Austin Williams, a Nashville farm boy turned country music renaissance man
Not yet 20, Pleasant View, Tennessee native and singer-songwriter Austin Williams has been blessed with God-fearing humility, laser-sharp focus, a tireless work ethic and a robust tenor voice.
As he played with his pet beagle on the front porch of his family's home overlooking acres of farmland a half-hour northwest of downtown Nashville, Williams adeptly broke down the arts of playing center field, harvesting tobacco plants and marketing mainstream country music during a recent interview with The Tennessean.
The boy-turned-renaissance man's latest EP, "Broken Things Break Things," was released on July 26.
Quick growth sustained by 'meaningful music'
Six years have elapsed since Williams decided he could carry a tune after hearing Caleb Lee Hutchinson sing The Steeldrivers' "If It Hadn't Been for Love" on the 16th season of American Idol. Expressing this sentiment out loud in a household where his father was friendly with Merle Haggard's co-writer Albert Brumley Jr. (the classic hymn "I'll Fly Away") and family listening sessions regularly included the catalogs of Tom T. Hall, Marty Robbins and Keith Whitley quickly led to the launch of a country music career.
In 2022, his first year as a mainstream artist, he amassed 388,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, 338,900 followers on TikTok, 100,000 Instagram followers and was named to the Recording Academy and TikTok's "Musical Class of 2023."
Year two found him touring in support of acts including 2023 country radio chart toppers Tyler Hubbard and Warren Zeiders and releasing his viral hit "90s Rap Mashup." The track blends memorable choruses and hooks from his father's favorite hip-hop classics by Nelly, Dr. Dre, Master P and City High (among many) with countrified sounds.
Seven months into year three, that song has aided his catalog of music, brief as it is, to already have crossed 100 million total streams.
His slow-growing success melds well with how he envisions himself as not just an artist but moreso as "a guy making meaningful music that not only captures moments but also vividly tells unforgettable stories that when you ride around and listen to them, they make you feel some type of way."
A superstar metaphor
Not unlike a baseball coach or a farmer teaching his son how to survey his crops, Williams' conversations are loaded with metaphors and similies.
How does he view his country career-to-date?
"Like a rubber band. You know, in how the farther out you stretch a rubber band, the harder it (recoils) when you let it go — unless of course, you pull it too far and it breaks?"
Williams is slowly expanding his rubber band. He's doing so while also watching how, quite savvily, Morgan Wallen has looped rappers like Drake, Lil Durk and Moneybagg Yo into the gravitational pull of his metaphorical rubber band, alongside the double-album worth of material and 16 radio-impacting singles he's released in the past two years.
He's currently making headway to that level of effect and honestly — yet proudly — admits he's about 20 percent of the way there.
"Slowly expanding that rubber band effect is impacting how I release material," Williams continues.
"I'm a disbeliever in filler songs. Nashville songwriters work hard and I believe in their labor. That work shouldn't ever be attached to false hope for success."
'Country Just Like Me'
Regarding respecting songwriters, the "Broken Things Break Things" EP features "Country Just Like Me," a ballad penned by multiple-time Grammy-winner Chris Stapleton, Kendall Marvell and Tim James.
Stapleton sang the demo on the song's work tape.
As one would expect, though awed by how simple yet excellently executed lyrics like "If your roots run deep in your family tree / And you help somebody and you do it for free / If your proud blue collar blood is what you bleed / I can guarantee, I can guarantee / That you're country just like me" were Williams was initially unsure he could cut the track.
Humorously, it relates well to a story Darius Rucker recalls about cutting the Chris Stapleton-co-written "Come Back Song" in 2011.
"Chris [Stapleton] sang the hell out of that demo. There's no way I can sing anything better than that," Rucker stated. Upon re-composing the song and changing its vocal key, it was recorded.
Similar recomposition finally got Williams into the studio to cut "Country Just Like Me."
Not backing down from getting 'punched in the face by an emotion'
"When you get punched in the face by an emotion and then you punch your truck's steering wheel in response, that's when you want to write a song," jokes Williams about his own songwriting process.
"Here I am beating God's door, needing help like hell / That's what I'm going through / Every night all because of you / Every morning waking up on the ground / I know I should forgive, but I can't right now," sings the performer on "Can't Right Now," a heartbroken ballad written in a moment like the one he described.
Since his baseball days, tough times have offered Williams as much solace as motivation to guide his aspirations.
"Baseball, like country music, is a game defined by how you respond to failure. You can hit a ball only three times in ten at-bats and be a Hall of Famer. This is, of course, compared to the number of times you (have to endure) being told no in Nashville. Growing up playing a game defined by how you respond to failure made adjusting to working in country music's mainstream much easier."
He continues with a simile drawn from his time cutting tobacco plants.
"Even when I'm tired, I still show up with the same energy because, as I've learned at every turn in my life — especially on the tobacco farm — nobody cares how tired you are when there's work to be done."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville's Austin Williams on his rise to country music stardom
