Welcome to a new series in which we slow down the madness of festivals and spotlight one band, one lyric, one song.
There’s a tender minimalism in the banjo pluckings of Austin singer/songwriter Jess Williamson that saddle up right and lonely with her tumble-folk takes on the human condition. Something that kept a soft brush of company with a dry Southwest breeze early Saturday afternoon like a coffee-shop archetype of Joanna Newsom, five-yard staring a thousand-yard tune called “Kids Like Us.”
Following the meanderings of a couple star-crossed hearts in the Bay area, it’s a simple tune, really, Williamson lofting the tale around the sentiment that “we both know the game and it’s a lie.” But with just a dusting of a rhythm section and a solitary shimmering guitar fill, it was perfectly harrowing, leading to the open-field lyric: “Each time that I take off I have this old habit of talking to God.”
Williamson assured it’s not a religious plug – “I’m not a Christian. But I used to be.” – when discussing the tune by a tree in a nearby empty housing lot. Instead offering this rhetorical question: “Do these people become God to you? Are you that entwined?” Meanwhile, the album the song is housed on is her first, dubbed Medicine Wheel/Death Songs.
