Williams to debut at Grand Ole Opry

Chancey Williams isn't in a hurry.

While country music artists have risen to the national scene and fallen from its graces throughout the years, Williams and the Younger Brothers Band have steadily made a career for themselves over the past decade.

The concept of a music career, especially at the highest levels, tends to be an oxymoron. Careers are typically stable and music careers are known for being many things but that.

A life in music can be volatile on the way up and down. That's a reality Williams is keenly aware of. It's also a reality that he and his band have consciously avoided for themselves.

They haven't yet hit the highest of highs, but they've steadily managed to move in that direction each year, marking their progress against themselves and avoiding the whims of the country music machine along the way.

"It took us a long time to get here, but it was worth every mile and every flat tire to get here," Williams said.

His sixth and latest album, "One of These Days," will be released March 24. It comes in the build up to his debut at the Grand Ole Opry next month and taking stage at the 75th anniversary of the National High School Finals Rodeo in Gillette this summer.

"We've got this machine that works and we're going to continue to do it and there's nobody in some office in Nashville that can tell us 'yes' or 'no,'" Williams said. "We're just going to do it ourselves because we've done it ourselves this long anyway."

Where it's taken him has been established. Where it all began is in Moorcroft, Wyoming.

Starting out

Williams has a frank understanding of where and how his life in music began.

"When we started, we didn't know much about playing music," he said. "We came from a part of the world that doesn't have a big music scene."

Wyoming, let alone northeast Wyoming, doesn't have a collective music scene established at the national level, the way it is in states like Texas and of course, cities like Nashville, Tennessee.

"We're kind of in the part of the country where we had to learn everything on our own," he added.

Moorcroft is a stone's throw from Gillette and another stone's throw from the South Dakota border, at least by Wyoming standards of space and relativity.

He first started performing with his band while in high school, pulling on their rodeo and small-town Wyoming connections to find gigs and figure out the rest along the way.

"Everybody in Wyoming knows everybody. It spread fast and we had a lot of support early," Williams said. "I always tell people when I'm on the road, I'm from Moorcroft, Wyoming. I grew up when it had 800 people in it and it's still very small."

Those origins bleed into the music, which lyrically has the fixtures of rodeo life, bucking chutes, bleachers and beers many from the rodeo circles of Wyoming can relate to.

"A lot of my writing and the stuff we sing about comes from growing up in northeast Wyoming," he said.

Counting the early years in high school, Williams has been making music for about 25 years.

"We have been at it for a while, but sometimes I don't really count the first part of our careers as trying to be an artist," he said. "We were just trying to figure out how to be in the music business, and how to play music."

The art and the business of music have emerged as distinct and separate parts of Williams' career. In the beginning, it was about finding gigs, playing rodeos and local fairs, covering songs and at the end of it all, pulling off a show.

Those practical elements informed the business side. The artistic endeavors came within the past 10 years or so.

"To learn the art of putting on a show and putting together a show and putting together songs and writing songs that people want to listen to over and over again is tricky," he said. "Trying to write songs that are great, songs that will span the test of time is tricky."

In Moorcroft and Gillette, Williams may be remembered best as the voice of the live background music many grew familiar with. Like at the New Year's Eve Buck and Ball at Cam-plex, where he and his band played all but a few of its 20 years.

That repetition and local exposure snowballed into the foundation of his music career.

"We've kind of done it backwards...we built this foundation of fans out West, the fans out West got us to where we are," he said. "We've built this following that's built this foundation for who we are as an artist and as a group."

The legwork in the early years compiled recognition and support that helped when Williams pivoted to music full time, again, approaching it as a career, a slow burn toward longevity rather than an overnight dalliance with fame.

Although Williams has a home in Laramie now, he travels to Nashville for a week each month to write, record and take meetings, the practical elements of maintaining a foothold in the crowded world of country music, where it's none more crowded than the streets of Nashville.

"It's been fun to do the business model that way and look at it like a job and a career, versus everybody when they're young would like a record deal, and be famous and looking back, we probably wanted that to," he said. "Would it have lasted as long if we had? For sure not."

Forging an identity

In some ways, sticking to his Wyoming roots instead of chasing the bigger audiences familiar with and drawn to whichever style of country music was fashionable at the time, has begun to pay off for Williams. "It's a little bit more country than it has been the last 10 years which fits right into what we do," he said.

"We're modern day country music, but we're definitely not bro country," he added. "We're still singing about Western lifestyle stuff and rodeos and those types of things and that's what people all over the nation now are interested in, because of things like 'Yellowstone.'"

In that way, the market has begun to catch up to Williams and his band. Whereas Wyoming and the Mountain West may not have a ubiquitous place in the country music zeitgeist, recent TV shows like "Yellowstone" and a renewed interest in exploring the West many took to during the pandemic has increased Wyoming's national presence in recent years.

"We fit that model perfect because we're not 'Yellowstone' either, we're real cowboys from Wyoming," he said. "It's super authentic. My backstory tells it all. I'm still a ranch kid from Moorcroft, Wyoming who rode saddle broncs. That's the stuff people from the East and West Coast are in awe about, there's real people who live that life, and I'm one of them that's actually in country music."

But not being aligned with the trends of the time hasn't tempted him to change the identity of his music.

"Our fans probably would have lynched us if we'd have started doing that stuff," Williams said. "They know too well who we are. If we were trying to copy that Nashville sound, we wouldn't have the fans we have."

He's quick to give credit to the musicians and bands that found success playing more pop-centric or mainstream country music sounds that have ebbed and flowed with the music scene over the past decade. But he's also quick to acknowledge that the success of others never altered his own trajectory.

"You go to start chasing sounds, you're already a couple years behind the curve," he said. "Two years ago, if I started chasing that bro country sound, it's - maybe it's kind of coming to an end now - we'd be behind the curve."

Not in a bad way, but Wyoming and Wyomingites are familiar with being behind the curve in some respects.

Other states and pockets of the nation have their own country music scenes. Wyoming may not have the numbers to tap into that those places have, but it has the talent.

"We just don't have as big a pool to draw from, but there are ones out there that are doing it and having a lot of success," Williams said of other Wyoming artists. "There are guys out there that are killing it. Which is awesome. More the merrier for our state, to go out and represent Wyoming across the United States is awesome."

Wyoming may not have the established music scene of other places, but Williams is among the small group of artists making an effort to change that. Just because it may not happen soon, doesn't mean it won't happen. In his typical fashion, it's a slow and steady approach.

When it comes to his status in country music, that approach is taking him somewhere. On the flip side, that's because with more than a decade of experience to lean on, when it comes to his place in country music, he's not going anywhere.