Robin and Linda Williams Rock-and-Roll Out Decades of Musical Magic in Virginia Beach

They’ve been doing it a long time. All the time. Together all the time. They are reliant on each other. It all rubs raw as the artists smooth the path again. Countless times, repetition, perfecting, synchronizing, countdowns reaching out again for the best emotional and technical connection, for 40 years. Watching Robin and Linda Williams do sound check is not without unease. The result though is a different place. From the tightrope they appeared on, these veterans of thousands of notes and words move on toward the night’s performance in Virginia Beach, VA on a crisp January night. They change clothes, take a deep breath or two, leave their preparation, and head toward launch. In the nearby audience, I look up to see something else. It’s as if Robin and Linda have gone on vacation. The magic of their performance begins.

Living legends manifest themselves in many ways. Live performance being a major one, the Williams began yet another tour when Christmas dinner in their long-time Blue Ridge Mountain home was barely history. An early act in this year’s excellent Tidewater Friends of Acoustic Music series, Robin and Linda took the stage at the Barry Robinson Theatre, a new and intimate setting for this showcase for folk and Americana by some of the international best.

The couple met over 40 years ago when Robin played Myrtle Beach. Before long, they set about making music together, and never stopped. This evening playfully wove into a musical mosaic a narrative of the couple’s adventures along the way.

Their influences were noted as in an early dusting-off of the Dylan  classic, Boots of Spanish Leather. Linda recalled first seeing Dylan on a happily adolescent tripping done with high school girlfriends from her small Michigan hometown to nearby Detroit. It was a period of exposure for her to such to-the-heart influences as Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Mitchell’s Urge for Going was another choice that night for the duo to merge and mesh voices so well acquainted.

I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky, then it gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
and all trees are shivering in a naked row
I get the urge for going but I never seem to go
I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown

Robin said Mitchell wrote this at, I believe, 23, and added that at that age, he himself could “barely blow my nose” or something to that effect.

They also sang one of their own songs that reflected raucously on two other favorites of theirs, these from the Country realm. Robin and Linda recounted a trip to Nashville (where they also lived for a time) to play the Opry, when they spent their afternoon touring The Country Music Hall of Fame, where they were dropped dead in their tracks facing a case housing Mother Maybelle Carter’s guitar and Bill Monroe’s mandolin. “The holy grail,” Linda beamed, raising her arms in praise. The pair then launched into their self-describing ode, Maybelle’s Guitar.

As they recounted life and music, Robin noted how they have spent every hour together for those 40 years. He said they did that remarkably amicably, that perhaps the only edge of that ongoing valentine-in-life was some sense of “bickering.” I thought that might describe what I observed as the couple ironed-out the night’s sound check.  I asked Robin whether that was an example of the bickering process, and he nodded positively and replied, “as long as there’s no bodily harm!” To which I added, “It’s quite remarkable the strong, effective relationship you two maintain through all these years of constant togetherness, never having a break from working as a pair, always reliant on each other.” To this, he quietly nodded in agreement, while he copied by hand their set list for me after the show.

Their Virginia home’s rich history and geography are other signposts in a concert of theirs, richly depicted in their songs, Across Blue Mountains and Old Plank Road. North Carolina is another loved locale, their having spent many summers at a home they owned on the Outer Banks, as recalled in Southern Shores. Their Dark Hills, performed that night , recalls those roots also:

When day is done and work is through
I seek the old familiar view
Those faithful confidants of stone

Truer friends I’ve never known
Chorus:
These Old Dark Hills
On which sore eyes can rest
These Old Dark Hills
Ridge after ridge to the west…

They’ve made manhy fans across the years, especially through their roles as regulars on Garrison Keiler’s (now starring Chris Thile) Prairie Home Companion, being featured on Keiler’s weekly National Public Radio variety show from its beginning episodes in the 1960s. Keiler also wrote-in roles for them in Robert Altman’s movie (his last) about Prairie Home Companion.

Those fans included a couple sitting in the front row who had R and L play for their recent wedding and the lady a few rows behind them center-audience who Linda said sang along all the words to all their songs. The lady confirmed that she had, saying that she owned perhaps all of the couple’s records, knew them by heart, and had seen them perform numerous times as well. The slight house light was the cause, Linda said, that she could see that feat of audience participation, adding that she liked being able to see the crowd.

Their songs’ narrative includes as well a rich period of growth in Nashville in early years, growing with and learning from colleagues and mentors such as Guy Clark, deceased this past year, and Townes Van Zandt. I asked Robin about Townes, and he said that, “he was a remarkably sweet guy, while at the same time, he could make you incredibly angry!”

Another influence, who had also died in the past year, was Merle Haggard, someone they revered deeply and whose Mama’s Hungry Eyes they performed.

The couple comes out like a well-oiled machine. Greased gears, belts, coils, and cores of the Williams’ machine mesh through well-rehearsed passages, stanzas, and refrains. Their polish shows in the mandolin twists of the songs, as well as the musical relationships of stanzas, choruses, refrains, and breaks – with one performer taking one, then his or her partner the next.

The Williams have become virtually seamless in these moves back and forth through the narratives and melodies of the songs, seemingly always moving like gears, together, then apart. Songs and stories interweave throughout.

You can tell you are watching and hearing a duo with 22 albums to their credit, a lifetime of tours solo or with band, usually the greatly talented The Fine Group. It is a duo, not surprisingly, that has songs having been covered by many artists including Tom T. Hall, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Emmylou Harris, George Hamilton IV, Tim & Mollie O’Brien, and the Nashville Bluegrass Band,

They ended the night with a gospel encore, Better Day A’ Comin.’ while the concert proper closed with Robin and Linda’s Devil is a Mighty Wind.

She doesn’t know that in my dreams

I hear a mighty wind that screams,

Man is tinder,

Woman is fire,

And the devil is a mighty wind.

Man is tinder,

Woman is fire,

And the devil is a mighty wind.

Opening for the duo was the talented local guitarist and singer-songwriter Dustin Furlough, who played and sang a selection of his songs, both deft, swift instrumentals and songs featuring his deeply rich vocals, notably In My Garden.

The songs were largely from his recent album, The Sound That You Call Home, a collection of tunes with an emphasis on organic relationships with nature and between people.