Gaither Vocal Band guitarist to host 10th annual concert benefiting youth of his hometown

By John Herndon, KentuckySings.com

Kevin Williams just wants to give back.

He wants to give back to the town where he grew up. Give back to the community where he bought his first guitar, where he hung out with someone who would become one of the biggest names in country music and where he got his own start in gospel music.

It started as a simple dream, but one that wasn’t too big for God.

And for the last 10 years, children in Russell County, Kentucky, have been blessed by Kevin’s Kids, a program that seeks to reach those in need while bringing Williams’ hometown together for the cause.

“I had always wanted to do something to help kids like I was (helped),” Williams said in a recent Zoom interview. 

Williams will get to help kids again with the 10th Annual Kevin’s Kids concert, set for Saturday, April 27 at First Baptist Church of Russell Springs. The concert, which features acclaimed gospel singer and author Angela Primm along with Gaither Vocal Band musicians Matthew Holt and Michael Shade Rowsey, begins at 6 p.m. CDT.  A community choir and local artists Larry Beasley and Crossroads Quartet are also scheduled to be on the program.

“I grew up in a little trailer park in Russell Springs, Kentucky. It’s a beautiful place to grow up and it still is a beautiful town, a lot of wonderful people there. It’s just a perfect picture of a community to me,” the acclaimed Gaither Vocal Band guitarist said. “We didn’t have any money. I had two hard-working parents trying to make it happen, you know. We had a church family and neighbors, so if you had a need, it was taken care of somehow. 

“So the thought occurred to me one day, ‘Who is there for the kids now, like those people were there for me because the culture is so different now. It’s very polarized. We live in an isolated situation. We do what we’ve got to do but we don’t even know if there is a kid across the street in need a lot of times.”

Little did he know how God would grow a desire to impact vulnerable young people into a ministry of transforming lives.

The seed grew slowly. “I prayed about this,” Williams recalled. “I went to my friend Vernie McGaha, who is a former state senator in Kentucky. He was a gospel singer in a group called The Crossroads Quartet. They have been in music ministry going on 62 years. He was also the high school band director.

“So he had encouraged me along my journey. I went to him with this idea. I was producing a record for their quartet and I said, ‘What do you think about that?’ 

“He said, ‘I will help you pray about it.’ That is something no one else had said to me, so I said, ‘OK, let’s pray.’”

Pray they did. For about a year, they prayed asking if the simple idea could come to fruition. 

God was listening and moving. One day, Williams got a call from his third-grade music teacher, JoNell Smith. “She had kept up with me all of these years and she said, ‘How would you like to come back to your hometown and do a concert?’” he said.

And Williams broke into a huge smile. “That call was just random! It was out of the blue,” he said. “I said, ‘I would love to! And I have got an idea. Let me tell you about this.’”

While he visits his hometown frequently, Williams had been living in Nashville for 26 years. Mrs. Smith committed to helping Williams connect with some of the movers and shakers in the south-central Kentucky town of 2,500. “We met there in the latter part of 2013,” Williams remembered. “I began pouring this idea out to some community leaders, some pastors, some business people, the media and certainly to the (Russell County) school system.”

And they contacted the Family Resource and Youth Services Centers, which are run by the state and collaborate with the local school systems and communities “to promote physical and mental health for families and students as well as opportunities for families to learn together in safe environments” according to the agency’s website. 

“The infrastructure was there. The people were in place who knew the needs of the kids. They knew the families,” Williams explained. “These are good people with good hearts but they don’t have any funding to be able to do what we would like to do.

“I said, ‘Let’s have a concert. Don’t pay me any money. Take that money and put it in a pot. I said I would bring money and put it in the pot. So (for the first Kevin’s Kids concert) we set a modest goal of $10,000.”

God was thinking bigger.

“I totally underestimated God,” Williams said with a big smile. “We set that $10,000 goal and at the end of the night, at the end of the concert in 2014, we had over $20,000. We didn’t ticket it. We just said we are going to take an offering. The Chamber of Commerce said, ‘We are going to donate money. Businesses came up with money. Private individuals just came up with money. Churches were doing youth functions to send a check. It was so inspiring of what a community could be and should be.”

The response is even more amazing when one realizes that Russell County is not known for its wealth. In statistics released by Kentucky Youth Advocates last year, 31.4 percent of Russell County children live in homes with incomes below the federal poverty level. The county’s rate is significantly higher than the 22 percent of kids living in poverty statewide and ranked 89th out of 120 counties. 

From the outset, Kevin’s Kids has worked with the resource centers as the best way to provide individualized assistance. “For instance, we didn’t want to just buy coats for everybody,” Williams explained. “We didn’t want to just buy shoes for everybody. This child might need a coat while this one’s feet are coming through his shoes, so we wanted somebody who knew the individuals and knew the families. It was the best grass roots way to get into their lives.”

And that is the goal of Kevin’s kids: touch lives and make a difference.

“Whatever the situation – live with grandparents, single parents, two parents – it is not the child’s fault. He has the DNA of a winner to excel. So we wanted to help them in that effort,” Williams said.

“Every year the fund has grown. And these wonderful resource managers are doing the hands and feet of Jesus work so that they can get in the lives of these kids. When we get in their lives, we can give them an idea that can change them and say, ‘You are important, you matter. We love you with the love of a community but God loves you with the love of the heavenly father.”

Williams emphasized that the resource managers are careful to maintain family privacy to the extent that Williams does not know everyone who gets assistance from Kevin’s Kids. 

“It’s (the resource managers’) job to make home visits. And when there is a concern, usually the teacher will be the one to raise the concern and say the student is doing poorly and I think it is because of such and such.

“We get on the phone and talk a lot,” he said, “but they do the work. I have some oversight on that but I just love what they are doing. That seemed to be the best Good Samaritan way to get into the lives of kids. It has worked for 10 years and we have a great track record. I am very thankful for that.”

With a growing Kevin’s Kids fund, the program has been able to expand over time. “Now we are able to do some incredible things,” Williams said. “We have been able to do some optical stuff. Then all of this clothing. Hygiene was something I underestimated. Some kids don’t even have a toothbrush or hair brush. It’s pretty interesting once you get into it. For somebody to say, ‘Hey come here, you need a toothbrush. We are going to show you how to brush your teeth. You would think basic parenting would cover that. It is almost scary but in some families there is such a lack of parenting.”

Being in the position to impact lives is rewarding but Williams is quick to say, “It is totally a God thing. I tell everyone that. I give God all the credit and all the glory for what He is doing there in a community that allows that.

“It’s a community thing. You are looking at me but I represent a lot of people in that.”

Williams can’t hide his pride at the success of Kevin’s Kids. After all, he says friends and neighbors reached out to his family while he was growing up.

In fact, he says one well-known Russell Springs native, country music star Steve Wariner, along with his family, played a major role in Williams’ success as one of gospel’s top musicians. Wariner is about 10 years older than Williams.

“Steve was such an amazing help to me in my youth,” Williams said. “So about every Friday night or so Steve’s brother, Terry who still lives in Russell Springs, I would get together with Terry Wariner and Mike Foley and we would make some music. It was usually on a Friday. I was usually playing in a church somewhere on Saturdays and maybe in my church on Sunday. 

“Friday night was a magic night. I wasn’t out dating a girl somewhere. I had a guitar in my hand. And Steve would pop by on a lot of those occasions. I learned a lot from Steve. He was very kind to me the whole way. He was very encouraging and was everything you would hope he would be. His dad had a little music store and I bought a guitar from him. And I would go into the store on Saturdays and just sit and pick with him. I was 14.  He was great. I would go over to their house.’

Now that both live in the Nashville area, Steve Wariner and Williams live just a few miles apart.

A group based in Russell Springs, the Rock of Ages Quartet, gave Williams his start at age 14. He spent time with other local groups, The Gospel Messengers and The Joymakers before going on the road with the Blackwood Quartet in 1987. A stint with Wendy Bagwell and The Sunliters followed before getting a call from Bill Gaither in 1992. 

For 31 years, Williams has been picking guitars for the Gaither Vocal Band.  “Mr. Gaither just turned 88 and is still going strong,” said Williams, who will be 59 this year. “I have never seen anybody that does it quite like he does it. We don’t do a ton of dates now. We will do 50 to 60 days a year as opposed to 2006 when we did 120.

“I love how he has a vision of what he wants and then we work toward that. He’s a great songwriter. You know he and Mrs. Gloria have been called the Songwriters of the Century. I believe they live up to that. … I feel I have had a 30-year masterclass with him.”

Kevin Williams has been fortunate to pursue his musical passions while lifting up the name of Christ. “It’s just a dream come true for me really and I can’t wait for the next chapter to see what God does tomorrow,” he says.

Along Kevin’s journey, God used people in Russell Springs, Kentucky to make a difference in his life. Now, God uses Williams to make a difference in Russell Springs.

“I live and work in Nashville,” Williams smiled, “but my hometown is Russell Springs, Kentucky.”

Williams expects some who influenced his musical journey to be present for Kevin’s Kids 

Kevin Williams is excited about people dear to him being a part of the Kevin’s Kids concert on April 27. He expects JoNell Smith, his third-grade music teacher to be in attendance as well as Vernie McGaha, the former band director and state senator who prayed with Williams for over a year before Kevin’s Kids got started. 

He’s also thrilled that his guitar teacher, Larry Beasley, is scheduled to be on the program. Beasley played banjo for Bill Monroe and The Bluegrass Boys in the 1970s. “I get to stand beside him and do a duet. He doesn’t perform out that much,” Williams said. “He is mostly a teacher.”

Williams is also looking for Charlie Witty, who sang bass for one of the young Kevin’s favorite groups, the Servants, to sing in a community choir.

He’s also hoping that Garry Polston, who recently retired from The Noblemen due to some health concerns, is able to come. “He was in the group called The Brotherhood, which was amazing. I would go hear them sing when I was about 14-15 years old,” Williams recalled. “I would hitch a ride with someone if they were singing. And he was with The Servants. They were amazing and really good to me.

“These people are so dear to me. I talked to Garry on the phone once for about an hour-and-a-half and I told him, you will never know how you influenced this kid. I was a kid in passing but you took time. You said a kind word and you recognized something in me and took time to encourage it. That’s important to all of us.”

Kevin’s Kids

The Kevin’s Kids concert is set for Saturday, April 27  at First Baptist Church in Russell Springs. The concert starts at 6 p.m. with doors opening at 5.

On the program are Kevin Williams, gospel singer Angela Primm, Gaither Vocal Band musicians Matthew Holt and Michael Shade Rowsey, Larry Beasley and Crossroads Quartet, a veteran group from the Russell Springs area.

There is no admission charge but an offering will be received.