Mad Whiskey Grin

originally published September 6, 2006

This week, the spotlight shines onto the shady porch of Nuçi’s Space, between the lower eastern edge of downtown and the Oconee River, where Mad Whiskey Grin sits coercing a metallic resonance from his acoustic 12-string guitar with the aid of a silver slide, cut from the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun that once belonged to a South Georgia prison guard.

You know that scene in any western or road movie when an obliging tumbleweed blows across the screen before the camera pulls back to expose an open desert plain, and the sound of a 12-string slide guitar (usually played by Ry Cooder) sings with desolation and pained regret? That‘s the kind of 12-string-blues genre that is inhabited by Mad Whiskey Grin, otherwise known as local musician Frank Williams.

A graduate of UGA with a Masters in Political Science, Williams has spent nearly his entire life in the South, save for three years teaching English in Japan, where he studied martial arts and absorbed the sanshin music of Okinawa. Williams says that because the Okinawans are a historically oppressed people of Asia, their music is akin to Western blues in that it is born of hardship and the resilience of the human soul in a beaten-down state. This experience, combined with time spent visiting Colombia, has subtly influenced Williams' music so that what some hear as just 12-string American blues, also carries the influences and sounds of cultures far from the heart of the black music explosion.

Flagpole sat down with Mad Whiskey Grin (and his guitar), to put forward these vital questions.

Flagpole

Do you like whiskey?

Mad Whiskey Grin

Actually, I drink gin. I’m not a heavy drinker but I like to get to that place where my teeth feel like glass and I feel like I’m glittering… that’s what I like. "Mad whiskey grin" comes from a line in a song I was trying to write, but as my show is about 45 minutes of fast and hard guitar playing, I haven’t really got the timing of 12-bar blues, so for me it’s all riffs, and I find it hard to sing.

So I’ve got a lot of unused lyrics and I thought, "To hell with this!" The best line was “I got a juniper berry bottle of gin / I got an empty bottle and a mad whiskey grin.”

So I thought, "Well, okay, I’m never going to finish this, so I think I’ll start a blues band called Mad Whiskey Grin," because I really liked the phrase. Somehow the band never came together, so now it’s just me.

Flagpole

You’ve made references to the difficulty of finding live audiences for your style of 12-string, blues-oriented guitar. Is that still the case?

Mad Whiskey Grin

Absolutely, but what I get the best feedback from is when you get six or seven singer-songwriters, some of whom are doing nothing but Dave Matthews covers, and then I get up and people go, “Whoa! This is different!”

Flagpole

What've you been up to over the summer? Any plans for the fall?

Mad Whiskey Grin

I've been working on my doctoral dissertation, and preparing a paper for an upcoming conference. I've written more pages of my novel, and played some wicked slide guitar from time to time. I plan on doing more of the same in the fall. I've got six more pieces I'm ready to record.

Ben Gerrard Spotlight is biweekly feature looking at newer or emerging local acts. Next up: The Pendletons.

Ben Gerrard

Spotlight is biweekly feature looking at newer or emerging local acts. Next up: The Pendletons.