Most folks know me as David Williams, mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet (okay, mild-mannered research scientist), living in the rural northernmost suburbs of Philadelphia with my wife and two daughters. 

I have been playing guitar since 1964, and bottleneck slide since 1976.  My early musical interests were rock (and roll), jug bands, string bands, ragtime, hokum and blues, bottleneck slide guitar and harmonica blues.  Recognizing that an intemperate interest in these musical styles could potentially lead to eternal perdition, my musical interests have expanded to include American religious music from the 19^th and early 20^th centuries as well as gypsy jazz, classical music, and opera.  Most of the people I enjoy listening to are either now dead or not feeling very well.
 

When I was in High School, we (my father, brother and I) made a wash-tub bass for our jug band, but I didn't really became interested in home-made instruments until late spring 2004, when I read a newspaper article featuring Shane Speal and his Cigar Box Guitar Museum.  I cobbled together my first cigar box guitar shortly after that, thinking that such an instrument fit in perfectly with my musical background.  I play my cigar box guitars fingerstyle with a bottleneck slide.  My playing tends to be pretty percussive and not particularly fancy.
  
I met Shane (founder of the current cigar box guitar and primative rock movement) face-to-face in the summer of 2005, and in the spring of 2006, he suggested that I hunt down the CD One String Blues, which featured 9 cuts by Eddie "One String" Jones, a master diddley bow player.  The music was recorded in 1960 on Skid Row in Los Angeles and at two parties in Hollywood.  The performances were stunning—raw, percussive and deeply compelling.  After just one listen, I knew that he had to build and learn to play this instrument.  The first cut on the CD was of Eddie Jones describing how he had built his diddley bow, and a drawing of the instrument and two photos were included in the CD insert.  With this information, I built a replica of his instrument:  a board with a piece of broom-wire stretched between two nails and tensioned with a little piece of wood and a small jelly jar and a paint can resonator, played with a stick and a whiskey bottle.
 

I showed Shane the replica instrument in August of 2006, and he was thrilled--he challenged me to incorporate the diddley bow into my act.  After encouragement from Shane and the late Donald "Boz" Bostwick, I took up the challenge, and told Shane and Boz that I would be "One String Willie."  

Thus, "One String Willie" is both a musical project as well as the musical persona arising from the project.   

The initial challenge was to master this primitive instrument, but the project soon became much deeper--to forge new playing techniques and repertoire for a single string.