Brothers’ Album Blends Folk, Rock and Pop in a Return to Acoustic Roots

The Williams Brothers perhaps just got carried away during the recording of their first album. That 1987 debut, called “Two Stories,” featured a full electric backing band and even had new songs written by such heavyweights as Bob Dylan and Tom Petty.

While Andrew and David Williams say they still enjoy listening to that disc, they now agree that perhaps they strayed from their earliest acoustic roots. With their follow-up effort, “The Williams Brothers,” the 32-year-old twins have returned to that original inspiration.

“Originally, we were real acoustic,” said Andrew, balancing an unplugged electric guitar across his knee. “But eventually you make your first record and you want to do everything, or at least we did. We wanted to dabble in all different kinds of styles.

“Going through that experience, I think we got a lot more grounded and realized what we were, which was an acoustic duo. There’s a certain tradition we’re carrying on,” he said, sitting with his brother in a candle-lit guest house high in the Hollywood Hills.

The brothers had just returned from fulfilling part of the activist side of that tradition last weekend, when they performed at an outdoor rally in Santa Barbara to urge building a desalination plant rather than a water pipeline to fight the drought.

It was a desire for a pure acoustic sound that led the Williams Brothers to producer David Kershenbaum for help with their new Warner Bros. album. Kershenbaum is a veteran of folk and folk-inspired records, stretching from Joan Baez to Tracy Chapman, and he added elements like strings to the Williams Brothers’ sound. The resulting record is a smooth blend of folk, rock and pop, anchored by the duo’s acoustic guitars. A surprising track, co-written and produced by Dave Stewart of Eurythmics and called “The Big Machine,” offers the brothers in a wilder psychedelic mode. But most of the record is sung with the twins’ simple harmonies in often raw, confessional style.

“We wanted our next album to have the simplicity that our live show had,” said David, adding that the quiet emotional ballad “Can’t Cry Hard Enough” was written after the death of a friend. “That song means a lot to me.”

The new album marks not only a further creative evolution for the act, but represents a new and definitive understanding between the brothers about their mutual careers. Sibling warfare has often been waged within such acts as the Everly Brothers and between the Kinks’ Ray and Dave Davies, sometimes obstructing career paths and creative productivity.

“Working real closely with your brother is not easy, because you’re face to face with yourself,” Andrew said. “Resolving ourselves to ‘This is what we want to do,’ and ‘We’re going to work together,’ we kind of made a commitment to what we were doing. There was a lot of self-discovery in the last couple of years.

“Musically, there is something so amazing when you hear the Everly Brothers and that vocal blend,” he added. “There is something that happens with brothers occasionally that’s beautiful. So it’s great to sing together.”

Andrew and David Williams were raised largely in Sherman Oaks, the sons of an entertainment manager, and the nephews of veteran crooner Andy Williams. But the brothers say they took most of their inspiration from the music of the late 1960s.

Subsequently, they found much in common with other young musicians on the local club scene in the early ‘80s, including Peter Case of the Plimsouls. The Williams Brothers were soon playing opening slots for that band’s club shows. And by late 1983, the duo was singing and playing on record and on tour with rocker T-Bone Burnett, who introduced the Williams twins to the vintage sounds of Jimmy Reed and Hank Williams.

“We were becoming an act,” Andrew said. “We were developing what we were doing, and T-Bone was really encouraging us to get our music together.”

In the years leading up to winning a deal with Warner Bros. Records, Andrew and David played and sang on albums by a dramatic range of artists, from the brooding Gun Club to country-rocker Joe Ely.

But the pressures of making their own first album left that record filled with songs written largely by other writers. After the inevitable depression that resulted when the record failed to top the charts, the Williams Brothers were ultimately drawn to make a simpler, more personal document of their own emotional concerns.

“When we come together, I think we integrate so well as writers,” Andrew said. “We have a relationship and collaboration where we can really finish each other’s ideas.”

This time, David said, the twins “just tried to make something we liked.”

REGGAE REDUX: The Reggae Sunsplash: World Peace Tour 1991, led by such major acts as Maxi Priest, Andrew Tosh and Shinehead, came and went at the Greek Theater over the Memorial Day weekend. But listeners still not fully satisfied will find a crowd of active local talent Saturday at Santa Monica College’s Reggae Festival ’91.

The Babylon Warriors, Pupa Curly, Wendy Shaw, Queen Ekanem, Onaje Murray and Candela will appear in the school’s outdoor amphitheater from noon until 7 p.m. The program is sponsored by the Santa Monica College student government. Tickets are $10 general, $7 for students and $3.50 for seniors and children. For more information, call (213) 452-9396.