, hip hop and country (but rarely mainstream country) Williams sounds like an old soul at 24, with a restless sense of sonic direction. When asked why, he says tailgate anthems just aren’t his thing.
“It just doesn’t come naturally to me,” he admits. “I kind of wish that it did, and I could just throw out a late-2000s Jason Aldean type song. But for me, it just is a lot more innate to speak from the heart, and that’s just honestly what comes out. When I got into songwriting, I saw that very quickly.”
After just the first listen, that much is obvious. “Reflective” (no pun intended) and focused on the big-picture themes of his upbringing, Williams’ songs often explore things like self-identity, loss, and healing. Tunes like the title track use orchestral strings and a fragile vocal to paint vivid pictures of the life he was born into, and it’s the behind-the-scenes fallout of fame that Williams wants to share. Even so, many are written with respected names like Mary Gauthier, and it’s yet another country music legend who helped Williams bring the album to life. After cowriting a devastated meditation on money and mental health called “Happy All the Time,” Williams typed up the lyrics and sent them over to Dolly Parton, asking for her blessing.
“I know from the outside it may seem like it was an industry situation, where Dolly was doing a favor or something,” he explains. “But it wasn’t like that at all.” Williams and Parton had never met, he explains, but she was so impressed by his writing—and perhaps his chutzpah—that she agreed to sing on the tune, and that validation fueled his step forward. The rest of the album came together in its wake.“Dolly Parton singing on my song, loving the message of it, and saying she loves my voice? All the things she said to kind of stamp me on the forehead, I kind of feel like nobody can tell me shit after that for a little while,” he says with a laugh. Elsewhere, Keith Urban contributes euphoric guitar work on “Kids,” a song in which Williams come to terms with the missteps of a privileged, if somewhat boring, youth. Others, like the propulsive indie-rock gem “10-4,” speak to moments of youthful normalcy, and especially romantic innocence.
Meanwhile, the reckless and rhythmic “Wild Girl” imagines a rebellious teen with a wild streak—a smart, circle-of-life saga which includes the brilliant line “There’s a little villain in all of God ’s children.”But along with the all-star collaborators and up-tempo anthems, themes of addiction and trauma are never far away. Williams often writes with the weight of his family’s past behind a thin veil, if you know how to listen for it.“Can’t Fool Your Own Blood,” for instance, finds the artist proclaiming that no legacy can be outrun—whether you’re the son of a royal house or not. And he finishes on the stunning
“The World: Alone,” a 50,000-foot look at tragedy which became all-too real with the passing of his sister, Katie, last summer. Overall, the album is heavy with insight and intrigue—especially for an artist so young—but also has some fresh creative energy, and Williams ends up walking a fine line. He succeeds in proving he’s an artist of his own vision (ironically, just like his father had to do; check out “Family Tradition”). But in turning the deeply personal into something universal, he also carries on a country legacy his family helped create. The lesson learned is simple: We’re all just trying to make our place in the world. “I think the salient take away for me is that vulnerability is power,” he says.
“Talking about your life is something you should do. And if you can’t feel, then you can’t heal. That may rhyme, but it’s very true.”