There aren't needles laying around the Five Points apartment. Ketchup isn't strewn across the walls and floors. It's not Sodom; it's not Gomorrah, for that matter. No art, save for the one painting of an eyeball that a Bosnian neighbor offered, even hangs on the walls.
Josh Williams isn't Ziggy Stardust, though he may be a Dr. Jekyll to a Mr. Hyde.
Williams, also known in his music as FireCamino, recently released the bold, brash, pulsating album titled FireCamino.
The line between the presence who yells, "They can't catch me because they don't know how!" bound for "wherever there's cold beer" and "a lot of whores" may be blurry, but it isn't quite Williams. For Birmingham-native, Margaret, Alabama-born Josh Williams, it's more balanced than those lyrics would have one believe. One persona is Josh; the other plays and writes the songs for FireCamino.
Williams's first response -- in a bit of side-eyed humor -- questioned if I was in the IRS. The truth is that Williams is a self-proclaimed quiet and reserved guy as well as self depreciating. FireCamino, though, is wide-open id, fast paced, daily dying, still venturing into the church parking lot to get stoned, to drink a vodka-and-Milos sweet tea, to eat a gas-station edible, "to try anything once."
"FireCamino is that wild beast I keep," Williams answers after a little give and take. It's an animal who "loves Jägermeister and whores," but Williams's life goal lies somewhere else, on a reserved duck farm. It's not the chasing of a buzz, at least not the kind in FireCamino.
But that second-hand high listeners get from the songs on FireCamino reflects that of a wilder, straightforward Conor Oberst, were Oberst Southern, outlandish, and a touch insane. It's no coincidence that Williams considers the music he makes folk rock -- and even, at times, pure rock 'n' roll in a punk, "Fuck it" vein as most "white guy folk acts are [too] pretentious" -- and it's no coincidence that Taylor Hollingsworth produced the album and features prominent throughout it.
Not saying he's a prophet/But, then again, maybe he is. (L to R: Josh Williams, Alan from Porch Talk)
Hollingsworth got his start in Birmingham and earned his way into Conor Oberst's Mystic Valley Band and the top of the music scene in the Magic City. It's in a borrowed DVD from the public library where Williams remembers Hollingsworth. "I was a big Conor Oberst fan," he recalls, "I thought it was cool [Taylor] was from [Birmingham,] but I'd never thought I'd meet him."
Williams's first response -- in a bit of side-eyed humor -- questioned if I was in the IRS.
FireCamino isn't the first record Hollingsworth produced. It's not even the first time he's done production for Josh Williams. "He came to me years ago to record his original [EP,] and he did that so fast and raw," Hollingsworth tells me, "but I wasn’t super happy with the results." Hollingsworth got honest with Williams. "I really liked him as a person and as a songwriter so I told him that if he could come up with a bit more of a budget that I would give him a really good deal and I would love to do a proper production and real record with him if he was interested." FireCamino makes them both happy, with Williams mentioning that he's "really happy to see the album doing well," even though he admits that he would "forever keep recording albums on a [fifteen-dollar RadioShack] cassette recorder." You can almost hear him shrug as he knows, "But that shit don't sell."
Taylor Hollingsworth, second from left, with Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band.
It's a friendship between the two that one may never guess when listening to the perfect mix of serious and absurd from FireCamino. It's not easy to add to the scales "Even if it's just pretend/One of us has got to die" when speaking of a lighthearted look at going to war. Still, the other side invites, "If you've ever spent your last dollar on a tall can/If you've ever told a cop to go to Hell." FireCamino -- or maybe Josh Williams -- stabilizes these ideas on one album without any song sounding out of place. Yet FireCamino maintains a punk 'n' rock swagger that provides Williams the opportunity to tell me, "I have more in common with Iggy Pop" than he does with "Woody Guthrie" as he also adds for people to please "listen to the record."
FireCamino live at the Firehouse in Birmingham, Alabama in December, 2025
A sense of place pervades the work.
"The rust off Sloss Furnaces is the iron that's in my blood," Williams claims. "[Birmingham] is as much of a muse as the people who inhabit it." It's likely those who are asking to be held while they're shaking from addiction. Or maybe it's the people around Williams who listens sensitively to Juan, the man who believes the government "is putting something in that vaccine."
Even if his tea and kettle aren't anything wild, Williams has another side.
It's good for us that he does.
Readers can hear FireCamino on all music streaming apps and sites. For more, follow FireCamino on Instagram.
