Strength to Climb: LA Williams on Keeping a Music Career Through Kidney Failure (Episode 36)

Reliability beats virtuosity.

Some episodes are about chops. This one is about staying in the game when your body tries to take you out of it. In Episode 36 of The Career Musician, Nomad sits down with guitarist LA Williams, a gospel quartet player, a kidney transplant and dialysis survivor, and the reason the show calls him the Miracle Guitar Man.

Nomad met LA through Kevin Wilson and the International Musicians Summit, and the conversation hit close to home: Nomad's father was going through the same thing. What came out is a story about keeping a music career going through serious illness, and about the mentor who taught LA that life lessons matter as much as licks.

Don't play through the warning signs

LA was never the guy who stayed home sick. Bad cold, he went to school anyway. So at about 35, when he felt ill for a couple of months during a Chicago winter, he treated it at home with soups, salads, water, tea, lemon and ginger, and kept working.

Then he was on stage at a show in Chicago and asked for a chair. He was slumped over, having trouble breathing, and still thinking about one thing: getting through the gig so the direct deposit would go through. Everybody around him could see something was wrong. After the show he went to the emergency room. The doctors told him his kidneys weren't working. The night cramps and the metallic taste he had been brushing off were the signs.

Three days of tests came back negative for every usual cause. Nobody could tell him why. He started dialysis right away.

"If I would have done it over, I would have had those regular checkups like I do now."

LA Williams, 14:05

His point to anyone listening: catch it early, when there is still time to turn things around. The gig will be there. Get checked.

From "why me" to a bigger purpose

LA is honest that his first prayer was why me. He even told God he had a list of people who might deserve it more. Then he flipped it. If the doctors didn't know why, maybe this was for another purpose. Over the years, musicians from around the country reached out to him about their own kidney failure, including Nomad. That is where he found his peace.

"I'm not asking you to move the mountain, but you're gonna have to definitely give me strength to climb."

LA Williams, 22:28

About three years in, a quartet drummer friend called him from a hospital bed with the same diagnosis. LA was devastated. His friend told him it was cool, because he had watched LA go through it. That call, LA says, is when his prayers made sense.

Build the system before you go back out

His biggest fear was not the treatment. It was the business. He knew musicians who traveled with a dialysis machine and did treatments in hotels, and he worried artists would see him as a liability.

The doctors were the ones who pushed him. You're too young to stop, they told him. There are clinics all over the place. So LA took six months off, not to quit, but to learn. His dialysis network assigned someone who checked in with him weekly, and she gave him the two rules that became his lifeline: don't miss one treatment, and protect your access. The treatment relieves the symptoms, but your kidneys still aren't working, so it can feel like you're fine when you're not.

When he went back on the road, he scheduled around it. Treatment early Friday morning, flight out, meet the group. If a Friday show got in the way, he moved treatment to Saturday after soundcheck. He credits the gospel artists he worked with for being considerate and waiting on him. And he learned to tell people plainly: when I'm done, let me sleep, and I'll be back up ready to roll.

That is Reliability beats virtuosity in its hardest form. The artist needs to know you will be there. LA made sure of it by building a system first.

His O blood type meant a six to eight year wait for a kidney. In 2016, about four and a half years in, the call came. He had prayed for the person ahead of him on the list to get it. Then the phone rang again, and it was his.

Spanky taught life first

LA, like his friend Isaiah Sharkey, was close to the legendary gospel and R&B guitarist Spanky Alford, whom Nomad calls the godfather of all things gospel jazz and R&B guitar. LA had stepped away from guitar for six years, working in the corporate world, until his brother-in-law begged him to play an outdoor festival at 25. That put him back on the road with quartet players, and one of them played him a Spanky cassette.

Years later, at a quartet convention in Birmingham, LA froze when Spanky walked by. He finally introduced himself through a mutual friend, and Spanky wrote his number on the back of a card: call me any time. For the next four years, LA did.

"Spanky spent more time talking to me about life than... about riffs."

LA Williams, 34:54

Being a man, preparing yourself, the business side of the industry. That was what Spanky passed down, and LA says others who were close to him will tell you the same. The last time LA saw him, Spanky was very weak and still teaching at a music store. He got up anyway to have LA's guitar set up, and refused to let LA pay. That is Humility, the H in ETHOS, from a giant.

Get the paperwork right, then create

LA's work also includes producing and arranging for quartet groups. One session shows how this business works. In the studio on another project, a producer asked if he had any ideas. He played a song idea on acoustic. Two years later, through a chain of producer friends, that song ended up placed on Snoop Dogg's gospel album, Bible of Love. Work begets work.

He wasn't keen on doing productions at first, because the business so often isn't right. His production partner promised it would be, and they laid everything on the table: get it on paper, email first, then the lawyers, split the production and writing credits. He kept his word, and LA registered his writing with ASCAP. That is Make Music Your Business.

The takeaway

Take care of the instrument that plays the instrument. Get your checkups. If life knocks you down, build a system that lets you keep your word to the people who hire you, and find the mentors who teach you about life, not only licks. As LA put it, there is life after kidney failure, and he is living proof. When you are ready to get back out there, the free Get the Gig guide is a good place to start, and you can follow LA on Instagram.

Get the gig. Keep the gig. Build the career.

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