White Williams is No Average Joe

Now on tour with his own group, which includes a pair of Ohioans on bass and drums, Williams is pretty much living the way he was two years ago, when he first began working on Smoke. He doesn't really have a home; he sublets an apartment in New York, but he's never there.

Williams records whenever he gets a chance to turn on his laptop. And he's pulling together abstruse ideas for songs that split the difference between artsy-fartsy and super-funky. "I have stuff all over the place," he says. "I have equipment in Cleveland, I have equipment in Cincinnati...

"It's a strange thing, trying to find a new job and apartment every three months," he concludes. "I had no ties to any social connection when I made the record. The music came out of that solitary ­environment."