IV & The Strange Band pulled off a stylistically double-sided live debut over the past few months, first by appearing at W.B. Walker’s Old Soul Radio Show LIVE! in Huntington, West Virginia, delivering a country, string-band-styled set to help celebrate modern C&W podcaster Walker’s birthday in July, and, secondly, by performing at Cookeville’s Muddy Roots Music Festival, strutting its loud and Muddy-appropriate country-punk-metal side.

IV & The Strange Band now looks forward to joining Amigo the Devil and Tejon Street Corner Thieves on the Eastern U.S. back half of the other two bands’ ongoing tour on Oct. 20 in Little Rock, Arkansas. IV & The Strange Band will re-route the path covered during the scaled-down Strange Banjo Tour in August and September, this time with the full Strange Band sound, bigger venues scheduled and shows performed in even more a thriving atmosphere, surrounded by fellow gritty, dark country friends and family.

The Amigo the Devil, Tejon Street Corner Thieves and IV & The Strange Band tour stops at Nashville’s Mercy Lounge on Nov. 4.

Between the pair of respective premieres, Coleman Williams was singing wherever he could while facing the growing conundrum of trickling media coverage that mostly overlooks his unique artistry in favor of pondering the perpetuation of Williams’ looming musical legacy. Meanwhile, friends’ and fans’ positive reactions appeared in the form of posts on IV & The Strange Band social media pages and YouTube videos from both solo Williams and the band, musically documenting the year thus far through acoustic backyard covers and teaser demos from a debut album set for a January 2022 release.

Coleman made walk-in appearances around familiar Murfreesboro territory, jumping in to sing Williams songs in friends’ dive bar sets or running by to check out Borostock 2021 in anticipation of the IV & The Strange Banjo configuration, which kicked off its tour in Louisiana on Aug. 27.

In this concoction, a shuffling of players paired Williams with banjoist Daniel Mason—formerly a bandmate of Hank3’s—who joined IV as Williams cut his teeth paying some dues out on the road, over and above dues previously paid while working with Murfreesboro’s The Punknecks.

The full Strange Band made it out for a couple of Strange Banjo Tour performances in Memphis and Columbus, Ohio. Elsewhere, Daniel and Coleman played a style harmoniously angelic through September’s Strange Banjo days. Coleman three-finger-picked his small-body acoustic with Daniel beside him in the effortless ease of speed-twanging banjo flow, establishing Williams’ presence in an eleven-string, two-man dive-bar format that covered 16 states and 7,000 miles. The jaunt put him in touch with a broad range of fans and curiosity seekers, reports Strange Band bassist and producer Jason Dietz.

“There’s wild people out there,” Dietz explained. “You go to West Virginia, people come out of the woodwork to see just the Williams legacy . . . there’s always weirdos. People are going to try and take his hat on stage.”

Fortunately, the guys didn’t run into much trouble.

As for IV & The Strange Band, the music is a tight, fast-paced, somewhat surgical execution of Coleman Williams’ intimate, goat-vibrato vocal style riding fittingly atop The Strange Band’s melding of thick country-punk-metal involving John Judkins on the lap slide, Laura Beth Jewell on the fiddle and Daniel Mason on the banjo, while guitarists David Talley and Carson Kehrer, along with Dietz, add raucous 100-watt amps and fuzz bass to the mix.

Williams’ lyrics suit The Strange Band’s musical genre-mash, yet sound fuzzy in available recordings (Muddy tapes do exist; find these and fan footage of Strange Banjo Tour shows at IV & The Strange Band social media pages). From what’s been heard, Williams’ literary breadth, as demonstrated on the upcoming album’s “Southern Despair,” pits eloquence against vocal-frying punk rants. In similarly edgy style, Williams gets some angst off of his chest in a Muddy Roots’ performance of the upcoming album’s “Filth.”

IV & The Strange Band bundles an amalgamation of all of this into its Muddy Roots performance of “I’m Going to Haunt You.” It’ll get stuck in heads. The way they do it seems like they’re referencing both the Sharleen Spiteri version and the Fabienne Delsol version.

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Again, the closest stop to Murfreesboro on IV & The Strange Band’s Amigo tour is at Mercy Lounge in Nashville, Nov. 4, 2021. Tickets are on sale through Eventbrite.