Cornerstone

 Williams, who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and an intimate community, works with a local church when he isn't performing. He was found by Jamie Tworkowski, founder of the movement known as To Write Love on Her Arms. Tworkowski was in New York, and a friend of his suggested going to see a Zach Williams show at a local bar:

 "I was playing a show up in Manhattan, and he came out, just randomly, and then wrote a blog about it. Then, suddenly our Myspace page had 5,000 hits, whereas before it had around 40. I emailed him, thanking him. We have a community up here in New York  - friendship and community is really, really important to us. All of my friends come to the show, and the sing every word with me. And Jamie noticed that. So he asked me if I could come down and do a show with them, and maybe talk about community a little bit, too. So I did one, and then ended up doing many, many more."

When he isn't writing songs, Williams part-times as a pastor of music around his community. Rather than stand behind the microphone himself, he is quick to point out that he is surrounded by talent and would rather try to think of ways to involve the talent around him into his church's worship. His community and friendships are at the core of both sides of his life.

"A lot of my songs are journal entries. A lot of them are about personal friends' stories. I have a song called James - my best friend, Caleb, his dad died in the middle of the night. It turned out that he was struggling pretty bad with alcoholism, but he was a traveling businessman, so nobody really knew about it. So he came clean from it, and actually had victory over it for three weeks, and then he died of a heart attack that was related to [his alcoholism]."

Williams has a unique way of writing music - unconventional, to say the least. 

"I write songs really quickly - within five minutes, the melody, everything. [James] is a song about a boy dying in a river, and everything represents something. The boys that he is camping with represents his community, that didn't really know what was going on, and then the river represents addiction. [My songs] have a lot to do with my friends. Whenever they are bummed out or celebrating something, I just try to remember it."

Aside from his unique songwriting process, he's got the pipes to go along. His voice is strong and piercing. His lyrics are so emotionally driven that it's impossible not to be affected. His band is smooth and soulful, with tinges of blues. He plays music like a man who loves to play music, like a man who loves to help people by telling real-life stories in song. 

For almost a year now, Williams has been traveling to events with Jamie and the rest of the TWLOHA gang. He's shared stages with the likes of Jon Foreman (Switchfoot), Aaron Gillespie (Underoath) and Stephen Christian (Anberlin), and has been able to use his story and his storytelling to help others. 

"The thing that is life-giving to me, from (TWLOHA), is the nights that we have. The whole goal is to kind of create this atmosphere of trust so that people will, sometimes literally, stand up and say, 'Okay, I don't want to do this on my own anymore. My life is in danger because I do all of this away from anyone else, and I need help.' And then, there are counselors there to help. That's why I live the way I live with my friends back in Brooklyn. When you're dealing with such heavy things, you've got to have an anchor. You've got to have friends that are behind you."

More than just music, Williams is trying to find comfort in his pursuit of life, and how to live it. "My thing that I've been searching out for the past few years is that I think that our faith and our community should push us towards where we are going in life - not our jobs. So I think that intentional community is really important. That's why I say that there's a community in Brooklyn that I trust. We just picked a couple of neighborhoods, and try our best to be within walking distance. We help each other find apartments; find jobs." 

It was all because of his community that Williams really stuck out to Tworkowski in the first place. If not for his friends' support of his music, Williams might not have had so many mouths singing along that night, and the connection to TWLOHA might have never happened. 

Being directly involved in the church and trying to pursue music is a struggle for many, but Williams seems to have found his place in it: "I'm not a Christian that's trying to sneak into the mainstream thing. I'm just a Christian that writes music. More than anything else, I want people to be able to pause in life and take in a moment, without anything else. At a show, my goal is to challenge a person to take in what's going on around them, and to just be present. And I feel like that's something that our generation is really struggling with right now, with the iPhones and Facebooks and Tweets and everything else. The value that we need to have to be present in the moment I don't think is something that people have hd to really pay attention to. So we have this challenge."

"There's so many things to do, that if a person comes to a show, it's not like there is nothing else to do on that Friday night. They came for a purpose. So it's a very intentional hour."

Though he is still fairly new at this music thing, Zach Williams is connecting with the right people, and for the right reasons. He loves music enough to commit his life to it, but not so much that he blinds himself to the things that really matter: community and relationship, and not solely the thing(s) that bring in a paycheck. He truly believes that music is an art that can press a palm to the wounded. 

"Art is a stop sign. It's a stop sign in our lives, just to pause. And music is art, and I see music that way. I don't really see it as something just to be in the background of your life. I see it as, a song happens and you pause. You pause and you live with it and with that other human being and his or her thoughts for a little while."

Check out Zach here for more information about his music and touring schedule.

-Jahred