Why Devon Williams won’t give himself a break

PHOTO by EMILY ROSE

I’ve never met Devon Williams, but after just 20 minutes with him on the telephone, his earnestness is painfully (by which I mean to say commendably) clear: In these times especially it takes a measured disposition to commit oneself to ideals, and Williams seems to have plenty of them (concerning hard work and laziness, motivation and creativity, performing and spectating). And yet to read too far into the craftsmanship of his tracks—the ’80s U.K. shimmy/sway guitars of “One and One” or the last-dance-ready “Elevator”; he’s got a 7-inch available through L.A. RECORD at {open}, plus a full album, Carefree, released earlier this year on Ba Da Bing! records—is to risk the dizzies trying to understand how someone so clearly in love with pop music can operate with his head hung so far below the clouds. And yet none of this really matters—you need only know he executes what he does with precision, and happens to love the very thing he does. For this, we will likely still be reading about him long from now.

The District Weekly: You said once in an interview with L.A. RECORD: ‘As long as you hate some things you did, you’ll always have room to improve.’ Do you think there is a correlation between pride—satisfaction—and complacency?
Devon Williams: Complacency is what I think about a lot—I feel like I’m really self-conscious. I like to make sure I’m doing things naturally, and I guess complacency is the meter by which I can tell if I’m excited or interested in the things I’m doing. For example, if I write a song—and I think it’s a good song, and I think ‘Oh this really came out naturally’—if it doesn’t strike me or if it’s not exciting, then I’m just complacent and kind of doing the bare minimum. In that sense, it’s a good meter and it’s a good way to tell where I’m at. As far as improving upon those things, I guess I always like to think that I can change—and not change my name, but just grow. I think my biggest fear is that I’ll always be the same person.
As you manage these incremental successes—releasing an album, going on tour—do you allow yourself a little pat on the back? Do you allow moments for thinking, ‘I’m doing okay’?
I guess the hindsight is 20-20, but I always look back on things with more pride or approval—it’s always in retrospect.
It’s easier for you to do that than in the moment? You’re able to feel happier looking back at it?
Right—my way of thinking is, if I’m like, ‘I’m the best! I’m doing such a great job!’—that’s not a motive for me to do better, that’s a motive for me to be complacent. That’s one of my other big fears . . . fears, fears, fears!
You also once said, “The fact that you can go and play a show and act like all these people like you—half the people at shows don’t even like music! It’s a bad perspective.” Can you explain what you meant by that?
I mean speaking from experience as a spectator at shows, and from experience playing music at shows—I’ve played a lot of clubs and bars across the county, and unless you’re headling a show, unless you’re . . . not necessarily selling out a show, but unless a lot of people are coming to see you, I just think people don’t really care. Sometimes I’ll genuinely meet people that are going to shows because, oh, they heard about the Smell or they heard about me in the paper or whatever, and that’s cool! I’m really psyched to meet people like that—I feel that’s kind of old-timey, or something, when people would actually go to shows to hear music. I mean people just go online to hear music now—which isn’t a bad thing, it’s just, I don’t think that live music is the place anymore for people to be exposed to music. In a way, I think live music is kind of dated, especially with studios—studios as the fifth member of the band or everything being done with Pro Tools or done with effects. I think that performing live is kind of a lost—not a lost thing, but kind of, you know, kind of old.
Do you think on the listener end people would rather listen to something perfectly done than expose themselves to the experience of a live show?
I think so—I don’t really like going to live shows, and by the way, I’m not saying that I don’t think live shows are good. But I like listening to records, I like listening to bands that can get their full vision across. Sometimes the best way to do that is in the studio recording. I think in my case or my band’s case, I worked really hard on the record, a lot of the tracks, if there are two guitar tracks, I played both guitars, sometimes I played the bass track. I’m doing multiple things, and when we play live, there’s no way to recreate that. It’s a hard thing to try and find people that—I guess ideally I would want to play with someone who would just play what I play, but I’ve always found it’s really exciting and fun to play with people who like what I’ve done, but want to expand on it and that’s really cool. The challenge for me as a live artist is that I have to realize I’ll never recreate the record live. But I don’t know if that would be fun. There’s this live exciting aspect you want from a live show. At least what I can do is be as honest as I can and sometimes I really don’t want to play, or I can’t hear myself, or whomever is playing drums doesn’t want to play that song or whatever, there’s certain things that just come up, spontaneous feelings that kind of define a show. At least for our sake, at least we’re having fun. I never promise that a show is going to be great or whatever, but at least we’re doing what we want to do and doing the best we can.
What drives you to continue to make music every day? I know you said something once about cheesy questions, and that’s kind of a cheeseball question, but I mean it sincerely.
I don’t really have a drive to make music, it’s just this thing that comes naturally. It naturally grew into an outlet. Whereas certain kids might play football and get out their aggressions or angst, or some people might put their head in a pillow and scream, I was fascinated with guitars—not guitar gear, but the idea of being someone that plays guitar in the band. I acquired a guitar and it really just grew naturally and became this outlet. It’s kind of been really understated in my life, just having a guitar and playing it—I never questioned it, wondered what was it for. My mom always said it was really therapeutic for me and I was like, ‘Ah mom, what are you talking about?’ But in a way she’s right: Sometimes if I don’t play guitar for a week, it’s like, ‘Oh man I haven’t played guitar in a week!’ And I get really frustrated, and I get angry, and I drink . . . these crazy things. And then I just realize I have rail a lot. I have to do it or I’ll turn into a raging asshole. It’s not really a drive, rather than just like—
A preventative measure?
Yeah, it’s like, ‘Do you want me to be a crazy jerk? Or do you want me to just be normal?’

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS DEVON WILLIAMS, GREATER CALIFORNIA AND THEE MAKEOUT PARTY THE PROSPECTOR | 2400 E SEVENTH ST | LONG BEACH 90804 | 562.438.3839 | MYSPACE.COM/THEPROSPECTORLONGBEACH | SAT 9PM | $5 | 21+

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