Alex Williams

Emerging in the neo-traditionalist country surge that followed Jamey Johnson's early-2010s breakthrough, Alex Williams takes 1970s outlaw country as his core reference point, the same approach employed by Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson, and locates an individual style inside the work of Nashville renegades such as Waylon Jennings and Texas mavericks such as Jerry Jeff Walker, a facility audible throughout his 2017 debut Better Than Myself.

A Pendleton, Indiana native, Williams first absorbed 1980s metal before shifting toward classic country in his late teens. After high school he entered Belmont University in Nashville yet soon withdrew, spending the next period playing clubs in Music City while also returning at intervals to Indiana or traveling down to Texas. He ultimately formed his own band, whose relentless roadwork attracted the notice of Julian Raymond, the producer and Big Machine Records A&R executive who signed Williams apart from the group and booked studio time with a star-studded ensemble that included J.T. Corenflos, Matt Rollings, and Victor Indrizzo. Better Than Myself reached stores in August 2017.