One of the Scariest People on the Planet—“I’m Roy Williams”

By Peter Nevland - Dec 01 , 2008

It didn’t take long for my pastor to hear about me hanging out with drug dealers in east Austin. He asked me to perform “Rashi & Me” and tell the story in front of church to illustrate his sermon on the city’s racial divide. At the end of the service, an overly enthusiastic guy came striding up to me, the bald crown of his head reflecting fluorescent lights.

“I’m Roy Williams,” he said. “I’ve seen you perform for a while, now. You’ve got something that needs to be shown to the world…”

“Who is this guy?” I thought.

He was obviously all sorts of confident and persuasive, but I’d never seen him at church in my life. The last guy that had offered to promote me turned out to have some other sort of agenda, barging into my house in-between trips to the gay and lesbian bookstore across the street.

“I want you to come out to my offices where we can shoot some video of you,” Roy said, increasing my fears.

“Now Roy, I don’t think you want to cut up shots of Peter too much. It’ll take away from people being able to concentrate on his words and facial gestures.”

The woman who had spoken these calming words was Pennie, Roy’s wife, although she looked much younger than him. Whatever their age difference and relationship, her concern for me calmed my fears of having to sell my soul to Roy Williams. I agreed to come out to his offices as long as I could bring someone with me.

When I arrived with my brother, Dave, and my friend, Bryan Brown, at Williams Marketing, I wasn’t sure what to expect. A couple people had filled me in on the kind of guy Roy was.

“If Roy says he’s going to do something, I’ve never seen him not make it happen,” said my pastor.

“If he wants to help promote you, you should take the opportunity. He’s got some amazing connections,” said Bryan.

I kept an optimistically wary, poker outlook as I performed for his staff, who seemed to enjoy the interruption of their normal workday. After the performance, we talked in Roy’s conference room, crammed with old books and memorabilia.

“Have you read any Jack Kerouac?” he asked.

“I’ve heard of him, but I’ve never read his work,” I bluntly confessed.

“50 years ago he was a poet who captivated a generation. I think it’s about time for another Jack Kerouac.”

This was starting to sound like a hype pitch. I was playing it cool, even though my brother, whom I had brought with me to keep me calm, couldn’t stop exploding beside me in his excitement. Trying to shush him, I waited for Roy to bait me into his trap.

“I guarantee you that if you keep going – I don’t know if it’ll take 1, 2, 5 or 10 years – but with the talent you have, you’ll be on late night talk shows, performing in Carnegie Hall, and traveling around the world,” Roy stated flatly. “I want you to come perform for some of my seminars. A bunch of radio people come to them, and I want to start exposing you to them – you know, see what happens. Let’s shoot some video and get you to record a CD at our studios. You can use whatever resources I have.”

No catch? No contract to give him half of whatever I earned for the rest of my life, like Elvis & Colonel Parker, one of the stories he’d told me? This guy was too good to be true.

He had told me how he’d gotten the entire student government elected in high school so that he could use their class money to install a state-of-the-art radio station in the cafeteria. He talked about well-known artists he’d made rich, political elections he’d help win, business owners he’d made fabulously wealthy, and radio guys he’d spurned due to their dishonesty. Everything in his demeanor told me not to trust him, to watch out for his secret agenda to control me and use me until I had no more purpose for him. But I couldn’t deny his generosity and past results. He had to be one of the scariest people on the planet.

My excited brother started working as Roy’s audio engineer, and I started performing at Wizard Academy for Roy’s seminars. Pretty soon, I made plans to record my first CD. “You should never publish a book of your poetry,” Roy had told me. I knew he was right, since my poems had been rejected for poetry festival anthologies, while my performances had won me money and gotten me gigs. I scheduled a week of vacation time in May 2001 to start sharing my passion with the world.