Williams Riley is Cookin' Up Some Country Livin'

Earlier this year Williams Riley released a single called "I'm Still Me" and while the single didn't burn up the charts, it did set up the band for their follow-up single "Country Livin'."  The band recently sat down to discuss the single and their career with us. 

Earlier this year I got to know about the Williams Riley Band and in an earlier interview with Steve Williams, the front man for the band, we discussed how the band had formed originally as a duo and eventually turned into a band with Steve Williams on vocals and guitar, Derek George on Guitar/Vocals, Charlie Hutto on Guitar/Vocals and Travis Thibodaux on drums.   The band, which released a single called “I’m Still Me” (Listen here) around March of 2009 have recently been touring the country promoting their second single “Country Livin’,” (Listen Here) a song which has managed to make inroads on the charts.  This past October, I met up with Williams Riley at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma, Washington where the Williams Riley Band was about to perform a show with the Trailer Choir.  Sitting in some box seats on the first-base side of the stadium, we discussed their career and what’s coming up. 

Matt Bjorke: How’s the year been going for the Williams Riley Band, since March?

Steve Williams:  Losing “I’m Still Me” was a little bit of a letdown for us and a lot of it had to do with the label committing to getting their own radio promotions team.  But the unique thing about that particular time is that while the song is close to all of us, it wasn’t written by all of us.  When we played the CMA Music Festival in Nashville, we had a lot of time, with nothing to do –which we very seldom have now days and we just started to write some songs. We started wrting “Country Livin’” and other songs like it where we started to figure out who Williams Riley are as a band, what our sound really was.  We knew it was gonna be great harmonies and melodies but the guitar sounds and the lyrics, the songs are really becoming us because we’ve been writing our own music. 

Even though we knew we had some songs that were as good as or maybe a little bit better than “I’m Still Me,” When you see the success of the Zac Brown Band with the song “Chicken Fried,” I stepped back and thought, even though their last single “Whatever It Is” and the current one “Toes” are great songs, they never get anywhere without “Chicken Fried.” 

Matt:  And it’s interesting because Zac had originally licensed that song to their friends the Lost Trailers…

Charlie Hutto:  And then they pulled it the last minute…

Matt: Yeah, because he realized, “What I’m doing?”

Steve:  Yeah, but without that song…I mean they have a great following but without that song, they wouldn’t be the household name they are now.  So we knew then that we needed to come up with a song like that, a song that could get us better known.  We wrote “Country Livin’” in about an hour and a half and walked to the president of the label and said, “man, we wrote our Chicken Fried’” and he heard it and then booked the studio.  And now it’s doing well at radio and is on the charts into the Top 60 and is near the 40’s, which is pretty good for a new band, particularly one that is just starting out. 

Matt: Do you think that the previous single “I’m Still Me” maybe helped you in that regard, as a way to get your name in the mind of the radio people and some fans as you came out with this single?

Steve: Yeah, I think our first week that we went for adds had a lot to do with “I’m Still Me,” because the stations that played our song added it that first week.  So there was a direct correlation to them knowing about us.  But I also think the fact that we’ve gotten out and played little shows in towns like Puyallup, WA and other radio events certainly has helped us as well because they have seen that we’re a real band that can play the songs live and not just some studio creation.

Matt: And that’s important these days, particularly with home studios and I think that’s what is helping country music as it grows again, it’s not a genre where you can use autotune a la T-Pain.  While it will be used to help correct somethings in the studio, generally what you hear on a record is what you get live.

Steve: Absolutely.

Matt: How has the touring been going for the band? How have the fans reacted to you?

Charlie Hutto: Oh Man, we love it.  I wish you could’ve seen the show a few nights ago.  We played with Mallary Hope and Easton Corbin and Chris Young.  And everybody was great.  I think people may not have known us as well as others but by the end of the night, not to sound arrogant but we owned it, we killed it and I really think we stole the show that night.  We got a standing ovation when we played the single and it was a pretty humbling evening for sure.

Steve: yeah, Chris Young, when he came out on the stage came out and asked ‘who’s opening for who here? How ‘bout those Williams Riley boys?”

Matt: That’s kind of what they said for Garth Brooks back in the day.  As an opening act he got the “How am I supposed to follow that guy and that song,  Friends in Low Places.”

Steve: Well, fortunately for Chris Young he has a little special hit song right now so he had the audience…

Matt: I guess it wasn’t difficult to go in and cut “Country Livin’”…

Derek George:  Yeah, in that week Steve was talking about earlier, we actually wrote about four or five new songs and cut three new songs and I think we’re going back into the studio to cut a couple more and it may be a double album before it’s all said and done…(laughs)

Matt: You know, I’ve had the original version of the record since March or so and the only place I’ve seen the album for sale is Amazon, outside of the singles.

Derek: We’re great proponents for the rainforest, (laugh)…

Matt: I think holding it back was a good idea, particularly without a song that really grabbed at listeners…

Derek: Yeah, we wanted something that would be an attention getter and we knew “I’m Still Me” was good, and it had integrity with radio but we knew we need something that really connected with people.

Steve: For me, we needed something that would grab radio.  We had to take something that was insignificant, like new artists and make them want to play the song. 

Matt: So how remarkable is for you to see your song on the charts with artists like George Strait and the other radio stars?

Steve: That was a huge deal for us.  You know, we have made copies of it so we can frame it and I thought of it this way, like if you opened a business how you’d frame that first dollar you made, it was like that.  Then to be in the Top 10 most added for two weeks in a row, that was a big deal for us.  But it was a nice hill to climb but there are bigger hills to climb.

Matt: Yeah, get the believers…

Derek:  That’s good to know because I was getting ready to go get a Ferrari (laughs).

Matt:  So you’re gonna put the new tracks on the record and release it?

Derek:  Yeah, that’s sort of the plan right now, to add some tracks and release it in January or February.

Steve: My best guess is that there will be 3 of the older songs taken off the original version of the record and three new ones will go on.  That record, if we’re as big as we hope we’re going to be, the record will be a collector’s item, particularly since the hard copy fold-out version only had 1,500 made. 

Derek: I think we’ll also offer those songs to people as downloads in some configuration…

Matt: Yeah, you could use them as bonus tracks for various places. 

Steve: Yeah and we don’t have a record deal that constricts us from being able to give a lot back and we’ve never sold that record for more than $10 and we’ve often sold it for $5 or so whereas other artists have sold their records for $18-20 a pop. 

Matt: Well they have to buy it back from the label at $10 a pop…

Steve: We’re going to give away our videos at iTunes for stuff like that, think outside the box.  We’re also hoping to get new ways to get the music to our fans, think outside the box.  Also, we signed a deal with William Morris and we have a shot at getting on some big tours in the coming year so one of the things we wanna do is give people the album download for our club shows, to give people extra incentives to come to our show.

Matt: The thing is that big labels out there have the money to do stuff like this but they don’t.

Steve: Yes, but they are afraid to try stuff like that and have it fail.

Matt: I just don’t get how labels don’t put out stuff they recorded albums on, when they could release something digitally…

How did you come about to write “Country Livin’” with Tim Owens?

Steve:  Well Tim came in and said “I have an idea for a song, but it’s probably not for you,” but the minute he said it, I said, well that’s why I want to write it. We spun it around to be more relatable to any country situation, not just trucks and tractors.  I live out on a farm with horses, cows and the difference between me and Derek is the fact that he’s got deer in his back yard and we’ve got gators that come through ours…

Check out our review of the original version of the debut Williams Riley project by clicking here.

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