Country singer-songwriter Zane Williams finds Greenville close to home on his musical journey

By Lance Martin Special for the Kenneth Threadgill Concert Series

Singer-songwriter Zane Williams packed his belongings into a tiny car and headed to Nashville two days after graduating from Abilene Christian University in 1999.

The math major, who opens the Feb. 27 Kenneth Threadgill Concert Series in Greenville, had decided in his senior year that a music career was worth pursuing. And while he found some acclaim as a songwriter and got a publishing deal, he struggled to break through in the world’s toughest market for aspiring country musicians. After nine years, he and his wife decided to return to his native Texas and start all over.

Then came a text message that made him cry.

Williams describes preparing for a show at Plano’s Love and War in Texas and getting the message on his cell phone: “Congrats - you’ve got the next Jason Michael Carroll single.” That single was titled, perhaps a little ironically, Hurry Home.

“We had just moved back to Texas and my publisher let me go,” Williams recalls. “I didn’t have enough gigs lined up to pay the bills and we were about to have a baby. So I was looking at probably having to get a day job and that’s not very fun – it slows everything down so much in building a career.”

Williams said he knew from talking to fellow Texas native and Kenneth Threadgill Concert Series alumnus Radney Foster what a hit single would mean both financially and for his career.

“I was just like ‘oh, thank goodness,’” Williams said.

The song has spent eight months on the charts for Carroll, peaking at No. 14 just as Williams is in the midst of releasing his newest album, The Right Place.

Williams and his wife, Jodi, moved to Texas to be closer to family, start one of their own and re-launch his music career, basing themselves in Jodi’s hometown of McKinney.

“It’s sometimes a little frustrating for me to be starting over after already doing this for 10 years,” Williams said, “but mostly I’m just excited about it because I feel like I finally know what I’m doing and down here in Texas you don’t have to be 19 years old to make it. So the fact that I’m a late bloomer is not a strike against me and I can kind of do my thing.”

He describes the Texas market as being a great fit for him. “There are a lot more opportunities down here for me to be myself as a recording artist that I didn’t have up in Nashville,” he said, “because I didn’t really fit the box of the major label deal and I wasn’t even interested in that.”

Williams said that while he’s starting over in many respects, it’s a rare opportunity to do things right from the beginning.

“I’m totally new (here),” he said. “But I’ve had time to figure out who I am as an artist and get pretty good at writing songs and putting on a good show. I feel that I actually have a market now – a niche I can focus on.”

Williams found that niche after touring colleges heavily, as well as spending time in folk and bluegrass circles.

He spent a year focusing on the Americana/folk scene, competing in songwriting contests at festivals with modest success, being named a New Folk Finalist at the Kerrville Folk Festival and runner-up at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. He won at North Carolina’s MerleFest and Song of the Year at the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, which brought him exposure and a $20,000 grand prize.

The competition in that scene is “just as competitive as mainstream country” yet with fewer people making much money, Williams said. “I didn’t last long doing that. I knew at least I’ve got some mainstream songs, so then I switched gears and landed a publishing deal” where could write full-time.

After a couple years just writing, Williams discovered he missed performing and making records and decided to go all-in on a career based in Texas.

Williams picked Radney Foster to produce The Right Place because he’s “the kind of singer-songwriter I aspire to be.”

Foster, whose work producing Brandon Rhyder, Roger Creager and the Randy Rogers Band produced hits for those rising artists, helped Williams deliver an album full of commercial promise. Foster co- wrote with Williams Six Steel Strings which appears on the new album and describes the struggle of balancing family with a life on the road.

Every song is written or co-written by Williams and from the musical welcome of the title track, The Right Place, Williams proves that he’s no one-song wonder. The album features songs that offer something for every kind of fan, from the seriousness of love song River Girl and break-up song Live to Love Again, while the winks-and-grins in Tired of Being Perfect, 99 Bottles and I Am What I Am carry the sly-yet-sincere country attitude of a George Strait or Garth Brooks.

Pablo and Maria adds a Marty Robbins-like southwest flair that tells the haunting story of an ill-fated couple.

Williams said the song started as a fairy tale he started writing about in college that featured a princess freezing in a snowy glade while waiting for her love. He couldn’t figure out how to finish it. “Fast forward 12 years later,” he said. “I’m sitting on the porch of my publishing company and I’m trying to write a song. ‘Pablo and Maria’ popped into my head – and I kind of remembered my ill-fated snow romance couple... The story just kind of came together in little pieces.”

And while Pablo and Maria was pure fiction, Williams said his songs are often personal, such as, Christmas Feels Like Christmas Again and Born Into Love, a bonus track when fans download the album via his website. Both songs about the birth of a new baby were recorded a month before his son, Buck, was born last July.

Williams, though, wasn’t exactly borne into songwriting. He didn’t start until he was in high school.

“It was basically love and a guitar that got me into writing songs,” Williams said, explaining how he was encouraged once he got to college to play and record the songs he had written.

“That first album was almost all songs about that girlfriend and we had broken up by then,” he said. “So it was the ‘I just met you’ song, the ‘we’re going to be together forever’ song, and the ‘I don’t know how I’m going to live without you’ song.”

One tune that Williams admits isn’t entirely biographical is his latest single, 99 Bottles, a tongue-twisting beer-drinking song that mentions more than a few brands of cold brew.

“I didn’t grow up around beer drinkers much,” he said, “Everything I’ve learned about beer has just been in the past few years… I had to rely heavily on the Internet to write that song.”

Williams may be a newcomer to the beer drinking scene, but he finds fans whether he’s in coffee shops or honky-tonks.

He described attending a singer-songwriter night at Commerce’s Cow Hill Express Coffee Company and being well received. “I liked the vibe of Commerce,” Williams said, noting how he sold 17 CDs to a crowd of approximately 20 people.

After the coffee shop closed, the artist walked across the street to a local bar where he knew the act performing there. He was invited to take out his guitar and sing a couple songs.

When he returns to Hunt County for the Threadgill Series, Williams said the audience can expect a lot of variety.

“It all falls somewhere in the country genre, but goes from rocking to folk to honky-tonk,” he said. “I think that people should expect to be taken on a little journey with each song. Each song is a little mini- movie and I’m one of those guys that gets a pleasure out of making people cry, laugh and tap their foot.”

He expects to have family at the show and enjoys the opportunity to play a family-friendly venue.

And while it will be his first time to play Greenville, Williams finds himself in a familiar place just as his career hits stride. “I remember driving through Greenville when my wife and I were dating – I was in Nashville and she was in McKinney,” he said. “Greenville always meant that I was almost home.”

About the Kenneth Threadgill Concert Series

More information on the Kenneth Threadgill Concert Series and Friends of Main Street can be found at www.greenville-texas.com.

Tickets for the Feb. 27 concert, which also features the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, are on sale now at Greenville’s Cavender’s and Magic Bubble on Lee Street. Tickets are also available online at www.frontgatetickets.com or by calling (888) 512-SHOW. A limited number of seats are available in the reserved section.