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Home > Crystal Ballroom > Calendar > ** SHOW MOVED TO ALADDIN THEATER **
 Thursday, December 3
Aladdin Theater presents
** SHOW MOVED TO ALADDIN THEATER **
KELLER WILLIAMS
Danny Barnes
7:30 p.m. doors, 8:30 p.m. show | $22 advance, $24 day of show | All ages
*** This show has been moved to the ALADDIN THEATER. Crystal tickets will be honored; refunds available at point of purchase ***
Before embarking on dream, Keller Williams' newest, most rewarding recording project, he scratched out a wish list of artists he'd like to collaborate with in the studio. Because Williams, a restless troubadour, has been a fan of and tour mate with so many excellent musicians, his list of names-including lots of musicians he admires most-ran long and ambitious.
"It was a totally unrealistic vision," he says. "The idea was that all we could do was ask, and the worst they could do was say 'No.'" The amazing thing is, the musicians he asked didn't say "No." And that's how Keller's dream came true. Partial to oneword titles, Williams coined the album because it best described the experience. "That's what this record was," he says. "It was incredibly rewarding."
Of course, when your dream team consists of outsized talents like Bob Weir, Béla Fleck, John Scofield, Charlie Hunter, Victor Wooten, The String Cheese Incident, Steve Kimock, and more, well, you're going to encounter an obstacle or two. Scheduling snags held up completion of the album for nearly three years. It took Weir a year to find a date for Keller, but when he did, and he invited Keller into his home studio to do "Cadillac," Keller found himself living, well, another dream. Likewise for his work with Béla Fleck. Keller and Béla began their collaboration, "People Watchin'," in the summer of 2004 but it wasn't finished until two years later. In fact, since this project began, Keller released the double live, Stage (2004), the DVD, Sight (2005), and most recently a bluegrass record, Grass (featuring Larry and Jenny Keel), not to mention hundreds of gigs.
But Keller never gave up on his dream. Armed with gentle persistence and plenty of patience, he slowly but surely started to realize his vision, accumulating a star-studded array of recording partners as the magnitude of the project became increasingly clear. "To be honest, I wasn't really thinking about public opinion for this record," Keller admits. "It was all for me. Mostly I just wanted to be able to crank these songs up in my pimped-out golf-cart when I'm 80. Some of these artists are living legends and will be appreciated long after we're gone. I'm extremely proud right now, but I'll be even more ecstatic when I'm older and can look back on this record and wonder, 'How the hell did that happen?'"
"I can only hope that the people who've followed my career this far, the audiences and the taping community, are as thrilled about this project as I am," he says. "From my perspective as a fan, to be able to work amid such greatness was very humbling and it made dream an amazingly human experience."
Visit kellerwilliams.net for more information.
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