Visions Magazine's
On Stage 2000

Winner - Award of Excellence - Musician

Eddie Williams
"Blowin' Fairy Dust"

The "Bachelor Party" - a small group of male friends, dedicated to making sure that the object of their friendship would never remember a thing about his last night on Earth as a bachelor. A table of Navy guys and their dates - just out lookin’ for a buzz, who had no idea what was about to happen to them.

Numerous couples out for late dining - who couldn’t seem to bring themselves to leave, long after they’d finished eating.

A table of 50-ish black couples visiting from Richmond - who were sitting right in front of the stage when the fun began. Amidst great appreciative hootin’ and hollerin’, by the time they had to leave and drive back to Richmond, they wanted to take Karl & Eddie with them.

Throw in a bar full of the usual Friday night suspects and you’ve got a very, shall we say, eclectic audience.

Early in the first set Karl & Eddie did a version of Karl Werne’s "Cost" that would have done Dave Brubek, or even Frank Zappa, proud. An equally outrageous take on the old Stealers Wheel classic, "Stuck in the Middle With You", had one of the sailors at the table with a date doing choreographed hand signals with (I hope) one of his friends at the bar, while the rest of them sang along with all the verses. Very strange.

And then there were the original compositions. It was like overhearing a musical conversation. Sometimes joyously manic, sometimes wistful, but always tight, melodic, weaving in and out and around each other. Their instruments were two voices discussing the same thought, in complete agreement.

I’ve already said all that needs to be said about Karl, get a copy of last month’s VISIONS if you missed it, but Eddie Williams does not get nearly enough light on his heat, never has – especially considering his lifetime of accomplishments. This is a guy who is respected up and down the East Coast as a brilliant Jazz innovator, one who taught at the Governors Magnet School for the Arts for over a decade. Known as a consummate "horn man" he has fronted well known Jazz and R&B groups like Secrets and The Little Big Band, he has also Rocked and Rolled in the bars with the likes of The Snard Brothers. He has been guest soloist with the renowned Virginia Symphony Orchestra when they performed Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, as well as when they hosted Burt Bacharach, Ben Vereen and Gladys Knight

Long before I ever played with Eddie in the Lewis McGehee Group, I was a big fan. After being on stage usually 7 nights a week myself I was in no hurry to be in another bar on a rare night off but, anytime Eddie was performing anywhere, and I wasn’t, I was right in front of whatever band he was with. When you can play with the Snards and the Symphony, you can play anywhere!

Eddie and his wife, Karen, have always been happy, friendly, people whenever we met, but the addition of two children - Parker 6, and Jarrett 4 – seems to have allowed a subtle but powerful change in Eddies demeanor.

Children don’t know how to be grown up, so they require us to become like them in order to relate. This is a very good thing for all of us, but especially for anyone involved in the creative arts. I mention this because all during this interview Eddie seemed on the verge of laughing, or at least giggling, and mentioned repeatedly how much "fun" certain things had become. Things like reading Ouspensky, and Gurdjieff’s "In Search of the Miraculous".

Oh, yeah! Karl Werne said, "Playing with Eddie Williams is like playing with a 5 yr old kid and a master virtuoso all rolled up in one body." Amen.

Eddie is finally creating his first CD of totally original works, entitled "Hang Time", with good friends John Toomey (well known brilliant pianist), Chris Brydge on bass and Rich Mossman on drums. Rich and Chris were specifically chosen, as "younger guys", to provide a certain "vibrant energy" Eddie feels when he plays with them. Even though Eddie has played the saxophone all of his life he says he was most influenced musically by Jimi Hendrix! Yep, this CD sounds like BIG fun. On it are songs dedicated to John Candy, called "JC", as well as a very "symphonic" piece for his mom entitled "Catherine", and one inspired by his wife, "Karen Marie".

I think his recent exposure to writers and thinkers like Gurdjieff have allowed him to articulate verbally something I felt in his music from the beginning. Eddie Williams plays from a place deep inside that is so intensely spiritual as to take you to that same place within yourself. That experience is precisely why we all went to see him for the last almost twenty years. In his own words: "I think music is so much more powerful than people know. When I perform I can see people change during the course of a night, sometimes during a song. It’s like the music is being blown out onto the crowd - like "fairy dust" - and you can actually see the people changing. Getting lighter, happier, relaxing, settling into their chairs, serious faces replaced by smiles and laughing. I feel that if I can do that to one person in an audience, then I have really accomplished my purpose in life.

" One night, at the old "Orient Express" in the Airport Hilton while I was packing up, a lady stuffed a napkin in my shirt pocket and left without saying a word. I finished what I was doing and went home. While I was unpacking later at home, I found the note and it said: ‘I’m not a very religious person. I don’t go to church, and I have never had any strong feelings one way or the other in that direction. But tonight, for the first time, hearing you play lit a fire inside of me. It brought my soul alive, brought my spirit a lot of healing.’ And I was like, ‘My God…’

"It was like an angel had dropped down and said, ‘Keep up the good work. You’re doing all right. You’re doing what you came here to do.’ "I’ve still got the note, from probably 15 years ago."

And he is 15 years worth of playing better than when he was already doing that to people. He is as smooth as Stan Getz or Sil Austin, and has all the premeditated honks and squeeks of John Coltrane at 4 am in a Chicago park. You can hear him laughing one moment and whispering the next, and it goes right into you.

I haven’t heard Eddie play recently with a full 4 piece jazz group, but I will be among the first in line for a copy of "Hang Time". However, for sheer individual artistry, you haven’t heard anything like he and Karl alone, just talking to each other about life through their instruments.

That is if you can imagine a conversation between Charlie Parker and Frank Zappa, how about John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix? Or The Dave Brubek quartet meets Pink Floyd - ya know what I’m sayin’?

Eddie Williams will "Fairy Dust" you right out of this world. By the way, he and Karl have a Live double disc CD set of their own, recorded one fine night at Abbey Road. Don’t miss it. Be there!

Oh, and thanks, Eddie.