Some things in life aren't necessarily preordained, but it comes as no surprise whatsoever to discover that Holly Williams is a singer and writer of songs. Hank Williams's granddaughter is making her own name as a talented singer-songwriter, writes Tony Clayton-Lea.

Her grandfather was Hank Williams, a man who virtually single-handedly set the agenda for modern country music in terms of songcraft. The paralysing heartache and confessional, emotional despair you have heard in many country songs over the past several decades were blueprinted by Hank amid the blur of alcohol, drugs, marital unrest, and the crippling pain of a spinal deformity.

"Even though I have the surname of Williams," she says, "I went about forging a career for myself as anyone else in Nashville would have gone about it. I started playing gigs in any place that would book me. I didn't tell people who I was; I just played and played at any small club or acoustic room just to see if I could build up a following without people knowing my background.

"When people found out my background, it was usually after the fact; it certainly wasn't as if I was trying to get recognition for my name only. I guess the people who would have been interested in my name only would have been those that work for country music record labels; and since I wasn't doing country music, it didn't affect me." Williams is not a chip off the block. The daughter of Hank Williams Jr (himself a major country rock star in the US), she may have chosen the singer-songwriter format by which to unleash her innermost thoughts, but you know from listening to her debut album, The Ones We Never Knew, and talking to her that she hasn't come into this world with a barrel full of neuroses. (In truth, her family background was not one of on-tour childhood. Her parents separated when she was very young; her father, who went through a phase of emulating the self-destructive nature of Hank Sr, saw her intermittently and only when he wasn't touring.) Williams, therefore, reminds one more of a well-educated backpacker than a dysfunctional strolling minstrel - there is no stroppy talk, no hissy fits, no expectations of red carpet treatment. She enters Whelan's, the Dublin venue she played some weeks back, with a rucksack and a guitar, having walked from her hotel. She agrees to have her photo taken and sits down for a chat with the casualness of someone eager to engage with people, keen to get her music across.

She could, as she says, have taken the easy route and touted her surname and legacy around, but she decided to begin her career as a virtual unknown. It took about four years of constant gigging and studio time before things started to happen. She knew she didn't want to sacrifice her integrity on the altar of commerce; she loves playing her music and having the freedom to sing what she wants to sing. "So I held out for the right record label and the right atmosphere. I knew that eventually I'd find the right team; the right people to believe in me - from fans to people in the music business, management, booking agents, and so on. People that would become part of a team for me to work with."

From the beginning, Williams imparts, it was never about selling millions of records or getting into the charts. Her initial aims were simple: to see how people would react to her in a live setting, how comfortable she'd be on stage, and to continue to develop her song writing. She didn't feel restricted by Nashville, either, as she was playing in other cities - including New York and Los Angeles - and touring with the likes of Ron Sexsmith and Billy Bob Thornton.

"I could easily have gotten a country music record deal," she muses. "Along with a stylist and make-up, videos and singing other people's songs. I'd be playing at horrible fairs, I know that, but that wouldn't be nearly as fun as what I'm doing. What I do is what I love doing, whereas if you were to become this country music star - which would have been possible for me - then you sell millions of records, make a lot of money and get stuck in that box forever."

What she's doing now, she explains through the clatter of talk from people arriving at the venue, "is free, rather than the country music cookie-cutter way of having to sing certain songs and being a specific person. What I'm doing now means I can do what I want to do." Which is? "I want to write songs forever, tour the world and make enough money to enable me to do that."

People have been supportive and encouraging, says Williams; despite her surname and all that it might imply, she has experienced very little judgment or pigeonholing. "The hardest thing about it is that I'm doing the songwriting by myself and most of the shows by myself, so if I'm going to be judged then that's all on me. There are always going to be people who will judge you more and say you're not as good as this or that person. But I don't have to deal with that kind of reaction too much." There are also people, she implies, who will say that Hank was "the one", and there will be no one in his family that will come anywhere close to him. Clearly - and to her ultimate benefit - Williams is not trying to. "I knew that if I were going to be a musician I'd have to do it with my own songs, and my own voice and audience."

The Ones We Never Knew is on Universal South