Marlon Williams On Writing With Don Walker, Being On 'Jools Holland' & Driving Around With A Lamb

Today we find Marlon Williams in Nashville. He played a show in Chicago two nights ago. "We got to Nashville last night and went out and saw some music," Williams tells. "Saw Steve Earle at this bar called Robert's [Western World] and there was, like, a sort of a jam vibe... Jason Isbell got up and played a few songs, just a lot of the main faces in Nashville [were there]."

This scribe last chatted with Williams at CMJ last October. "It really has been nonstop since that," Williams observes. On how the nomadic life of a touring troubadour is treating him, Williams considers, "Um, it's good, you know, it's a cool job... it's a lot of fun. This tour is a lot less intense than normal, you know, we've got a few days off here and there."

So does Williams still have a fixed address in Melbourne? "Not in Melbourne. I've given up my room at The Yarra and now I'm back in New Zealand, back in Lyttelton. So that's where I'm at at the moment and, you know, I'm gonna be spending most of summer back home, which is good."

"It's a friend's lamb and her name is Buck and they found her in a property next to their house, with her dead mother..."

We're tipping Williams has been too busy touring to write any songs, but he enlightens, "I've done a little - bits here and there. I'm waiting for the floodgates to open properly." Has he had any collaborative songwriting sessions? "I did some writing with Don Walker a few weeks ago, which was amazing," Williams enthuses. When he gets back to Lyttelton, Williams intends to "go try and really nut it out". "But I really need to do some of my own sort of, you know, syphoning through what I actually wanna be doing. I just need a little bit of space," he stresses.

If you check out his Insty, there's a really adorable video of a lamb sitting on what looks like a red beanbag chewing. Obviously we need to know more about this. When asked to please explain, Williams laughs, "I think she's chewing a bit of bark. It's a friend's lamb and her name is Buck and they found her in a property next to their house, with her dead mother... She'd just been born so they took her under their wing and then she came on a holiday to the West Coast in the South Island with us. And we drove for about 11 hours with a lamb in the car, stopping for piss stops every now and again." So how did Buck tell them when she needed to go to the toilet? "By pissing, just by pissing. It told us that it needed to go to the toilet by going to the toilet. No, eventually it stood up and sort of, you know, started to make movements and you knew that it was time."

Given that they say 64% of Americans have never left the US, Williams could probably spin a few whoppers to the people he meets during this Stateside tour. "Yeah, you can sort of, you know, play them along a little bit," he concurs. Although if he told them about driving around with a lamb in the car they'd probably think he was pulling their legs. "That's true, yeah, it sounds like a story." When asked whether the locals have any interesting ideas about New Zealand, Williams reveals, "They haven't got any ideas about New Zealand, they don't really know that it exists at all."

In May, Williams performed on Later... With Jools Holland. "That was pretty special," Williams allows. "He's a really amazing little gentleman is Jools. It was just me and my guitar, you know, with all these bands; with Underworld... but, yeah! He's such an amazing gentleman, you know, he's been at it, what, for 25 years now." The fact that Williams "grew up watching that show" makes his appearance on Later... With Jools Holland all the more special: "It really meant a lot to be part of what I watched as a child".

He's had lots of pinch yourself moments this year, another was performing on Conan. "Those are the most obvious sort of keystones, but, I dunno, I really appreciate more the slower stuff and developing, you know, different ways of touring and just being better at being away from home and that kinda stuff," Williams adds.

Another pinch yourself moment would be headlining the Out On The Weekend festival, with Williams out front of fellow alt-country and Americana acts such as Robert Ellis, Lindi Ortega, Joe Pug, Joshua Hedley and more. Williams was also recently announced as the support for both of Bruce Springsteen's New Zealand dates, in Christchurch (for the first time) and Auckland, in February 2017. "That's gonna be pretty amazing... It just sort of came up as an option presented to me and, yeah! We're obviously tickled with it." When asked whether he plans to include a Springsteen cover in his set, Williams chuckles, "Oh, that doesn't sound like a good idea at all." Not planning on helping the audience warm up their vocal cords then? "I don't think we should play that role," he shares. "He'll be able to cover most of that in his four hours on stage."