IV & The Strange Band perform at the Mercy Lounge in November 2021

Murfreesboro’s adamantly Nashville-raised songwriter-musician Coleman Williams (IV), accompanied by an equally Music City-rooted supergroup, The Strange Band, have spent the last year and a half in the throes of an initially tentative push for their low-key, dark-country grunge, hyping a debut album that didn’t yet exist to an already loyal and growing fanbase along for the ride. 

A year and a half, later, IV & The Strange Band’s much-anticipated first album, Southern Circus, debuts on Shooter Jennings’ Black Country Rock (BCR) label on June 17, with a celebratory album release show set for Saturday, June 18, at Nashville’s storied Exit/In. 

The following weekend, IV & The Strange Band will perform at the Boro Beards and Brews fest, held Saturday, June 25, at Panther Creek Brews in Murfreesboro.

As we know Coleman Williams’ origin story, a small side note of IV & The Strange Band’s initial plan for their debut presentation of Southern Circus was the possibility of operating separately, if need be, according to Strange Band member Jason Dietz. This capability is stunningly and audibly successful for them later in this year and half run, becoming Amigo the Devil’s backing band for a Gogol Bordello tour in May 2022. Such foresight also helped navigate heavily tentative The Strange Band lineups throughout this year and half touring and recording Southern Circus.

Around the same time Dietz first met Coleman, he had also joined an endeavor that would become crucial for the release of Southern Circus:  Murfreesboro’s twenty-teens porch staple, The Hardin Draw. 

“Jason [had] bought an upright bass because he was wanting to learn how to play it like Joe Buck, and Aaron [Swisher] bought a mandolin. [It] started out as just getting drunk and jamming on the patio of the Handle Bar. . . . I wrote a couple of songs and that’s when it became a thing,” explained Davd Talley, founding member of The Hardin Draw. 

“Coleman was around and I had met him in passing, but didn’t know him all that well. I know he dug what we were doing and I guess I made an impression on him as a writer and a player based off of that,” said Talley. 

“Our partner, David Talley . . . he’ll pick up a guitar and he’ll come up with melodies, immediately; vocal harmonies just on the fly. He’s so good at just hearing that stuff,” said Dietz. “Then he comes out with our fiddle player . . . “

“Laura Beth [Jewell] comes from, like, a classical background but she plays country music very well,” Dietz said.  “She’s been playing down in lower Broadway for so long; just hustlin’ at Layla’s. Not buskin’, just playing a couple-hour slot of just covers, being a slave of playing cover songs for tourists on Lower Broadway. But, she did it for a long time and made a lot of good connections,” explained Dietz.

Come April of 2021, IV & The Strange Band’s litmus-test Bandcamp presentation of their tried-and-true first single, “Son of Sin,” crediting Coleman Williams (IV) on vocals and acoustic guitar, Talley on guitar and banjo, Dietz on bass, Jewell on fiddle and Taylor Powell on drums.

Coleman Williams, a.k.a. IV

“We were [recording the demos] with a different drummer,” explained Dietz. And the guy that had been demoing with us, he worked at Liquid Smoke, man. Hell of a dude. Hell of a drummer. He’s going on tour so much, this fall, with a bunch of bands, so he couldn’t do it with us,” Dietz said. “So it was a no-brainer to ask my brother-in-law. I was like, ‘Hey, you wanna f**kin’ play some drums?’ So, my brother-in-law’s in the band.” 

Carson Kehrer drummed for Sheep Shifter, one of Murfreesboro’s rowdiest, craziest bands (definitely look up some YouTube videos of Sheep Shifter), as well as for the New York band Fashion Week, a pretty good-weird, heavy-drummed, alt-metal-noise deal . . . with occasional harmonica.  

Just after the release of “Son of Sin,” another lineup shuffle that would free up Talley’s hands to focus solely on guitar included former Hank 3’s The Damn Band banjoist Daniel Mason, who has been with the Williams family since he was 16 years old. 

“Daniel, the banjo player, played with Coleman’s dad for, I don’t even know for how many years, so Coleman’s basically surrounded by his best buds and family, y’know. It’s definitely kind of a working-family environment thing.  Nobody’s a stranger or just coming in to plug in, do their job and go, y’know.  We all put in an equal amount of blood and sweat to get the thing going. And that’s rare to find, y’know.  Especially in this town,” said Dietz. 

The Strange Band at Muddy Roots

Multi-talented and area-loved guitarist John Judkins, of Murfreesboro’s long-running, rock-operatic Nintendocore band The Protomen, played lap steel and guitars for IV & The Strange Band’s upcoming Southern Circus, as well as joining for local live shows as able, all the while helping successfully plan and execute The Protomen’s 2022 tour that wrapped in early April at the Exit/In.

This whole tale of Tennessee royalty and an IV & The Strange Band launch has been nuts, and there’s been a long line of Southern happenstances circling one another around the right places and times for this culmination in Southern Circus. And there’s more to come. 

IV & The Strange Band’s Record Release show for their debut album, Southern Circus, a year and half in the making, is set for June 18 at 8 p.m., at Exit/In in Nashville, also featuring The Kernal and Riley Downing. Tickets can be found online at ivandthestrangeband.com, as well as through IV & The Strange Band’s social media pages on Facebook and Instagram, and a list of local venue ticket merchants online. IV & The Strange Band’s debut, Southern Circus, will be released June 17. Hard copies can be found online at Black Country Rock Media’s site, bcrmedia.colortestmerch.com, for vinyl options in “Coke Bottle Clear,” yellow, and black, if they make more; as well as on CD.