Alan Williams

Alan Williams has been writing, recording, and performing music for over forty years. He continues to release albums under his own name, as well as Birdsong At Morning, the band he has led with Darleen Wilson and Greg Porter since 2008.

Growing up in Asheville, NC, Alan studied classical and jazz piano, and gained experience performing in a variety of settings – Top 40 cover band, country and bluegrass, and his first foray into original music in the Hang, a band of precocious teenagers from across the state of North Carolina, featuring longtime collaborator Greg Porter, as well as Holden Thorp (former Chancellor at UNC-Chapel Hill, and Provost at Washington University, currently Editor of Science) and Nick Robinson (practicing attorney, and father of EDM star, Porter Robinson).

While majoring in Third Stream Studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston (a program now known as Contemporary Improvisation, and home to many talented musicians from Don Byron and John Medeski to more recent alums Aiofe O’Donovan, and Lake Street Dive), Alan and Greg formed a jazz/pop/world music group called Danse Real along with another long-time collaborator Ben Wittman (Sting, Paula Cole, The Story, Laurie Anderson), Mauricio Villavechia, Taki Masuko (The Horseflies), and Susan Botti (a composer/vocalist whose works have been performed at the New York Metropolitan Opera), releasing a self-titled EP in 1985.

Upon graduation, Alan formed the folk-rock band Knots and Crosses with Carol Noonan and Rick Harris. Knots and Crosses (often joined by Greg Porter and Ben Wittman) built a career in the Boston and Portland, Maine rock scene during the late 80s and early 90s, self-releasing two albums – Creatures of Habit (1990), and Curve of the Earth (1992) – that sold a combined total of over 30,000 copies, and led to an ill-fated signing with Island Records in 1993. Lost in the shuffle when Chris Blackwell sold Island to Polygram, the band decided to call it quits in 1994.

Alan soon turned his energies towards a solo album, Evidence, recorded with many of the musicians from Knots and Crosses. But after pressing CDs and sending copies out to press, he experienced a profound loss of confidence in the project, and quietly withdrew the album from release – though the story doesn’t end here.

Despondent and at a loss for direction, Alan began a career as a freelance recording engineer and producer, engineering albums by Jennifer Kimball (Veering From the Wave), Lucy Kaplansky (Ten Year Night), and Patty Larkin (Perishable Fruit, à Gogo, Regrooving the Dream), and producing Kris Delmhorst (Appetite), The Nudes (Boomerang), and Stephanie Winters (Through the Storm). He also co-produced with Darleen Wilson, the debut album for Cry Cry Cry, the folk trio featuring Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky, and Richard Shindell, after serving as musical director for Dar Williams’ first full-band tour to support her album, End of the Summer.

Shifting direction again, Alan enrolled at Brown University, eventually earning a PhD in ethnomusicology, and re-discovering the joys of music making while playing in a number of world music ensembles – Javanese gamelan, Ghanaian drum and dance, Middle Eastern ensemble. Inspired to pick up the guitar after a decade of silence, he found a new songwriting voice, and enticed Darleen Wilson and Greg Porter to join him in Birdsong At Morning. Performing for over a dozen years, the group has released three albums – the 4-CD Annals of My Glass House (2010), A Slight Departure (2015), and Signs and Wonders (2019). The recordings highlight his insightful lyrics and inventive musicality, with carefully crafted recordings and arrangements, often supported with full string arrangements. Somewhat limited by Alan’s full-time commitment to teaching at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, the group occasionally performs in various small and expanded versions.

Alan has found a great deal of fulfillment in these endeavors, though the non-release of his 1995 Evidence project quietly gnawed at him. Revisiting the album, he concluded that the material, while somewhat different from his more recent work, still held up, as did the basic recorded performances from the band. What was now apparent was that his vocals and some of the arrangements were not yet fully confident or realized. Thus he undertook the process of re-recording his lead vocals, altering some arrangements, and remixing the entire album. Going back to the multi-track masters, he also discovered an uncompleted instrumental, lacking lyrics and vocals. Many years later, he finally wrote the words, sang them to a new melody, and this new song, “Always,” was added to the tracklist. Retitled Evidence Unearthed, the secret held for twenty years was finally sent out into the world in 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Working to establish ways of connecting to the world, even in isolation, Alan began leasing a large workspace that could accommodate full band performances for webcasts and other audio/visual productions. A series of performances with a various incarnations of Birdsong At Morning took place, including a contribution to an annual Jeff Buckley tribute concert. With large plastic screened dividers allowing musicians to share the same physical space, the Aviary also hosted a set of UMass Lowell ensembles directed by Alan that focused on the recreation of various classic albums from Pink Floyd and King Crimson. The Dark Side of the Moon video gained exposure on the A/V Club and other influencer sites, amassing over 100k views. Now back on campus, Alan continues the tradition with high production value videos of these ensembles, Radiohead being the most recent example.

Alan also took advantage of a sabbatical leave to record an album of songs written and recorded during the pandemic, collaborating with drummer Ben Wittman via file exchange, and bringing in other musicians one at a time, maintaining appropriate distancing. The resulting recording, Currents (2022), reflects the totality of his musical experience from quiet balladry to prog-inspired guitar workouts and is grounded in the turmoil of 21st century current events.

Future projects include some work on updating the Birdsong At Morning early catalog, making past work with Knots and Crosses available on streaming sites, and perhaps a new set of compositions inspired by Alan’s recent reconnection with the piano and a reclamation of his trusty 1980s Oberheim OBX-a synthesizer…