Press Kit

Singer-songwriter Robert Williams comes from a place no other American singer-songwriter can lay claim to. Born and raised in Oklahoma, his crossroads meet at a dark little gin joint where Kurt Weil vamps and Hank Williams sings lonesome, heartbroken melodies.

Already earning a living from his music at the age of 19, Williams ran away to Berlin in 1969 and quickly found himself caught up in a thriving music scene rife with a nightly smorgasbord of stellar musicians, singing transvestites, multi-lingual songwriters and countless other denizens of the hippest scene going.

Back in the States in the mid-70s, Robert’s musical journey took him through the folk clubs and roadhouses of Oklahoma, Kansas City, Houston and Austin where he continued to forge his sound, blending folk, blues and rock with the melodic European cabaret style that had caught his imagination in Berlin.

A soulful guitar and mandolin player, Williams’ melodies make full use of his knowledge of unusual chordings and tunings. Unburdened by artistic borders, he isn’t afraid to travel through the many worlds of human emotion in his songs. Meet the young couple, Ruby and Bill, who married too young and live in a trailer park outside Oklahoma City. Hunker down in a dark corner and observe Jumbo’s Clown Room, a fantastical nightspot frequented by the inhabitants of the dark backstreets of post-war Berlin.

In central Europe, Robert regularly tours with his band members Ron Randolf and Thomas Baumgarte. He was also a founding member of Berlin’s now famous Hagelberger Collective, a “musical commune” he joined there in the 70s with other like-minded musicians from Czech Republic, Switzerland, the U.K., Germany, Australia, Canada and the U.S.