Will grew up in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, and was raised on eastern North Carolina bluegrass music, in the country outside of Greenville, surrounded by tobacco farms and cornfields and woods. He learned to sing and play from a young age at pig-pickin’s and bluegrass jam sessions (in North Carolina, a pig-pickin' is when you slow roast a whole pig outdoors in a pig cooker for a night and a day, throw some chickens in at the end, slather everything with a vinegar and chili pepper barbecue sauce, and invite everybody you know to stay up all night picking bluegrass). Will married a girl from western Canada, where they live now in Alberta, on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains.
Raised in the southeastern United States, Will grew up steeped in the folk music of the region. His roots span the breadth of the South, from tidewater Virginia and the Carolina low-country, across the mountains of West Virginia and Tennessee, down to the Mississippi River. His songs reflect that heritage: bluegrass, Appalachian old-time, Delta blues, gospel and country, all stirred up together, sung and played on 5-string banjo, acoustic guitar and National steel slide guitar.
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