ISSUE 011: Ken Williams Is Getting Better at Doing Well

Ken Williams remembers the first time Nashville felt like more than a place he might visit someday. Around 2018, he and his dad took a short trip south, partly because country music had always been something they shared. His father was one of the people who helped shape Williams’ taste early on, introducing him to the classic country that would eventually become the foundation of his own sound. The trip only lasted a couple of days, but it stuck with him.

At the time, Williams was still figuring out where music fit into his life. Born and raised in Milwaukee and later attending high school in Waukesha, Wisconsin, he studied music recording and music business in college while continuing to perform whenever he could. Summers began filling with more shows, many of them just Williams and an acoustic guitar, and the same suggestion kept coming from friends, family members and people who heard him play: he should move to Nashville.

The idea did not become real overnight. Williams spent roughly a year and a half working multiple jobs and saving money before finally making the move in October 2024. What had once been a casual suggestion gradually became a commitment.

Nearly two years later, Williams has learned that moving to Nashville is not the same thing as arriving.

A Sound Built From What He Grew Up Hearing

Williams describes his music as ’90s and 2000s country with a rock edge and a modern sound, which makes sense when he starts listing the records and artists that surrounded him growing up.

There was plenty of country: George Strait, Alan Jackson, Diamond Rio and Tim McGraw. But there was also Green Day, Nickelback, Eminem and 50 Cent. Those genres never felt mutually exclusive to him. They were simply different parts of the same musical upbringing.

“I grew up with so much music,” Williams says. “Country was the one that stuck to me the most.”

George Strait and Alan Jackson remain two of his clearest influences. Jackson, in particular, was one of the first artists Williams remembers hearing before he even thought much about genre labels. As he got older, Eric Church became another important reference point, especially from a songwriting perspective. He also points toward artists like Cody Johnson and Parker McCollum, while the rock side of his taste still includes names like Kid Rock, Uncle Kracker, Matchbox Twenty and Hootie & the Blowfish.

What ties all of those influences together is not a desire to sound exactly like any of them. Williams seems more interested in carrying forward the kind of country music he grew up loving while leaving room for the rock and pop instincts that were always there too.

That approach shows up most clearly in the way he thinks about performing. Williams wants his shows to feel like a place where people can drop whatever they carried in with them and simply have a good time.

“There’s no drama, no politics, no nothing outside of the music,” he says. “Just fun, just good times.”

For him, the goal is not complicated. If someone walks into a room tired from the week and leaves feeling lighter, the show did what it was supposed to do.

The Record That Sounds Like His Life

Williams currently has four songs released, with “About to Dive In” serving as his most recent single at the time of the interview. The song was originally brought to him by producer Rich Singer, and Williams heard an opportunity to push it toward the country-rock side of his sound. He describes the final direction as Southern rock, heartbreak and a little Chris Stapleton energy.

Williams also brought in Rachel Hall to contribute vocals. The two had met through Singer, and Williams was already familiar with the way she performed songs like “Tennessee Whiskey” and Reba McEntire’s “Fancy.” In the studio, he asked her to bring some of that soul and attitude into the track, and the collaboration ended up becoming one of his favorite parts of the record.

But the larger project Williams is building now is his first full-length album, and one song in particular has already become the emotional center of it.

“Getting Better at Doing Well.”

Williams has been performing the song at writers rounds before its official release, and he describes it as his life laid out in front of the listener. The song begins from his own perspective, but by the end, it turns outward.

“Success doesn’t happen overnight,” Williams says. “You got to keep on keeping on with your life.”

That message is the heart of the song. Nobody has everything figured out. Nobody’s path is perfect. Everybody is trying to improve, survive, recover from mistakes and move toward something better.

Williams wanted the song to reflect his own experience in Nashville without making it so specific that someone else could not hear themselves in it.

Even one of his favorite lyrics came from trying to make the song feel more personal.

The original version referenced Johnny Cash and “I Walk the Line.” His producer liked the idea, but pointed out that the lyric belonged too much to Cash’s own story. The song was supposed to be about Williams.

So they shifted the reference toward one of his biggest influences.

George Strait.

Williams rewrote the line around “King George” and the idea of being a troubadour trying to find his own path. The reference suddenly felt less like a clever country nod and more like something connected to the journey he was actually on.

For Williams, that is what makes “Getting Better at Doing Well” stand out. It sounds like the music he grew up on, but it also sounds like his life now.

Nashville Changed the Definition of Work

Before moving to Nashville, Williams says music could feel more straightforward. You played the gig, finished the job and went home.

That mindset changed quickly.

One of the biggest lessons Nashville has taught him is that the set is often only the beginning. Staying at the venue for another 15 minutes can matter. Hanging around after the show can matter. Walking into another room and introducing yourself to one person can matter.

“If you really want to get somewhere, you got to know people,” he says.

That has been one of the biggest adjustments in the way Williams approaches the business. Nashville made him realize that music is not simply about getting better onstage. It is also about building relationships, understanding who is in the room and learning how to create opportunities without waiting for them to appear on their own.

His writers-round experience has included events through The GetUp and Nash Bash Collective, along with performances at Alley Taps before it closed. His first Nashville writers round took place at The Commodore, during a period when musicians could show up late at night and play a few songs in an open round. That was before downtown gigs became part of his regular routine, and Williams still remembers it as one of his first real steps into the Nashville scene.

It also taught him one of the harsher realities of Music City: talent by itself is not enough.

Williams pushes back against the idea that someone can arrive in Nashville with a strong voice, a successful history somewhere else and expect everything to fall into place.

“The biggest thing that people misunderstand is that it’s as easy as just showing up,” he says. “That is not the truth at all.”

To Williams, the city is full of talented people. The difference often comes down to consistency, relationships and whether someone is willing to keep reaching out after the first good show or the first closed door.

That reality does not seem to discourage him.

If anything, it has made him more serious.

The Songs Usually Start Somewhere Quieter

For all the networking and noise that comes with Nashville, Williams often finds the beginning of a song somewhere much quieter.

He loves the outdoors.

Fishing, being around lakes and rivers, spending time in nature and simply getting away from the constant motion of the city all help clear his head. Williams says he is not usually the type of writer who sits down and forces an entire song into existence in one session.

More often, something happens while he is outside.

A line comes to him.

He types it into his phone.

Then he comes back to it later.

“Getting outside and just having a moment with good friends, or just even by myself, really helps me out a lot with shaping myself as an artist,” he says.

That connection to everyday life carries into the kind of people Williams hopes hear the album.

He thinks about people who work long weeks, people picking up overtime, people who have been through heartbreak, people who have had success and still felt lost, and people who have fallen down and had to figure out how to stand back up.

The songs are not written from the perspective of someone who has all the answers.

They are written from the perspective of someone trying to live the same life as everyone else.

“I hope they feel inspired to live life every day to the fullest, and know that it’s okay to make mistakes and know that it’s okay to be human,” Williams says.

That idea may be the clearest thread connecting the entire record.

Work hard.

Make mistakes.

Learn something.

Keep going.

Success Means More Than Getting Heard

When Williams talks about success beyond streams, followers and recognition, he does not immediately point toward bigger stages.

He points toward community.

Recently, Williams was gifted a rare guitar by a friend whose father had served in the Army and later died from throat cancer. Her father had also been a songwriter, and one of those songs remained important to the family. She asked Williams to sing it.

The experience stayed with him.

It pushed Williams to think more seriously about how music could be used not only as a career, but as a way of serving people, particularly veterans and military families.

“I think music is a great way to help people,” he says.

Williams says he wants to find more ways to give back and remind people who have served that they are not alone. That instinct connects naturally with the themes already running through the album: hard work, faith, perseverance and the belief that difficult chapters do not have to become permanent ones.

When Williams describes who the music is for, he talks about people who work hard, people who pray, people who have been through heartbreak, people who have experienced success and people who simply need to be reminded that everything is not over because something went wrong.

“There’s always hope and there’s always faith,” he says.

A First Album and a Bigger Chapter

The next several months will revolve around Williams’ first album.

The project is expected to contain 10 songs, with a release planned for late fall. Williams knows that putting the album out is only one part of the job. Independent artists do not get to release something and wait for the rest of the world to discover it.

You have to keep the record alive.

Keep playing the songs.

Keep promoting them.

Keep finding new reasons for someone to care.

At the time of the interview, Williams was also preparing to celebrate his 30th birthday on November 11 at Redneck Riviera, using the show as another opportunity to keep momentum behind the record.

One of his favorite Nashville stages recently has been Whiskey River, which he describes as one of the biggest local stages he has performed on. Williams seems less interested in naming one ultimate Nashville room than he is in appreciating each stage as part of the larger progression.

The larger dream, though, is easy to name.

If Williams could open for anyone, it would be George Strait.

The artist who helped shape his understanding of country music remains one of the clearest symbols of where Williams would someday like the road to lead.

But Williams’ story does not feel built around waiting for one massive break.

It feels built around accumulation.

The trip to Nashville with his dad.

The acoustic shows in Wisconsin.

The jobs he worked to save enough to move.

The first writers round.

The first downtown gigs.

The people he met by hanging around after the set.

The songs.

The album.

The next room.

One of his favorite fan moments happened far from any major Nashville stage. Williams was back home at a family cabin when several of his cousins’ children showed up wearing shirts with his name on them. They gathered for a photo while he was performing, and the moment landed differently than a streaming number ever could.

People were listening.

People cared.

And people wanted to hear more.

He has begun hearing something similar whenever he performs “Getting Better at Doing Well.”

People tell him:

That’s you. That’s your song. That’s your life.

Williams is proud of that reaction because it means the song sounds personal without becoming inaccessible.

It belongs to him.

But someone else can still hear themselves inside it.

Getting Better at Doing Well

If Williams could speak to the younger version of himself who first imagined becoming a musician, he would not pretend the path ahead would be smooth.

He would tell him there would be far more twists than expected.

Shows he could not predict.

Songs that would evolve.

Moments where the plan stopped making sense.

But he would also tell him that those moments would become the story.

“You’re going to go through so much that you’re not even going to believe,” Williams says. “But I guarantee you it’s going to be a good part of your musical journey.”

That perspective is why “Getting Better at Doing Well” feels like such an appropriate centerpiece for his first album.

Ken Williams did not move to Nashville because everything was already going well.

He moved because he wanted to find out how far he could take it.

Since then, Nashville has taught him that talent is not enough, good shows do not guarantee the next opportunity, relationships matter and progress almost never arrives on the schedule you imagined.

His response has been remarkably consistent.

Keep working.

Keep talking to people.

Keep writing the lines when they come.

Keep finding moments away from the city when he needs to think.

Keep believing that one bad night, one missed opportunity or one wrong turn does not have to determine the rest of the road.

Asked for one word to describe his next chapter, Williams considers “focus” before settling on something simpler.

Go.

For an artist building his first album around the idea that success is something you get better at rather than something you suddenly achieve, there may not be a better word.

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