Big Smash! Music Scene: AGILE, MOBILE, HOSTILE: A YEAR WITH ANDRE WILLIAMS

Big Smash! Music Scene presents:

Dir. Tricia Todd + Eric Matthies USA 2008

Thursday Feb. 11 - 9:00pm

at the Royal Albert Arms - 48 Albert St.

www.big-smash.com

Andre Williams has written and recorded a number of landmark hit songs and has worked with legends of the industry: Berry Gordy, Ike Turner and Stevie Wonder to name just a few. He's also struggled throughout his life with addiction, poverty, homelessness and the legal system. The doc's star says, "I'm going to show you the right way, because I've gone so many wrong ways". With this statement the man known as "Mr. Rhythm" takes us along a fascinating, funny and distressing journey. Andre doesn't always go "the right way" and this leads to tenuous relationships with friends, family and business partners, time in jail, eviction from his "old folks home" and subsequent struggle to pay for his room at the "Hotel 6" where he lives between tours. The filmmakers follow the charismatic underground recording artist through his day-to-day existence. For Andre, this could mean rehearsing for a show in Chicago, recording with Jon Spencer in Michigan, performing for enthusiastic fans in Croatia, doing a radio interview in Serbia or marching in a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans. Throughout his 72 years, Andre has never stopped driving his creative visions forward, regardless of cost or consequence. The consequences turn out to be severe as Andre's addictive history catches up with him.

Ultimately doing the right thing could be the choice between life and death for a musician who is perpetually on the cusp of newfound success.