Born in Oklahoma, Robert Williams is a wanderer, picking up songs along a road that stretches through the roadhouses of Oklahoma to the tempting haunts of Berlin.
Since the 1970s, his style has been his own, a masterful blend of folk, blues, rock and a melodic twist of European cabaret. He played through the Cold War in West Berlin clubs and became a mercurial spark in that scene, a voice in the mosaic of what once was and what was taking its place.
Robert’s guitar and mandolin play soulful and brash. But so much of his songs are about the words. How they fit, sound, rub together; how they whirl and dance. Robert’s lyrics can take you places and bring you back with a deeper wisdom. They are small worlds of longing, wonder and intimate detail.
His first solo album, State Secrets (2004), was named by the Oklahoma Gazette in 2010 as one of the ten most important albums of the previous decade by an Oklahoma artist. Robert’s latest album ‘Never Let The Truth Get In The Way Of A Good Story’ was released in October 2021 on Berlin Bluebird Cafe Records.
Robert will be performing at WoodyFest with long-time friends Mary Catherine Reynolds, Louise Goldberg and Terry ‘Buffalo’ Ware as his backing band.