Keith Williams – Tone For Worship

Keith Williams
Tone For Worship
EPM Music Group (release date: September 10, 2013)
www.epmmusicgroup.com

By Bob Marovich for The Black Gospel Blog

Keith Williams is one of the newer members of the gospel crooners club, a society whose progenitors include Robert Anderson, R.L. Knowles, Bishop Charles Watkins, and Elder Charles Beck. Like label mate and EPM Music Group prexy Earnest Pugh, Williams has an “easy like Sunday morning” voice. He doesn’t shout the glory down; he coaxes it down.

On his national debut album, Tone For Worship, Williams pours his handsome chops over a handful of contemporary worship songs, most of which he wrote or co-wrote. Entering into a personal relationship with the Almighty is the overarching theme of the album and the explicit message of the title track. With some exceptions, the musical tone throughout is classic quiet storm.

The nicest selections are the most delicate and soothing, such as the Christmas-inspired “Holy to You” and the single, “I Believe God,” a gently rolling ballad on faith in God’s constancy. Tops lyrically is Marque Walker and David Gillard’s “All For You.” Here, Williams asserts that he does not need accolades or back pats from people because what he does, he does for God. As long as God is pleased, he is pleased.

Though not Williams’ best vocal work on the album, “You Are My Way Through” is a big production number with potential. “As For Me and My House” is far stronger, with a rhythmic sway that evokes early Seal and, as such, is known as “the gospel stepper’s anthem.”

Formerly worship leader for Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church and a behind-the-scenes veteran of the music business, Keith Williams stepped down to serve as A&R man for Pugh’s EPM Music Group and focus on his solo career. Tone For Worship, the product of this collaboration, will appeal to fans of Earnest Pugh, Brian Courtney Wilson, Jonathan McReynolds, and others of today’s gospel crooners.

Three of Five Stars

Pick: “Holy To You,” “I Believe God.”