THE KELLY WILLIAMS BAND

Kelly Williams is calling from somewhere west of Columbia, one of those trucker oases with hash browns on the griddle in mid-afternoon and phones in each booth. She's there because the Kelly Williams Band van has just smacked into a truck in a snowstorm whiteout on the interstate.

This is her life now, waking up in time to have lunch along the roadside and laughing with the boys in the band about whatever the day has brought them. Only a year ago, Williams was an early-riser in charge of wellness programs for a big oil company. Now she's singing songs like "Bad Case of the Blues" on stages across the U.S., including such big-name showcases as Antone's in Austin and the Grand Emporium in Kansas City.

Perhaps only Williams, who recalls dreaming of being onstage since she was a little girl, could have foreseen such a transformation.

She grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, a high school jock devoted to fast-pitch softball. She got nowhere near the choir room. A master's degree in exercise physiology took her up the corporate ladder and off to Pennsylvania, Connecticut and finally to Atlanta.

That's where Williams began taking guitar lessons, and singing a bit in front of her guitar teacher. Everything changed the night she went to a small restaurant to hear him play. He called her onstage to help sing "Stormy Monday."

"They had to push me up there," she recalls. "I was digging in my heels."

Looking at the attitude in her picture, you know this woman wasn't meant for a desk.

Now she digs in her heels only when leaving the stage. "It feels like it's something I've always done, comfortable and familiar and natural," she says. "And it's a rush."

Comfortable, familiar and natural are words that describe Williams' voice. A whisper of Stevie Nicks and just an echo of Janis Joplin can be heard, maybe because all three hail from Texas. But most of all, Williams sounds like Kelly Williams.

Her band includes twins Doug and Don Pharris on guitar and bass, respectively, along with keyboardist Thom Mann and drummer Kingsley Paul Grant.

Their music is bluesy, certainly, but can also sound swampy, funky and even delicate at times. All the sounds the band calls "blueternative" can be found on their CD, "The Kelly Williams Band."

They can be forgiven if "Cruisin'" sounds a lot like the Allman Brothers' "Whipping Post," since every Georgia musician idolizes the supergroup. And she can be forgiven if some of her blues lyrics are a bit cliched, because other songs like "Song for Missy" and "River of Time" sound as if they sprang from her soul.

Though Williams writes most of the lyrics, keyboardist Mann says the band is very much a cooperative venture."There is a constant interchange of improvisation," said Mann, whose background was in jazz before joining the group. "Every one of use has different influences."

By now, Williams has yielded the truck-stop phone because she's been asked to define the easy "Texas attitude" critics have ascribed to her. She doesn't have an answer.

"Well, everything's bigger in Texas," Mann says.

THE KELLY WILLIAMS BAND

Where: River City Yacht Club, 19 N. Water St.

When: 9 p.m.-1 a.m. Saturday