BIOGRAPHY

Never give up your music.

I grew up in Aberdare, one of the industrial valleys of South Wales. When I was 16 in 1976 the musical landscape of the UK experienced a revolution with the emergence of punk and new wave. Like many young people at the time I found the whole thing intoxicating, I loved all sorts of music already, particularly reggae, funk and the out of ordinary bands like the Velvet Underground or Roxy Music but punk was ours to own, the bands were there playing in our towns, singing about the things that mattered to us growing up in recession hit environments.

I started to learn guitar through my pal Mike Fenwick, he got us together in a band we called 'Stolen Images' and he and I began to write songs together. We played anywhere we could in South Wales and by the time I was 18, we were experienced and getting guidance from a local rocking blues band 'Johnny and the Jets'.

I left South Wales for London in 1979, any job would do and life would be an adventure. I played in a 9 piece psycho-billy band called 'The Psychotics' and continued to write songs.

In 1981 I knew I needed something more in my life and began training to be a nurse in London. Looking back now, I can be proud of a 35+ year career in the NHS but maybe I would have played more music if I hadn't who can say.

When I qualified as a nurse I moved to work in Brighton and there formed a band with my brother Andy, Phil Jones and Ade Harris. The Sign-On-Valley Rangers were everything I ever imagined a band could be, we were original, powerful, full of energy and I always look back at it being one of the most important experiences of my life.Some clips can be found on YouTube;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UKXFiK6zzc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPUm7yCHlqM

Since those days I have always played the guitar and written songs but work and family (I have two great kids, well young people now, Aidan and Hannah) became a priority. It was by chance that I met Hannah's singing teacher who said she was forming a country music band. off the cuff I said 'If you need a bass player'. a month or so later I got a call and joined 'Sam Coe and the Long Shadows'. It was so great to be playing with a band again, Sam is a great songwriter and it inspired me to start again in earnest.

My songwriting partner in the 'Rangers' was Phil Jones, and it was Phil who had picked up on the fact I was playing with Sam and encouraged me, after the long sabbatical, to write and record the music which you now see as Jonny Williams.

The good news is that now I am going to keep going, writing and playing is a beautiful thing to have in my life, it skips generations and shares life stories on a level that it's otherwise difficult to find in this digital world.