He’s only 24 but Kiwi star Marlon Williams has managed to change the way we think about country music. The singer — in line for five awards at next month’s NZ Music Awards — talks to Alan Perrott about life on the road, why his father sold his favourite CDS and being born in Boh Runga’s bath. Slight to the point of skinny, typically blushing as he hunches over his microphone, and never sure of what to do with his arms unless they're cradling a guitar, Marlon Williams has a voice that's always a surprise when it arrives. It's not just that he can sing - and he can! - it's the way he sings, which is so completely at ease, yet in total thrall to the lyric, that makes his audience hold its breath to better absorb each note. It's a power that's easy to recognise and hard to explain. 'I don't know, but there's a beautiful naivete there,' says his friend, sometime mentor and longtime Lyttelton legend, Al Park.

Flying Free Don Besig Pdf File here. 'I remember when we first realised he was a star. He was only 16 and he'd turned up for this Beatles tribute show at my bar. He sang the ballad Till There Was You and everyone just went nuts, they wouldn't let him go until he'd done five more. Torrent Office 2007 Dutch Language Pack on this page. I know this sounds like crap but it was like everyone there knew that this was his destiny, the charm and that voice, he was something special.'

But if word of the 24-year-old's abilities have been slow to leak beyond the bearded world of alt country until now, five nominations in this year's New Zealand Music Awards for his self-titled album may start setting things to rights. Not only does he have more nominations than any other contender (Unknown Mortal Orchestra follow with four), they're all big ones: Album Of The Year, Single Of The Year, Best Male Solo Artist, Breakthrough Artist and Best Alternative Album. Which is great, but for the shame that we've already lost him. Since heading to Melbourne in 2013, Williams has reached such heights he's about to tour with Lucinda Williams and Paul Kelly - so the clock is already running on when they start claiming him as their own. He's also signed with American label Dead Oceans, the sister label to Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian, which places him in the same stable as Bon Iver, UMO, War on Drugs and Dinosaur Jr, and just yesterday he completed six showcases at the CMJ Music Marathon in New York before heading to Europe for a 12-stop tour. But then he was born in Boh Runga's bath and named after Marlon Brando, so his life should have a certain boho style. And that's before you factor in his parents.

His father, David Williams (Frank, as in Spencer, to his mates), had discovered punk rock back in Gisborne, playing and singing in groups like the Boneshakers, while his mother, Jenny Rendell, who is of a more arty bent, was seldom up before 1pm and then painted into the wee small hours while banging out classical music. This cultural millieu began with his naming. Rendell had wanted Kahu (among other meanings, it's the name of the swamp hawk), but Dad eventually got his way when they discovered the name of his favourite actor also meant 'little hawk' in French. From there his mother's tastes led him into choral music and opera, which he then blended with the more earthy stuff that's got him wearing bolo ties and singing about baby killer Millie Dean.

'Yeah I guess I soaked up everything they threw at me, Dad especially - I'd be getting into a CD then he'd trade it in and come home with something completely different.' The first to catch his ear featured Dylan's 1966 European tour, but more for the backing group that went on to become The Band. So his father traded it for their album The Big Pink. 'That took me to this world that was just so fresh to me. Ravenloft Tarokka Deck Pdf more. That was an exciting thing to discover.' It remained on constant rotate until, inevitably, it disappeared and was replaced by Gram Parson's Return of the Grievous Angel.

If that one took longer to sink in, it proved a life-changer. There is an entire generation whose feelings toward country have been tainted by anodyne shows like That's Country, but, says Williams, 'I had no handle on any of that in my early teens, instead I was into this dude [Parsons] who'd died at 27 from a heroin overdose. That was my starting point and, by the time I found out about all that other stuff, it really didn't figure in the equation.'

So, still only 15 and with his imagination fired by country's Gothic darkness ('that was really attractive') Williams started writing songs while doing the bare minimum at school, Christchurch Boys', where he'd fallen in with a group who shared his love of harmony. Straight away he found a solid compadre in Ben Wooley and the pair began performing Beatles covers and singing in the school choir. 'Marlon's one of those people for whom no mountain is too high,' says the school choirmaster, Don Whelan. 'He has the most disarming smile - it's like he sings through his eyes - and an awareness of the integrity of beautiful sound and beautiful harmony, elements that people are attracted to rather than impressed. He actually puts me in mind of another young man with a guitar and a country and western background and, while Marlon may not shake his hips like Elvis, he has the same way of sucking people in, and that's a rare phenomenon.' Williams and Wooley were also part of Whelan's Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament Choir that toured Europe over the summer of 2009/2010 with the budding soloist singing front and centre in cathedrals in San Francisco, the Baltic states, Portugal and Spain.