Empty beer cans and cigarette butts littered the carpet and there were holes in the walls, but it wasn't the decor the musician found troubling from his vantage point behind a well-worn drum kit.
"When I first moved out there, it kind of felt like amateur hour," Williams, a native Virginian, said about the band he traveled cross-country to be a part of. "At first I thought maybe I had made a mistake. It took three or four months to really get to where it felt like maybe there was something there."
In spite of initial misgivings, Williams stuck with The Head and the Heart for two reasons. First, his good friend and former bandmate, Jonathan Russell, was one of its founders. Second, Williams stayed because he believed in the folk-pop act's future.
"The songs were just so good," he said. "There was always something there. We were just kind of like a diamond in the rough that needed polishing-up to be presentable."
It was a rough song that spurred the musician to leave Richmond in the first place. Williams had lived in the state capital for several years and played in the band Silent Film Star with Russell.
After three years with the group, Russell announced he was moving to Seattle. The guitarist and vocalist kept in touch with Williams and one day the drummer received a package in the mail containing the demo of a song Russell had written with The Head and the Heart's co-founder, vocalist and guitarist Josiah Johnson.
"The growth in his songwriting maturity was kind of astonishing," Williams said of his former bandmate. "When we were playing together the songs were no way near the caliber of what I heard on that demo."
Soon, the drummer moved west to join his old friend.
Tonight, they return to the commonwealth for a headlining gig at Harborfest, the annual free maritime festival in Norfolk's Town Point Park.
Just months after The Head and the Heart's initial, inauspicious gathering, the sextet saw a change in its trajectory. In 2009, the group self-released its debut album, which was sold at shows and in local music stores. The disc, packaged in homemade denim sleeves was a melange of harmony-driven roots music and Beatlesesque pop.
After selling more than 10,000 copies, The Head and the Heart had become the toast of Seattle's indie folk scene and was signed to the city's seminal Sub Pop record label, which remastered and re-released the disc in 2011 to critical acclaim.
The band's sophomore album, "Let's Be Still," followed last fall. The disc found The Head and the Heart introducing new elements into its sound, perhaps in an effort to distinguish itself from the rest of the folk rock revival pack that was buzzing around the musicsphere.
"We never really were that band," said Williams of being lumped together in the press with acts like The Lumineers and Mumford and Sons.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
"I love those bands," said Williams. "If our first album had a similar vibe, a lot of that was due to the ability that we had at that time and the constraints that we had on our recording budget. We're definitely trying to break out of that thing."
As evidence, Williams points to the track "Summertime," as an example of how the band has grown. "It's got a synth-y, danceable thing going on," he said. "I think that song takes us to a place that people maybe didn't expect."
But fans of the band needn't worry that The Head and the Heart are blowing up the playbook and veering away from what got it noticed in the first place. The group's storytelling and heartfelt lyrics remain at the core of the band's music.
"I think we keep getting better at crafting deeper songs," said Williams. "And I think we've gotten really good at imbuing our performances with so much passion and energy because we really believe in the songs. We honestly are in the moment every time we play them."
