Music

A life of mixed notes

In Austin, producer turned life around to once again make sound memorable

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Tuesday, June 02, 2009

To see David Williams today, or hear his band Beautiful Supermachines, you would have no idea that he's had one of the weirdest careers in Austin music.

Thirty years ago, Williams was a 19-year-old kicking around Denton with a few post-punk bands.

Twenty years ago, Williams was an up-and-coming producer in Los Angeles who would soon help produce one of the all time great hip-hop albums.

Ten years ago, the native Texan moved to the capital of his home state, sure he would take this town by storm. Except he had a massive drug habit and — instead of recording and producing bands — he sold off his studio piece by piece.

Recently, the unassuming 49-year-old with salt-and-pepper hair, an easy smile and a world-class ability to yack about music — from the composer Stockhausen to George Jones to Miles Davis to Elton John to Ultramagnetic MCs — has been mixing bands now and then at Beerland. His sharp ears have turned a club with good bands and a controversial sonic reputation into a killer-sounding room that any band should be thrilled with.

"I respect David Williams, and when I get a high remark from him, I consider that to be an ultimate compliment," says Beerland booker Max Droupout. "I know I can trust David's tastes, always. He's very honest and earnest about what he likes."

He also put in time at Austin-based Open Labs, which makes high-end music workstations, and, with Beautiful Supermachines, released a new record, full of weird detail, stacked guitars and subtle hooks. Live, the five-piece band translates the layers into knowing indie rock.

"All of this has just been driven by curiosity," Williams says.

Williams became curious about sounds and how to make and break them at an early age. Born in 1960 in Naples, a Texas town 45 minutes west of Texarkana with Dallas a good two hours southwest, he listened to whatever Dallas radio he could pick up, which meant everything from R&B to album-rock FM: "I developed a really broad idea of a hook." Translation: He doesn't see hip-hop's bricolage of grooves or Pavement's indie rock destruction of bubblegum riffs as all that different.

His parents doted on him, indulging his musical whims. "Our town had two doctors and one of them was a pretty cosmopolitan guy," Williams says. "His kids were a little older and had this pile of records that I can remember clear as a bell," including the first two Roxy Music albums, Brian Eno's "Another Green World" and some reggae.

His mind blown, Williams, now around 16, hooked up with a punk band the next town over. "I showed up with a EMS VC3 suitcase synth," Williams says, the kind his hero Brian Eno used.

Williams joined the band in time for two shows and their sole EP before heading off to school in Denton in '78. He stayed for eight years, kicking around in various bands, playing the professional student.

In '86 he headed to Dallas with a Prophet 2000 sampling keyboard filled with AC/DC beats and formed Decadent Dub Team with Jeff Liles and Paul Quigg. Their song "Six Gun" was on the soundtrack to the 1988 movie "Colors," as remixed by a 19-year-old DJ named Dr. Dre.

As DDT got bigger in Dallas, Williams got crankier. "My ego was not in check at that point," Williams says ruefully. "I was like 'if you (the audience) think this is good, I need to challenge myself.' "

Williams moved to Los Angeles, started calling himself a producer and hooked up with a well-connected manager. "There was a lot of getting really close (to success)," Williams says. "And I was still thinking of myself as this small-town guy."

In 1992, Williams was asked to put together a demo for the Jungle Brothers. He was floored: "For me, Rakim was the greatest solo MC and the Jungle Brothers were the greatest group, so it was like 'You want me to put a demo together for the Beatles?' "

He started crate-digging, atomizing loops and building them back up. "It was the most intense thinking I've ever done in my life," he says.

The resulting album, "J. Beez Wit The Remedy," came out in 1993 and was light-years ahead of its time, genuine psychedelic hip-hop that bombed commercially but is now a recognized classic.

A break should have been around the corner. "At that point I felt like I was a guy people would call rather than constantly hustling for work," Williams says.

It didn't happen; instead, Williams dipped further and further into what he refers to as "self-sabotage."

A 10-year move to New York didn't help much. "It got to the point where I told lots of New York friends not to lend me $10, which was the magic increment (for a bag of heroin at that time,)" Williams says.

Moving to Austin didn't change things. It's hard to build a music career when you're not out hearing that much music. He wrote a little bit (including some freelance for the American-Statesman) and struggled with getting clean. Junkie-dom strips away everything but itself.

"If you're a creative person," Williams says, "(your drug habit) takes away the possibility of something different happening on any given day. You get sick of it." He finally kicked it for good about three years ago with the help of good friends.

"Stephen Bruton (the late guitarist) was one of those people," Williams says. "He would never take credit for it: 'Oh, you did it all yourself.' That is not true; he helped a lot of guys in this town."

In 2007, Williams got a gig at Open Labs, beta-testing and tech supporting the company's digital workstations.

"Suddenly, I had a recording studio in a box, I was doing something I liked and the self-sabotage was over," he says.

Last September, he put together a band so he could perform his new music live; their first gig was an opening slot at Emo's large room. The band added a few parts here and there to the record as well.

The resulting album, Beautiful Supermachines' "Shut Up," released earlier this year, mixes Pavement-esque shattered-pop craft with the detailed layers of sound Williams applied to his Jungle Brothers productions. "I wanted to make an album where you heard a little more every time you listened to it." Indeed. "Shut Up" isn't all that immediate, but it rewards repeated listens.

Williams has big, weird plans for his band's future gigs. "I want to footnote the next pressing of the record," he says. "Explain every note, the music that inspired it. Nothing comes out of spontaneous combustion; we all have influences. I just don't have any anxiety about them anymore."

Eventually, he'd like to add visual representations of the songs, chord structures and lyrics floating by on screen behind the band in blooms of data.

Recently laid off from Open Labs, he's more than ready to get back to production; he just mixed a song for Golden Boys' next album. "I have an infinite number of tracks and I really like making people sound good without imposing myself on them," Williams says. "I'll do it for anyone whose music I like in this town."

Then the gears will start turning and that old curiosity will come to life and David Williams will want to put sounds together in new and strange ways.

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926