Holly Williams talks about her new album 'The Highway' and what it's like playing festivals compared to small shows.
Holly Williams is about to complete her 2013 US tour with just two more festivals to hit up this month starting with Austin City Limits Music Festival this weekend (October 4th-6th).
The country star, who happens to be the granddaughter of the legendary Hank Williams, has been hitting the road over the course of the summer, playing at the likes of Rhode Island's Rhythm & Roots Festival as well as supporting John Hiatt over his July dates. She has been promoting her stunning third album 'The Highway' which, she admitted in an interview, she thinks has done much better than her previous work because 'it feels much more authentically me and I feel like people respond to that better'.
Watch Holly Williams - Video Interview
The album has been released on her own label, Georgiana Records, which she reveals has been a major contribution in it reaching the US Album Charts. 'I really had much more of a say in everything from the artwork, the song choice to the way it was presented on a visual level to the band', she says. She even gave a thrilling intimate performance of her new song 'Drinkin', which you could tell had every inch of her heart and soul poured into it as she strummed away, closed eyes, with her session guitarist.
Watch Holly Williams Perform Drinkin' - Live Video
Holly has had a lot of experiences in her life on the road from badly breaking her arm in a near-fatal car accident to marrying her band mate Chris Coleman, and while her ups and downs are definitely documented in her previous albums 'The Ones We Never Knew' and 'Here With Me', her new offering is much more focused on looking back over the places she's been and all that she's been through.
This weekend, Holly will take her beautiful new song collection to Austin City Limits, performing alongside Brooke Waggoner and Houndmouth on the BMI stage on Friday. She will also play on the same stage for the second weekend on October 11th. Her last festival of the year will take place on October 19th-20th at the Southern Ground Festival in South Carolina.
Talking about the difference being playing festival shows and playing at more intimate venues, Holly says it comes down to the song choice and the band because while there are louder instrumentals at festivals designed to bring people to their feet, smaller shows are generally much quieter. 'I really like the evenness because I love playing tambourine and putting the harmonica with my guitar player and those kinds of things but then the songwriter shows are so nice just because people are pin-drop quiet and you can really tell the stories about everything', she says.