© 2024 KMUW
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

A Musical Life: Ronnie Glenn Williams

Ronnie Glenn Williams is a singer-songwriter based in Wichita, Kansas. His latest release is an album named after his hometown.

“The night life’s interesting. It really is almost a controlled loneliness. You get a couple drinks in people and they either get extremely happy about their situation or they’re lonely. That’s always kind of inspired writing.

I don’t write songs about politics, just because I’m not informed enough. But I do know about being lonely and I do know what it’s like to be in a room with 50-60 people and still feel like you’re all by yourself.

That’s how the night life goes. It can be a great, awesome time or it can be an awesome tool for writing.

I chose to hone that.

Every night that I was out I had these notes in my head. Either I saw a girl sitting at by herself and I wanted to know what her story was. I would see a couple guys playing pool and I wanted to know what they were doing the night before.

I was going to school for teaching and at some point in time I established that that wasn’t my passion anymore. I wanted to learn more about this people watching, or stories. Everyone has this story that we don’t know, that we don’t see. I remember telling my mom that I was going to switch degrees to writing. She gave me the same look that she gave me when I was nine and I told her I wanted to be a Ghostbuster.

She wasn’t the most enthused about it. But she supported it and I feel stronger about it now. I can look at that girl now, that’s sitting alone at the end of the bar, and think, ‘Alright. I bet that she has a great story to tell.’ I’d like to tell that story now.”

Jedd Beaudoin is host/producer of the nationally syndicated program Strange Currency. He has also served as an arts reporter, a producer of A Musical Life and a founding member of the KMUW Movie Club. As a music journalist, his work has appeared in Pop Matters, Vox, No Depression and Keyboard Magazine.