Seemingly, with the oversight of a guardian angel, Murfreesboro-area musician Coleman Williams, accompanied by a locally-sourced backing group The Strange Band (or at scaled-down appearances, The Strange Banjo), introduce themselves to the world this 2021 as IV & The Strange Band.
They are currently navigating a rapidly evolving debut-album concept and social experiment that IV & The Strange Band concocted last November at area producer/Strange Band bassist Jason Dietz’s Twin Oak Recordings, according to Dietz.
Their concoction will ultimately come to fruition as a live, in-person performance at this year’s Muddy Roots Music Festival outside of Cookeville, Tennessee. Yes, IV & The Strange Band are definitely confirmed to play Muddy Roots 2021, planned for Sept. 3–5, according to the Muddy Roots Festival.
The forthcoming IV & The Strange Band album, under an undetermined working title kept sadistically pocketed (jokingly, Coleman Sings Folk Songs, as of May) has the potential to combine the re-introduction of the East Nashville rock scene circa 2010 with the influence of a long-percolating, dirty, Middle Tennessee-outskirts sect of Nashville country, slightly metal-ized and slyly popularized over the life of the Muddy Roots Music Festival. Take that combination and throw in traditional Nashville country, whose popularity and practice are to this day rightfully attributed to the life and songs of the iconic Hank Williams Sr.; then, with IV & The Strange Band potato-mashing that mixture at Twin Oak Recordings, you have a Coleman Williams’ debut album that has been cooking right here in Murfreesboro.
The album project tows a heavy mental load (and, I emphasize heavy) with uncertainty for the band, as sometimes only luck, or the idea that someone, somewhere, somehow is seemingly watching over it, as the deciding factor for any next step IV & The Strange Band takes navigating its debut concept’s evolution, Dietz says.
Pertaining to the bloodline of Coleman (born Coleman Finchum, but now performing under the Williams name), in order for the Williams family legacy to fall upon our local boy Coleman, current country-metal-psychobilly-punk scene poster-child, Shelton Hank Williams (a.k.a. Hank 3 / Hank Williams III), would have to have had a son about 30 years ago in Middle Tennessee.
In 1996, Hank 3 signed his first record deal with Curb Records out of Nashville, right after he discovered he had a 5-year-old son. So, Hank 3, opting into the family business, supported his son while figuring out his own Jekyll-and-Hyde musical legacy.
Back in 1952 Hank Williams Sr. was found deceased in the back seat of a Cadillac traveling to a big New Year’s show. Hiram “Hank” Williams was in the thick of being one of the first Nashville country music superstars. He was 29 years old, and also one of the first country superstars who represented the philosophy “Die young, leave a good looking corpse.” Coleman, his great-grandson, was also 29 years old in late 2020 when he began seriously considering the formation of IV & The Strange Band, the vehicle that will carry IV, musically, from age 29 on.
While a young, charming and coy Coleman was making this monstrous life decision to opt into his family legacy, he fell into acting as a double agent.
By introducing a postmodern, Coleman-specific lyric style to his great-grandfather’s country legacy, IV & The Strange Band is bridging the dichotomy between the fandoms of two sub-genres (the concept of the upcoming album): the globally popular Nashville country music and Coleman’s sub-sect of a hybrid niche genre. That is the social experiment, conceptualizing a genre shift and movement to blend 100 years of traditional Nashville C&W with its estranged country-punk son from down the interstate, just to see how that works out.
The entire plan to debut IV & The Strange Band to the world as that determinedly raucous Muddy Roots brand of Coleman’s personality was paired with the group’s appearance on W.B. Walker’s Old Soul Radio Show, broadcast out of Huntington, West Virginia, club The Loud on July 30.
W.B. is more in the vein of Hank 3’s preservationist nature and the Hank Sr. crowd. W.B. Walker’s Old Soul Radio Show can be found at wbwalker.com. It’s worth getting into. He’s the guy that has the drop on current Nashville country.
So, Coleman’s got this. IV will sign merchandise that he personally ships out, when he’s not too busy. That’s what he likes to do, Dietz says. When you think about it, his double agency is kind of obligatory in Coleman’s Tennessean lot.
The concept of IV & The Strange Band’s debut record is to “make music that would be accepted as a Friday show at The Muse or a Tuesday night at the Ryman,” as the artist puts it, and to bridge the musical genres bound by Coleman’s four-generation legacy, actually presenting the same song in both styles, like A- and B-sides of a 7-inch vinyl, for example, containing a more traditional country version on one side and a modern, Muddy version of the same composition on the other. IV & The Strange Band—a project that also includes Dietz’s Hardin Draw mates, guitarist David Talley and fiddler Laura Beth Jewell—will give listeners the power to globalize a heavy Tennessee sentiment. All we have to do is put the needle down.
IV & The Strange Band reported some progress in April of this year with the Bandcamp drop of the single “Son of Sin,” in which IV offers some thoughts on his Williams family lineage and how he’s coping with it. There are videos for both stylings—Coleman’s vulnerable, Hank Sr.-influenced approach, and The Strange Band version. Hearing both versions should motivate plenty of music fans to look up ticket prices so they can experience this in person. Find other videos on IV & The Strange Band’s YouTube channel, where Coleman croons acoustic Replacements songs next to a campfire, or hear a couple of completed versions of album tracks “Inbred” and “Southern Despair.” Find more information at facebook.com/ivsonofiii and instagram.com/ivsonofiii.
Find more on Twin Oak Recordings at facebook.com/twinoakproductions and twinoakrecordings.bandcamp.com.
