One man or full band? Performer builds the music on stage, while you watch

Keller Williams constructs a tune onstage the way many chefs prepare a meal – by scratch.

His ingredients – well, instruments – sit before him awaiting placement in what will become a musical souffle, the kind of performance that usually involves ensemble work.

Williams, however, prefers to be alone in the kitchen.

For close to three decades, the Virginia-born song stylist has built compositions from the bottom up with acoustic guitar grooves played and recorded live into loops so they can repeat under the next ingredient. Bass, percussion, keyboards and vocals are added until what results is a modern one-man-band creation.

Though he occasionally moonlights in more traditionally designed group collaborations, Williams’ solo folk, pop, rock, funk and more music remains his musical calling card. It has brought him a global fanbase, critical recognition within bluegrass and jam band circles and a Central Kentucky following that has made him a reliable local and regional concert draw since the ’90s.

“It started out with just a guitar and a microphone,” Williams said. “Then it was a guitar and a djembe drum. Sometimes, I’d just play the drum and sing. From there, it moved on to the loops. At that point, and this was in the late ’90s, I was using an actual delay unit. That made for a lot of trial and error. About ’99, I think, was when the bass came in. In 2004, we were driving a lot all over the country, carrying a bunch of gear. I had an upright bass as well as an electric bass. I had a keyboard and a kind of electric vibraphone. I also had these PVC pipes - Blue Man Group turned me on to them – as well as a dozen different guitars and percussion instruments.

“Today, with the confinements set by the airline industry, it’s basically electric bass, sometimes three acoustic guitars and three cases that hold electronics. All of that fits into the back of a mini van or SUV that we rent at the airport.”

That explains the still-novel set-up of a Williams concert. The catalyst, however, remains Williams himself. While audiences may pick up quickly on the mix of grooves, loops and ensemble colors he creates on his own, it’s a fair bet Williams will wind up having as much fun as anyone during the course of a performance.

“Some people call that narcissistic,” Williams said. “For me, as solo act, it is a true joy to get up there and have all of my stuff working with people there to see me. On and off the stage there are swirling issues that are going on in different people’s lives – my life, especially. My family. There’s all kinds of things happening. But for that 90 minutes to a couple of hours that I’m onstage, my focus is pure and into what I’m doing and into playing off of audience reactions. My goal is to hopefully bring them along with me and forget the outside world and their problems for the short time that I have their attention.”

All of this, of course, was largely halted when the COVID-19 outbreak took hold. Though the pandemic forced him off the road, Williams found two avenues with which to pursue music.

The first was a series of streaming performances called “Live from Keller’s Cellar” that offered fans a revealing and detailed glimpse at how Williams creates his tech-savvy one-man-band music. An 11-minute clip of him performing “Freeker by the Speaker” in late December is especially insightful.

“A community was created through this streaming thing from folks all over the country who talked to each other and made the show a kind of jukebox situation where people typed in requests. A lot of them were for songs I’ve written but had forgotten. That’s made it really interesting, to go back and relearn a lot of this material that lost its way out of my normal songbook. Yeah, there’s no audience, but I know people are watching and that’s exciting. It helped me stay on my toes and keep my chops up, so that was super fun.”

Williams’ other lockdown activity was a record unlike any of his previous 26 albums, save for the fact that, like his preceding works, it sported a one word, one syllable title.

When faced with the fact that he had little by way of completed songs ready for the project, he recorded a set of guitar improvs and vocal ideas onto a voice app on his cell phone and sent them to pal Bobby West, known professionally as the electronic music artist and producer Erothyme. From there, Williams’ musical sketches were processed and mapped to assorted beats. The result became Williams’ newest album, “Cell.”

“During the shutdown, I was constantly outside, just recording improvs of me noodling on my guitar. You sometimes even hear the birds singing. Bobby took these songs that were recorded on my cellphone, put them into his computer and then arranged them appropriately to become this record. I literally phoned it in.”

While Williams continues to pepper his discography and touring schedule with collaborative works (just before the lockdown, he released “Speed” with bluegrass guitar stylist Larry Keel and his bass playing wife, Jenny), Williams insists his one-man-band performances remain his primary musical focus.

“That’s pretty much what I call my day job.”

Keller Williams performs at 6 p.m. April 25 at The Burl, 375 Thompson Rd. He will also play outdoor shows on May 28 at Riverfront Live, 4343 Kellogg Ave. in Cincinnati (axs.com) and May 29 at Headliners Music Hall, 1386 Lexington Rd. in Louisville (etix.com).