Keller relishes band direction

If someone were to try to classify Keller Williams’ music in one word, it would be chameleon. For more than a decade, Williams’ musical style has been called everything from folk and bluegrass to jam, dance and even reggae. True to character, Williams admits his music takes aspects from almost every genre, but there’s a good reason behind it.

“I’d like to attribute that to Attention Deficit Disorder,” he said. “Over the last decade, that kind of pinpointed the issue. I guess it was me never really settling into one specific genre as far as my musical listening tastes go … just being really interested in all different kinds of music and wanting to put myself as an audience member and thinking about what I want to hear as part of the audience.”

For his latest endeavor, Williams, long known as a consummate solo performer, is embarking on a tour as part of a band with Jeff Sipe, Keith Moseley and Gibb Droll, which will stop by the Sherman Theater in Stroudsburg Sunday, Sept. 28.

“I’ve always wanted to have a band with me,” he explained. “The reason I didn’t do it in the beginning is because I couldn’t afford it. Then when I could afford it, I was working as a solo act, so I kept going on the idea of ‘if it’s not broken, why try to fix it?’ I look at my solo career, now, as my day job.”

As far as his current bandmates, the lineup seems like it was bound to happen with all members coming from the jam scene, and Williams and Moseley (formerly of The String Cheese Incident) previously joining together to form Grateful Grass, a bluegrass tribute to the Grateful Dead.

“I was a fan of each [member] individually before I even met them,” he said. “When I thought about putting a band together, I definitely wanted it to be two guitars, a bass and drums. Jeff Sipe [of Leftover Salmon and Aquarium Rescue Unit] has always been my first choice for a drummer. Keith and I have been friends for a long time, and I used to open for the Gibb Droll band back in the mid-’90s. [Droll] came and sat in with me a few years ago in Phoenix, and it really clicked like it never has before with another player. The reason we’re all playing together now is simply because of timing. In each one of our lives, the timing was right for this particular project.”

Recently the group released its first album, a live recording appropriately titled “Live,” an album which offers a decisively newer sound than Williams’ longtime fans would come to expect. For starters, there are no looping effects (something Williams is widely recognized for), and with Droll’s lead guitars, the album has more of a rock edge to it.

“I’m definitely living out childhood rock and roll fantasies of playing this kind of music at this volume to these kinds of audiences,” he said. “I’m definitely going way further here than I can solo. Being solo is definitely a comfort level, but it’s also very rooted in acoustics — singing and playing guitar. With the band, there’s constant movement, not only from the band and myself, but also the audience.” As for the show at the Sherman Theater, Williams promises a show which, much like his musical background, will cover every type of genre imaginable but keep everyone on and off stage in high spirits.

“You can expect a wide variety of genres with heavy notation to the rock side of things,” he said. “There will be jazz, reggae, funk, disco and acoustic bluegrass. We’ve been having a good time pretending to make these things sound like bluegrass. It’s a lot of fun for us.”

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