The end of June saw the release of Oh God Ma’am by the Virginia-born brothers’ Sons of Bill (reviewed here), the album surprised many, coming in the wake of a series of personal tragedies. Ahead of their UK tour which is now underway (see dates below), Ron Wray caught up with the band on their US tour at their Richmond, Virginia gig and also spoke at length with James Wilson over the phone. The following is both a live review of that night and an interview – on a deeper level it provides an overview of the band looking at their departure and return to the scene and also explores their connection to southern American novelist William Faulkner.
“A lot different from 2009,” James Wilson, tall, ruggedly-handsome lead singer of the band, Sons of Bill (SOB), said with a smile while setting up for their performance, “bringing us waters, and we’re listening to the Smiths!” Later, someone requested the Sons of Bill song, “Broken Bottles,” and James grinned, as if to say, “really?” because broken glass caused a potentially tragic event in the band’s upward ascension in the music world. That act was James’s having cut his hand falling on a broken champagne glass. He described it in Richmond’s Style Weekly as something done “randomly, comically, and tragically.” It had occurred to me a metaphor. It was part of a chain that caused them to leave performing for almost two years. But now, at the start of a tour soon to reach the UK, the three brothers at the core of one of the world’s best bands, possibly the best I feel, and one of the most creatively distinct and diverse, are back.
James makes no effort to sugar-coat things and breaks the cause of their hiatus into these three units: “dependencies, relationships, and physical injuries.” He underwent physical therapy for a year. “Doctors said I wouldn’t play a guitar again, but now I am. I actually think I’m playing better now. I have to have more focus, more attention to functionality, but I think that has improved my playing.”
In Style, he called them “a lot of the kind of unnecessary but unavoidable tragedies that come to you in adult life.” Discussing the impact he explains “It’s affected us all in different ways. Suffering that comes with what life does to you. In different ways, for us, mostly drinking, relationships, and physical injuries. It knocked us back. That’s why this had to be a different record. Not more of the youthful rock-and-roll music, but more grown-up.”
But, something short of a miracle, Sons of Bill are playing again. They’ve begun a brief but exultant return to their home turf in Virginia and nearby DC, prior to returning to possibly their next most important base, the United Kingdom, where they have a large and enthusiastic fan base.
Talking about the UK tour James relates their US and UK audiences. “We’ll be there about 2 ½ weeks. Some of the fans and critics over there were among the first to understand and like what we were doing on “Love and Logic.” Some got, and get, that better over there. England and the US are the two home bases of rock and roll. They keep an eye on each other. The British keep the Americans so that they don’t get too kitzy.”
“I’m really pumped!” elder brother and the youngest-looking one, Sam Wilson, with longish blond hair, says to me, beaming and looking very fit, before their first Virginia gig in Richmond, setting the stage for opening their UK tour in Brighton and then London. And, all three brothers seemed cheerful and relaxed. The tour is promoting their new album, “Oh God Ma’am,” a title taken from a quote said by Bills’ drummer Todd Wellons, who is still on a break from touring, when approached by a prostitute while the band was playing in Tampa, Florida. “It’s become what we say about just about everything that surprises us,” James said.
Bill Wilson has a tendency to walk around, through the audience and by the stage, during his sons’ (Sons of Bill) performances at their home base, The Jefferson Theater, in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Abe still lives and the brothers grew up. James and Sam live in, of course, Nashville now. On one of the elder Wilson’s journeys through the Jefferson, I stopped him a minute and asked about the album the band was then working on (2014’s “Love and Logic”). He replied, quietly and intently, “exquisite,” which could also describe the new Sons of Bill CD “Oh God Ma‘am”, coming several years later, following brilliance with brilliance, and still highlighting brother Abe’s increasing role as an incredible songwriter.
I’d heard a bunch of things about the virtual disappearance of SOB In recent years, such as bad physical reactions to touring, reconsiderations of careers, etc., but, eventually, the one consistent thing was the hand injury, which doctors said meant he’d never play again. Looking at pictures of James and seeing him at performances over the years, it somehow didn’t seem out of place, with him so often appearing on the edge of each moment, reluctantly and with interiorized passion. But, he’s always seemed to be a superior being, a man of intellect and melody at once, able to dance in place with the universe.
At the same time, his brothers have increasingly shared centre stage. As songwriter and another intellect showing little restraint in his beautifully melodic, literate, and poetic songs, James’ brother, Thomas “Abe” Wilson, keyboard player and vocalist, is also an architect and has become more of a major force in the band. His new songs on Oh God Ma’am are amazing, line-by-line, in content, in the spoken music of assonance, consonance, and poetic wording/phrasing, and in the actual music itself. And, Sam, lead guitar and pedal steel player and vocalist, is increasing his role in the creative, conceptual components as well, always perhaps having been the instrumental centrepiece of a gifted band. Sam, indeed, may have written possibly the band’s most beautiful song, “Road to Canaan.” And, that’s not to mention the, what I consider individually beautiful, distinctly different, and powerful, voices of the brothers, which often combine in gorgeous harmonies.
There are, I feel parallels in Sons of Bill to the work of Nobel Prize-winning novelist, William Faulkner. Each moment in Faulkner is a work of literature in itself, as in this paragraph from Faulkner’s Sanctuary: Behind him the bird sang again, three bars in monotonous repetition: a sound meaningless and profound out of a suspirant and peaceful following silence which seemed to isolate the spot.
James Wilson is, indeed, an intense fan and scholar of his fellow Southern artist, Faulkner, has taught workshops on him in Charlottesville, and will likely deliver a talk on the writer at Notre Dame in the upcoming year. That influence permeates James’ and perhaps all of the Wilsons work. “Oh God Ma’am” can also be listened to as a tandem of poetic description, in the Faulkner vein. And, as each Faulkner novel needs to be seen as part of an entire pattern, the songs of the new SOB album comprise a whole, not disparate parts.
Speaking of influences, the Wilsons’ dad, Bill Wilson, i.e. Sons of Bill, is a professor emeritus in theology and southern literature at The University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He’s an expert in the marriage of theology and literature that exists within many of the Sons’ songs and, as such, may have been an influence on their work. Bill is also a musician and is definitely a major influence on his sons musically. Their mom, Barb Wilson (Barbara Braunstein Wilson) is a University of Virginia Health System Associate Professor and the Chair of Dermatology. She is also a musical influence and encourager, who still sings duets with Bill at the SOB annual Christmas performance and fundraiser at The Jefferson Theater. The fellows also have two sisters, one of whom is a fine singer/belter of songs, who also sings at the Christmas shows. The youngest brother, Luke Wilson, still lives in Charlottesville and has a bluegrass/contemporary band of his own, Gallatin Canyon.
A connection of Abe Wilson to Faulkner, such as James has, isn’t anything that’s been made, so far as I know. But, it strikes me that both brothers, if not Sam as well, brood and cry-out over similar emotional and literary/story-telling terrain. Quoting an uncredited but profound prefatory page in the first paperback edition of the novelist’s Sanctuary: “Faulkner is a story-teller – one of America’s best. … But, he is more interested in what goes on beneath the surface of a story – in the springs of violence rather than in violence itself. He worries a situation like a terrier, returning to it again and again, seeing it from all angles, till he has got its essence … Perhaps his unique contribution to American literature, through its ability to convey feeling – the below-the-conscious stream of horror, suspense, despair … Faulkner describes the indescribable: insanity, intoxication, the moment of love, the moment of death, the secret, unplumbed depths of the soul. Like Webster, he “sees the breastless creatures underground lean backward with a lipless grin.”
That could apply to work such as Sons of Bill’s “Back in the Cosmos Again,” “Metaphysical Gigham Gown,” “Charleston,” Brand New Paradigm,” “Joey’s Arm,” “Road to Canaan,” and Abe’s “Santa Ana Winds,” which James called at last night’s Richmond performance, “one of your favorite sing-along songs about an arsonist.” I myself have felt guilty about enjoying that song, about the arson killings in Santa Ana, California, so much, except when I focus on the twist of the lyrics that brings into the picture the fact that “we’re all gonna die,” which is perhaps at the sardonically-rocking core of the song, one of the Sons’ most popular at performances.
In the Sons of Bill’s work, like Faulkner’s, there is the penetrating and encircling parade of southern language and deep, deep poetry and omnipresent mystery and passion. James has described close friend and collaborator Molly Parden as follows. In doing so, I feel he describes his hero Faulkner as well as the devoted work of himself and his brothers:
“But for all its unapproachable beauty, the heart of Molly’s music is humble and profoundly human. They are songs that remind us that heartbreak isn’t simply another marketable human emotion, but is more like a familiar place—a sacred space within all of us. We are all born with a deep sense of loss, and great art has a way of articulating the personal tragedy inside of us. It makes listening to Molly’s songs feel like falling into a dream or a distant memory— a beautiful reminder of something we’ve known all along.”
One of the band’s biggest fans is an Englishman, who connected first with James in an apparent shared passion for Dostoevsky. A lawyer, he and his wife and young son have journeyed to the US to follow SOB for years, in addition to the Sons’ UK and European touring. When first seen at the Jefferson, he was wearing an individually-fashioned Sons of Bill UK Tour jacket, and his young wife could be seen singing the words to every song. It all began in New York City. “I had a period where I had to get away,” as James described their meeting, “so I did some gigs solo in New York. One night when I was playing a bar there, a guy came up and said he wanted to talk to me about Dostoevsky, and we spent the night drinking and talking Dostoevsky!” It wasn’t too long after their meeting that the Sons began touring the UK and Europe.
Opening for Sons of Bill at Richmond’s The Broadberry was old friend Carl Anderson, who played a fine set with Sam, and Wrinkle Neck Mules, originally from Richmond and who’ve played with SOB for years. Both openers did a great job. Carl will join the Sons on their UK/European tour, and Wrinkle Neck will join Carl in opening the remaining US gigs. Lead singer, Andy Stepanian, of Wrinkle Neck is a nice mix of gnarly raw edges and smoother riffs in his vocals and led a talented crew through a rocking, at times powerfully jamming, set. Sam sat in with them at times. “This is Sam Wilson on dobro,” Stepanian said, “the talented one in the Sons of Bill. That’s what they call him, the talented one,” while Sam laughed. Andy then stood in front of the stage cajoling and applauding the Sons of Bill during their set.
The SOB Richmond show featured a number of songs from the new album, while showcasing a range of earlier work. It was a stellar performance, well supported by rotating-in drummer and bassist and not showing any deficiencies in James’ playing. The audience was big and enthusiastic, and there were other popular acts playing Richmond that night.
Sons of Bill are on tour in the UK tour now, after which they will play in Germany and the Netherlands before returning to the Americana Festival in Nashville.
Sons of Bill European Tour Dates
FRI 17 AUGUST Broadcast, Glasgow, UK*
SAT 18 AUGUST Soup Kitchen, Manchester, UK*
SUN 19 AUGUST Rescue Rooms, Nottingham, UK*
TUE 21 AUGUST Blue Shell Club, Cologne, Germany*
WED 22 AUGUST Milla Live-club, Munich, Germany*
THU 23 AUGUST Musik & Frieden, Berlin, Germany*
FRI 24 AUGUST The Stage Club, Hamburg, Germany*
SAT 25 AUGUST Once In A Blue Moon Festival 2018, Amsterdam, Netherlands
* with Carl Anderson
Ticket links and more details here https://www.sonsofbill.com/