Premiere: Rob Williams rises out of depression with new record, ‘Weathering the Storm, Vol. 1’

“I guess only time will tell if this spell cast over me / Will begin to fade away, disappear entirely / Or find me easy prey and devour me,” Rob Williams muses with the confrontational fire-spitter, “A Hard Time.” Laced with both resignation and hope, its volcanic guitar wash accentuates the lyrical foundation, stepped wholly in his long-standing battle with mental health. 18 months of a tireless struggle, which saw him seek personal and professional support, directly pour into his new record. Weathering the Storm, Vol. 1, his first in three years, now up for pre-order, carries with it as much heart-rending melancholy as brightness, and Williams himself appears like a lighthouse amidst a raging thunderstorm.

“The train rolled on and it rolled on some more / And the day became the night like it had done the night before,” weariness seeps into the watercolor imagery. “Only Heaven Knows” rumbles along in the mental haze, Williams’ voice never wavering but simply relaying the endless journey. Such desolation stitches throughout much of the record, particularly with songs like “Moon’s Light,” which sighs with a poetic brushstroke. “The moon’s light through the window / Throwing shadows to the floor / Tree limbs, clouds, ghosts, and other figures / The whistled tune of autumn wind / Too loud to ignore,” he sings.

Out of Richmond, Virginia, Williams winds the listener through wondrous, echoing chambers of his past, and it never gets too much to bear. In fact, the excursion from the plucky stage-setter “Nameless” to the twinkling lamplight of “Good with the Changes” punctures the tension, and the emotional turmoil falls from his shoulders.

Weathering the Storm, Vol. 1 is undeniably “therapeutic, in the sense that I’ve been able to get back to doing what I love to do,” Williams tells B-Sides & Badlands over email. His confessional songwriting style, evident throughout his catalog to-date, including 2013’s solo debut A Place in the Sun, unwraps with a forceful simplicity. “Writing about my experiences seems natural. The most important parts of my continuing recovery have been the support of my wife and getting the professional help that I needed when I needed it. I don’t think I could have made it through without both of those supports.”

In turn, his renewed strength worms its way into the music, too, present through his refreshing concoction of Americana, blues, and indie rock. Williams pieces these various genre shards together into a mosaic that’s unmistakably his own; while his influences run far and wide, from The Beatles to Josh Ritter, his magnetic vocal rearranges them all. It also helps he has an impressive roster of collaborators: Kris Krull (drums, backing vocals), Turtle Zwadlo (bass, backing vocals), Leslie Williams (electric guitar, backing vocals), Ian Shenk (piano, organ), Jonathan Corey (piano, organ), Toby Whitaker (trombone), Bob Miller (trumpet), and J.C. Kuhl (bass clarinet, saxophone).

Where his last two records, 2015’s Southern FM and 2017’s An Hour Before Daylight, saw him venturing outside the Richmond sphere, the new tunes enticed him to stay close to home, and so he once-again teamed with producer John Morand. “I only had a few songs finished this time around when I told John that I was ready to start making a new album. When we got together to talk about the process, we sketched out a plan for a series of mini-sessions, two or three songs at a time. Once a session was done, I’d start writing for the next one,” Williams offers. “I liked working this way because it allowed time between sessions to reflect on and revisit some of the work that had already been done. It also meant that the songs were all new, and no one was wedded to a particular part they had grown accustomed to playing. That allowed John to have more input on how the finished tracks were going to sound.”

Initially, the record bloomed with 12 songs, but given the constraints of vinyl, with many songs clocking in at five minutes, he whittled back to only nine. Thus, a Volume 1 of his story was born. “I think that John was able to capture the essence of what I was aiming for with this record. Although [this album] was written following a long and difficult struggle with depression, it isn’t a sad and self-loathing album. It’s an album filled with hope and possibility.”

Weathering the Storm, Vol. 1 arrives this Friday (August 28)

Listen below:

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