Photo by Erbu Yildiz
Yasmin Williams first made waves with her unique style of playing—a rapid, percussive approach with the guitar laid down horizontally in her lap. Her extraordinary dexterity—she would sometimes play the guitar with one hand and pluck at a kalimba with another—drew raves.
In 2021, on the heels of her wildly successful second album, Urban Driftwood, Williams found herself at the historic Newport Folk Festival riding a golf cart to her stage and, understandably, a little nervous. For one thing, Newport was the largest festival Williams had ever played. For another, the deft young guitarist wasn’t even sure she was a folk artist—and certainly not the heir to John Fahey that certain music critics made her out to be. Williams had only recently checked out Fahey’s music in response to a string of comparisons and was puzzled by the reference. “I was like okay, he’s definitely doing more of the old-school Delta blues thing,” she remembers. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
Williams killed her set. “It was one of the best sets of my life, period,” she recalls. Later that night, she joined in on an all-star sing-along with R&B legend Chaka Khan. She considers the festival a turning point in her career—an event that made her think that maybe she could succeed as a professional musician. And it was part of a series of experiences, at festivals and among other musicians, that made her reconsider the “folk” label she had, to this point, rejected.
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Her latest album, Acadia, draws on some of those folk traditions—the opening song “Cliffwalk” features Dom Flemons, a Piedmont-based folk-blues mainstay. But it also expands on Williams’s growing confidence in composition and arrangement. The album reaches across genres, and features 19 guest artists from across many different disciplines. These include percussive guitar master Kaki King, the nouveau folk band Darlingside, and seasoned jazzmen Immanuel Wilkins and Marcus Gilmore. Unlike previous albums, Acadia makes judicious use of vocals. In “Dawning,” recent touring partner Aoife O’Donovan adds a heady, dreamy, wordless counterpart, while “Virga” brings in the entire Darlingside ensemble for a breathy flight of melody.
Williams recently made time to talk about her journey from rejecting the folk label to embracing and expanding on its tradition, her love of African music and instruments, and her gorgeous new album.
When your first album came out, you got somewhat pigeonholed in a blues/folk category which, as I understand it, wasn’t your thing at all.
Yeah, pretty much.
This album really breaks out of that mold, but as I’m reading the notes, it seems like you’ve drawn a lot from your couple of years of playing at folk and bluegrass festivals. Can you tell me a little about that experience—getting shoved into a category you didn’t ask for and then gradually finding things to like about it?
When my first record came out, I was kind of in the percussive, fingerstyle world with Kaki King and Andy McKee and all those people. And then when Urban Driftwood came out, I was thrust into the folk/bluegrass world, and I had no clue what that really was. I knew way more about the percussive finger-style stuff than bluegrass. So I would go to festivals like Telluride and other bluegrass festivals in the U.S. and abroad and eventually I thought, ‘You know what? This is actually pretty neat.’
I started doing a bunch of research about old-time music and the folk tradition to understand more about it, and I ended up really liking old-time music especially—even bluegrass. In the festival scene, it kind of sounds the same a lot of the time. But when you find artists like Jerry Douglas who are doing kind of innovative things within the genre, it starts to sound more interesting to me.
But yeah, it was a little weird, because I don’t know where the comparisons came from. It was like “Oh, you’re like John Fahey…”
And you had not really dug into that at all?
No, I had no idea.
I love John Fahey, and I don’t think that Urban Driftwood really sounded like that, except both of you play guitar.
That’s the only similarity I could find, too, having listened to a couple of his records. I was like okay, he’s definitely doing more of the old-school Delta blues thing. That’s not what I’m doing. It was weird, but I’ve started embracing it more in the last couple of years.
I remember on the last album you were incorporating some African sounds and African instruments into your work. I’m not hearing that so much on this album, and I was wondering if you’re still interested in that.
For sure. I played a little bit of kora on the last track, “Malamu.” Even if it’s not as audible as it was on the last record, definitely African classical music informs my writing more than it used to. The polyphony, the different rhythmic patterns clashing against each other, the more long-form, flow-y structures that I’ve embraced on this record—that’s a consequence of listening to more West African music.
I was reading your notes about “Cliffwalk,” and you’re talking about being at the Newport Folk Festival as an inspiration for that one. Can you tell me about being there at this very large, very historic festival, and what that was like for you?
I remember when I got to the grounds—this was 2021—I was super tired for some reason that morning. I don’t know if I was psyching myself out or nerves were making me tired. And when I was on a golf cart getting transported to the quad stage and I saw the structures that surround the festival, I was just like, “This looks so cool.” And then I got a bunch of energy and did the set. It was one of the best sets of my life, period. It was so fun. The audience was super engaged, super into it. I didn’t know what to expect. That’s probably the biggest festival I’ve ever played in my life.
I really love the way you incorporate vocals onto this track “Virga,” which I think is my favorite. Is that something you decided to do early on or did it just come out of who was there and available?
“Virga” started as a solo guitar track. Then, for some reason, I didn’t feel it was ever finished. I finished the song and the form and my parts. But I always felt like it needed something else. Then I thought, “Maybe it needs vocals.” Because I had finished another track, “Dawning,” with vocals. I was thinking it needed vocals similar to that, but more elaborate—and potentially with lyrics. I asked Darlingside to do it, and they said yeah. I love how they kind of have an almost a baroque style of singing but in a folk tradition. It’s very ethereal—not just ethereal in the sense of spooky but very controlled. The harmonies are always super tight. It’s always super thoughtful the way they produce their songs. I just like everything about their music, pretty much. Also their voices are very different individually from each other but they fit together very well. Everyone has their role, and it was really cool to see how they arranged “Virga.” I just sent them a guitar track.
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Oh wow, so they did all the vocal arrangements. It’s a beautiful track. The other one that I wanted to ask you about is “Mamalu” where you just let it rip, guitar-wise. It’s almost like a Frampton Comes Alive kind of thing. Didn’t you learn to play guitar partly by playing Guitar Hero?
Yes. That’s how I started playing. That’s what I was doing for the first couple of years.
Who are some of the shredders that you most enjoy?
Hendrix, for sure. Is Stanley Jordan a shredder? In my mind, he is. Stanley Jordan for sure. I remember liking Paul Gilbert a lot as a 12- or 13-year-old. Buckethead was a big one for me as a kid. Those were the top four for me. Now I don’t listen to as much electric shredder type stuff. Now it’s more jazz. But those were the top four for me.
How did “Mamalu” come about?
That track is kind of weird for me, I really don’t know where it came from. The first acoustic guitar part you hear is the first thing I came up with for that. And then I was like, “You know what? This track is hype. It’s going to have a lot of energy.” That was clear to me from the beginning. I knew that electric guitar was going to be part of it. As far as drums and Immanuel [Wilkins] playing sax on it, those were later decisions.
The sax is really striking and really, to my ears, kind of ‘70s sounding. Can you talk about the people that you worked with on this album? Did you have a band, or did you just have people dropping in and dropping out?
So, I kind of curated who would be on the record and just hoped that they would say yes, so I asked—the 19 people that are on there, I just asked.
Nineteen people, good lord.
I didn’t realize how weird that was until it was done, and then I was like, “Why did I have 19 people on my album? I could have just had a band and that would have been easier.” But whatever, I don’t regret it. I just wanted people on the record who I respected as musicians and who I knew could bring something different to my typical sound, and who would also be open to improvising and willing to get out of their typical boxes. For instance, Immanuel Wilkins is a jazz artist and Marcus Gilmore, who played drums on it, is a jazz artist. The song is not really jazz at all, but they weren’t afraid to bring themselves into the track, and also to branch away from what they’re used to and do something different. Same thing with Darlingside. They brought themselves to the record, but it’s also much different from what they’re doing.
Do you feel like your album varies quite a lot from track to track because you were working with all of these different people?
I think it varies more because of my tracks than the collaborators. The songs are kind of their own stories, in a way. Like, each song is a planet, and the album is a universe. So each song is very much its own thing, but it’s cohesive and it works as a narrative arc from song one to song nine. That’s just me being in different headspaces as I write the songs.
Did you write them all during the same period of your life?
No, not at all, they come from four years of writing. A lot of them, I was on the road in different places, so different headspaces.
That makes sense because your life must have been in incredible flux.
It was crazy, yeah. It was like zero to 100.
If you could get across one big idea—”This is what people don’t get about me and I wish they did”—what would it be?
I would say that I feel like maybe people think of me or know about me because of the techniques I use on the guitar. But for me, that’s never been important. For me, composition is the thing that gets lost. People will say, “Oh, you’re playing the guitar on your lap, you learned from Guitar Hero,” whatever. But it’s taken a bunch of years to figure out how to write complex compositions confidently. And to be a confident player and to be more aware of the nuances of the compositions. To be okay with silence for example, to not try to show off. Just trying to be in service of the music. I hope it’s apparent that I can do that now. Talking about techniques is great, but for me, they’re just a means to an end.
This record goes a lot further in that direction. I mean, your technique is pretty amazing. You can’t blame people for being stunned when you’re playing the guitar with one hand and a kalimba with another one. But I do think if you listen to the songs on this album, there’s way more structure and complexity.
Hopefully yes, and it’s taken years to get to that point. To be confident enough that I can do that and to be mature enough to even think of these songs and these structures.
