AFTER THE STORM

IT’S a chilly September night in Nashville and Yasmin Williams is sitting alone on stage at 6th & Peabody – an outdoor venue attached to a touristy moonshine bar and a gourmet hot dog stand. Behind her is a giant banner for Americana Fest, the annual roots music gathering. There are a handful of people seated at picnic tables and Adirondack chairs arrayed around the stage, all them watching closely as she rips through one guitar instrumental after another, most of them taken from her second full-length album, Urban Driftwood. When she plays, she plays with her whole body – which is why she’s quickly risen through the ranks of the solo guitar scene. She drums on the wood with her fist and elbow. She plucks and taps on the frets, her fingers moving in a blur.

“I WANTED TO IMAGINE THINGS GETTING BETTER”
YASMIN WILLIAMS

“I’m gonna play a slow one because my fingers are yelling at me,” the Virginia-born guitarist tells the crowd midway through her set. She’s just ripped through a rollicking version of “High Five” on her acoustic guitar and this next song, “I Wonder (Songs For Michael)”, will provide something like a break. Before she launches its pensive, pastoral central theme, she gives her listeners some homework. “I’ll have y’all guess what it’s about when I’m done playing.” With the bustle of drunk non-locals next door as a backdrop and with the distant woo-hooing of a bachelorette party commandeering a pedal pub in the distance, Williams strums, picks, taps, slaps at the strings