Julie Williams
“I know that I’m telling my story on this stage, but I’m also telling somebody else’s story that they get to hear in that time,” says Julie Williams. “I feel stronger every time I play one of those songs.”
On and off the stage, storytelling is a priority for the singer-songwriter. She aims to share her experience through her pointed lyrics and silky vocals while uplifting listeners of all backgrounds.
Williams’ goal for Tennessee Moon, the EP she released Oct. 17, is to channel the “fleeting nature” of her 20s. Each song draws on her 1990s and early-2000s country influences while presenting contemporary perspectives on identity, love and self-acceptance. “It’s really an ode to all the good, bad, all the dirt and mess,” she says, “but also the beauty of these past few years in Nashville.”
Williams started singing as soon as she could talk. While music comes naturally to her, she instead went to college to study public policy, intending to build a career in which she could help people and foster resounding change. While she was a student, Williams began writing songs and discovered that music could further that goal.
She first immersed herself in Nashville’s music scene in 2019. When she went to writers’ rounds, she would seldom see any people of color performing. She’s since worked to find her groove as a mixed-race queer country artist.
“Being here five years in Nashville,” Williams says, “I feel like I am now just really coming into my own as who I am as an artist and my sound and what I want to say.”
One highlight of Tennessee Moon is a new “Moonlight Version” of “Southern Curls,” which strips back the original piece’s full-band arrangement to solo piano. It’s an important song in Williams’ catalog that details her experiences growing up as a mixed-race person in Florida. “If you’ve ever had to fight to love yourself because somebody else made you feel like you shouldn’t, then that song is for you,” she says. The release of the original version in 2021 sparked her connection with the Black Opry, which led to her performance on the main stage at the Newport Folk Festival in 2023.
“I wanted to put it out with this EP because it feels [like] this closing out of the ‘Southern Curls’ chapter,” says Williams. “Without that song, I would have never found the Black Opry. I would have never been a part of CMT’s Next Women of Country. I don’t think I would have stayed in Nashville if I hadn’t written that song.”
Julie Williams
As the EP concludes one part of Williams’ journey, it marks the start of another, focused on introspection, acceptance and a surge of inspiration. She recorded Tennessee Moon with her partner and producer Jonathan Smalt, a process she describes as a “labor of love that kind of came together as we were falling in love, too.”
“This record was born from laying on the couch,” she explains, “lighting incense in the living room and just playing records and records and saying, ‘Oh wow, did you hear that piano part? Did you hear this, and did you hear that?’”
“Dirt” is one of Williams’ favorites from the EP. Co-written with Natalie Closner of the band Joseph, the song reflects the vulnerability Williams experienced in therapy experiences and her strengthened self-awareness.
“In that process, when you are digging up all these things from your past, there’s a while where you’re sitting in the dirt,” she says. “You haven’t gotten to see the fruits of your labor, and that’s what I was feeling.”
Williams is especially excited to perform “Dirt” when her tour brings her to The Blue Room at Third Man Records on Thursday.
“Every time I sing it live or hear it, I’m reminding myself of its message of trying not to live for other people.”
