Artists inevitably have eras that fans, critics, and perhaps even the artists themselves agree are especially fertile.
For Don Williams, the period between 1979 and 1984 was that especially fertile time. That five year window saw him nominated for and/or win prestigious awards from the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association while enjoying a string of chart topping singles and albums that often landed in the Top Ten.
That was also the period during which Williams, who passed in 2017, recorded a group of songs that never saw release. Though certainly not uncommon that an artist would leave tracks off a record for one reason or another and left to languish in a vault until the arrival of a reissue campaign.
Whatever the reason, they found a somewhat unusual home in the Williams family cellar. Over decades, the recordings weren’t just accumulating dust, they were also degrading, as tape tends to do.
The family, including Williams' son, Tim, was aware that the tapes were down there but in no hurry to release them.
But as these things go, somewhere along the way there were conversations and persuasions and eventually the tapes came out into the light to reveal the secrets they held.
It turned out that there were genuine treasures on the tapes, songs that could stand on their own and which had been brought to the point of completion. Working with his father’s longtime collaborator, Garth Fundis, as well as several members of his father’s band, the younger Williams quickly discovered that there was a collection of material that might represent a brand new album from his father.
That effort, Epilogue: The Cellar Tapes, out now on Craft Recordings, is presented not as a collection of songs culled from various times and places but rather a unified piece of art that rests nicely next to any of the late musicians recordings but in particular those times between ’79 and ’84.
The condition of the tapes themselves required that some instrumentation be updated but Epilogue feels as familiar and timeless as anything else in the discography perhaps because the music was never encumbered by unnecessary production flourishes and there is no attempt now to make the music somehow seem contemporary. (No, you won’t find a bonus track with hip-hop beats intended to curry favor with commercial country radio.)
Williams, who enjoyed a loyal international audience (a YouTube search unveils video of a 1997 trip to Zimbabwe), was, according to his son, someone who listened to a broad range of music and took his craft seriously while encouraging others to follow their paths.
Tim Williams recently spoke about the process of bringing Epilogue: The Cellar Tapes to life, memories of music in their household, and some of the surprising music his father enjoyed hearing.
Host/Producer: Jedd Beaudoin
Theme music: Torin Andersen
