Alexander Michael hails from North Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father, Greg, played guitar and started teaching Alexander music at 8 years old, around camp fires and in the kitchen.
A story in the Paradise section of The Key West Citizen on Wednesday, May 18, misspelled the last name of musician Channing Lynn Griggs. The Citizen regrets the error.
Williams says he wanted Trickster Carousel songs to have both depth and naughtiness. On the quintet’s new album,
Snake Oil, available for purchase on the band s website, iTunes and Apple Music, Williams explores ideas he wrote about in
The Trickster Brain. Take the upbeat foot-tapping swing cut “Cradle to the Grave,” a humorous song about death and evolution that sounds like Tom Waits sitting in with the Squirrel Nut Zippers.
“Evolution never meant to make us happy,” Williams says. Happiness is not something that evolution gives a shit about. It s just survival and getting your chance for the future. I took that and made a kind of a funny song, but it just so happened that right after I wrote that song, the whole COVID thing came out, so it was kind of apropos. It’s not so much making light of it, but just kind of poking fun at death, kind of sticking your finger at it, saying ‘Fuck you.’”