Holly Williams w/The Staves: at 3rd & Lindsley (Nashville, TN) Sun. May 26, 2013

Holly Williams w/The Staves

Lightning 100 & Yuengling Presents

Nashville Scene Critic's Pick …

There have been those who’ve assumed that daddy Hank Jr. bought Holly Williams her music career, and reviewers who’ve assumed that “Waiting on June” must be a song about the Cashes, or that it’s always guys she’s brooding over in her lyrics. “As a woman,” she observed earlier this year, “you’re supposedly always writing about the boy who broke your heart.” But Williams is far freer from the trappings of legacy and expectation than you’d think; it’s not like she walks around carrying the weight of the classic country world on her shoulders. She’s a singer-songwriter in the way that Patty Griffin is a singer-songwriter: confessional, emotionally cathartic and perfectly content not to let beefed-up, bells-and-whistles accompaniment do all the work. This is only the second show Williams has played in Nashville this year; the other one celebrated the release of her independent, Charlie Peacock-produced album The Highway, which is where she’s been spending a lot of her time. Next up are dates opening for John Prine and John Hiatt.

—Jewly Hight