Keller Williams: Deer
Keller Williams has averaged just about an album per year since he emerged in 1994 with Freek, the first of a reported 35 single-word-titled releases. He’s an enterprising and adventurous fellow, this artist who shares his own name with that of a prominent real estate firm: His catalog includes bluegrass music and a children’s album, Grateful Dead covers and one LP on which he only plays bass. Sometimes Williams collaborates with others (The String Cheese Incident, Travelin’ McCourys), while on most occasions he goes at it alone. Deer—the title doesn’t seem to have any particular significance, other than he liked it—by those eclectic standards, is a relatively conventional Keller Williams collection. Its nine songs don’t, on the surface at least, have any obvious theme, poignant or otherwise, running through them. Its opening number, “Two Lips/Tulips,” is, mostly, a paean to Fredericksburg, Va., where Williams was born in 1970 and where he cut this recording. “Got a dark history but now we shed the light,” he sings, playing all the instruments (as he does throughout, except for a couple of guitar and drum parts by co-producer/engineer Jeff Covert). “Everywhere you look/ We’re an open book/ Just poppin’ with color.” And at the other end of the set, he’s placed the title track, whose main purpose is to make us aware that said mammal is “addicted to nicotine from all the cigarette butts on the side of the road.” In between, there are several other fine additions to the considerable KW catalog: “Hippies for the Win” insists that, even at this fraught time, “The right people in the right place at the right time/ About face in their right mind, can change the world.” He’s convincing, too, but then Williams, a well-meaning and most unassuming, amiable kinda guy, usually is.
