» Rachel Williams
Image: num 1.jpg Soulful country songstress Rachel Williams releases her first full-length album since her 2004 debut, First Day of the Truth, on June 26. The generous 16-song set—titled Lonely At the Bottom—comes on the heels of five song EP released last year, including the single “Some Things Make Her Cry,” which notched its way onto the Music Row Charts and received a great deal of airplay in Great Britain and other countries overseas.
Sixteen songs is well above the average 12-song album length, but there’s good reason for Lonely’s wealth of tracks. “I was writing so much that I just couldn't bear to part with any of the songs—they were all significant to me for one reason or another,” Williams explains. “I felt that the only way to get a true representation of who I am right now and the music that I'm doing these days was to include them all. It definitely ended up being better this way, because instead of the token ‘one acoustic song, one power ballad, one party song, etc.,’ we got to put together an album with no limitations.”
The twenty-one-year-old artist wrote or co-wrote twelve of the sixteen songs and co-produced the album with Nashville producer, Kim Copeland. Assembling the album piece by piece, they enlisted a revolving crew of ace studio musicians, including several of Nashville’s most in-demand drummers, from Nick Buda (Taylor Swift, Mindy Smith) to Wayne Killius (Big and Rich, Steve Forbert), Brian Pruitt (Mark Chesnutt, LeAnn Rimes) and Owen Hale (Lynyrd Skynyrd, George Strait, Patty Loveless).
As the album title suggests, the songs are earthy, accessible narratives about life’s ups and downs. “This new CD just kind of follows me through all the disappointments of relationships and my career,” says Williams. “I basically tore out my journal and put it on a CD. It’s a very scary, vulnerable place to be. But I’d rather put it all out on the line then hold back and be unsure. That’s my release, how I keep sane. I always tell people, ‘Don’t ever break my heart, because you will hear it in a song at some point down the road.’ Guaranteed.”
Williams’ packed up and moved to Music City a couple of years back—a little while after appearing as a finalist on the second season of Nashville Star—but her roots are in Belleville, Mich., a tiny suburb of Detroit. And Motor City certainly hasn’t forgotten her—she was nominated as “Outstanding Country Vocalist” for the Detroit Music Awards last year.
Williams has plenty to celebrate. She’s opened shows for top-notch country acts like Jason Aldean, Trace Adkins, John Anderson, Sammy Kershaw, Confederate Railroad, and even her idol, Wynonna Judd. Millions of viewers caught her head-turning performances on Nashville Star. Her music is featured on iTunes, Burn Lounge and CD Baby, and her website has received half a million hits in the past seven months alone.
Of late, Williams been creating quite a buzz in Nashville’s songwriting scene, logging co-writes with a host of well-respected writers, from Dave Berg, who scored number one hits with Reba McEntire (“Somebody”) and Rodney Atkins (“If You’re Going Through Hell”), to Stewart Harris, who topped the charts with the Wynonna Judd smash “No One Else On Earth” and Travis Tritt’s “Can I Trust You With My Heart,” Rachel Proctor, who wrote the radio hit “Where Would You Be” for Martina McBride, and Lisa Carver, who has had cuts with Sugarland, Reba McEntire, Julie Roberts and Willie Nelson.
In 2007 alone, Rachel can credit a pair of showcases, a handful of performances in the prestigious late night songwriters’ rounds at Nashville’s famed Bluebird Café—including her hosting debut—and a booth at Fan Fair—an important long-running feature of the CMA Music Festival—for having raised Williams’ profile in Music City. Her latest album promises to turn even more heads her way.
“I feel like this CD is going to take all the excuses off the table. I realized that I wasn’t making a product just for Nashville. I definitely want to be a country artist and I have respect for the things that country music has been. Of course, I still want my record deal but I feel like I’m going to get it by being even more “out there” than if I’m just trying to water things down. And with this album, I think that the industry and critics and fans are going to notice that. There’s absolutely no way to fit me into a box. There’s absolutely no way to categorize what I can do.”