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Retrospectively, the Scene Friday night at the Calvin Theater in Northampton was straight out of the “Chronicles of Narnia.” Outside it was a beautiful winter wonderland. Yet indoors, fans of Keller Williams and the WMD’s took shelter from the cold and celebrated the gifts of life and music.

The small yet lively crowd that made the snowy trek out to Northampton received a priceless treat. They have improved drastically since their summer touring schedule, which included the Bonnaroo Music Festival. They’ve all grown immensely close as musicians and seemed to be having a ball sharing their gifts with each other and their fans. They were all grinning in pleasure throughout the night and this was contagious as the crowd seemed to catch on from the very beginning.

The setting inside the Calvin was calm and peaceful like a blend of mango, chamomile and strawberry tea. There were some beautifully tinted curtains in the background that changed from green to purple and all the other colors of the rainbow. The high definition television screen behind the band went back and forth from showing the musicians to old-time movie footage of wackiness that only Keller and his crew could think of. The movies included dancers docey-doeing, square-dancing, twirling, waltzing and some incredible Frisbee tricks done by the mysterious Keller Williams Frisbee team.

Keller and the WMD’s proved to many dedicated fans that this new all-star group is no joke. They pleasantly blended a mix of original material with covers such as The Beatles “Dig a Pony” and Tom Petty’s “Last Dance with MaryJane” which went into “Breakdown” and back into “Last Dance.” This Petty cover has been done in the past by Keller and the Keels (Keller’s bluegrass project), but they put a rocking new twist on it that had fans singing along and getting down and dirty to the uncontrollably groovy beats. The band also played a couple of Grateful Dead tunes, one of which declaring that “The Women are Smarter.” Maybe so yet Keller Williams and the WMD’s are undoubtedly an ensemble of amazingly smart men.

“Above the Thunder” was one of the first songs played. This tune included lyrical skill, fantastical imagery and soothing rhythms that reached out and touched hearts in all directions. A Yonder Mountain String Band cover was also performed. This song was coincidently about thunder as well; yet, it had a completely different feel to it. It started off as a reworked, foot-stomping rock song and transitioned smoothly into a country, bluegrassy type tune sounding more like the original as they broke it down. This song in particular made the crowd hoot and holler uncontrollably as if we were at a 1950’s town fair in rural Kentucky.

The song “Doobie in a Pocket” was a fan favorite as Keller declared that he had a doobie in his pocket, a doobie in his suitcase and a doobie pretty much everywhere else. In “People Watchin” Keller wanted to know if you would “let me be your dog, and you could be my master” and the answer was a loud and unanimous, “hell yea!”

What makes Keller such a great musician and poet is that he can sing about the most ridiculous topics imaginable and somehow still make them sound blissful. Example, the song “Kidney in a Cooler” tells a story about Cheyenne, Wyoming. This song is about the perpendicularity of Middle America, a double decker double wide and as the songs states in its title, a “Kidney in a Cooler” that must be delivered pronto.

The exact meaning of this song is ambiguous and confusing at times, yet it somehow doesn’t matter. It’s got soul, and that’s all that really counts in the end. In the words of John Popper of the Blues Travelers, “It doesn’t matter what I say. So long as I sing with inflection. That makes you feel that I’ll convey.”

The show ended with an encore that included all four musicians sharing the drum set in order to create some vibrantly funky rhythmic beats. The drummer Jeff Sipe held down the bass drum while the others each took on their own section of the kit. Keller took the most original approach to this drum piece, filling in the empty space with intricately woven and thoughtfully paced bangs on the Toms.

Matthew Solomon can be reached at [email protected].