Lucinda's
tour is now over. Before covering the last portion, I will share
with you the articles & reviews of a special post-tour evening in Fayetteville,
Arkansas. Lucinda & her father, poet Miller Williams, did a "tandem
gig" to benefit the local library.
Posted
on Sunday, October 9, 2005
Arkansas Democrat Gazette
FAYETTEVILLE — Lucinda Williams is musician and songwriter, a poet who works in words and music. She was born into a creative world, with her poet father and pianist mother.
On Tuesday, for the first time in Fayetteville, she’ll share the Walton Arts Center stage with her dad, Miller Williams. They’ll perform "Poetry Sung ... Poetry Said," a show they’ve done in other cities.
Lucinda and her band just finished their tour, which started in June, with a Wednesday show in Baltimore. On Friday, Miller planned to join Lucinda in Norfolk, Va., for a "tandem gig," as he calls it. Then, they were to ride her tour bus to Fayetteville, where he has lived for some 30 years.
Her guitarist, Doug Pettibone, will join them for the show here. Lucinda doesn’t play guitar on some of her songs now. "It kind of frees me up a little bit," says Lucinda, 52, speaking by phone before a recent Chicago show.
For the show, they’ll take turns singing and reading their works, mixing in comments that elicit "a nod or a laugh." She compares it to a songwriters "in the round" format, in which each performer presents a song with some comments about it. The fun part has been selecting songs that fit the nature of her dad’s poems, she says. "We try to plan it out as much as we can, but we like things to be spontaneous at the same time," she says.
One of Miller’s poems is particularly appropriate for the Fayetteville show, but he’ll wait until that night to reveal exactly how. But Miller says this much: "When [Lucinda] was 5 years old, she gave me the closing line."
Miller, an Arkansas native who has written, edited or translated 30 books, was the official poet for President Clinton’s 1997 inauguration. His first novel, The Lives of Kelvin Fletcher: Stories Mostly Short, was published in 2002.
Lucinda’s three Grammy awards came in three categories: country, folk and rock. That reflects her early influences of Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Cream, the Rolling Stones, the Byrds and Robert Johnson. At first, she covered songs that widely varied in style. When she started writing her own songs, they also fell into different categories. "It never occurred to me to pick one style of music," she says.
Lucinda’s songwriting ability and style come from being reared in a poet’s house. She’d grown up with her father’s group of friends, like Flannery O’Connor.
Lucinda says her lyrics "owe a lot to poetry," but that poems and songs are different beasts. Her dad once gave her some of his poems to put to music. The rhyme and meter were different, and it just didn’t work.
For Lucinda, writing music is partly therapeutic, something she has recently named "journalistic songwriting." Her dad told her she didn’t need to keep a journal because she does that with her songs.
Father and daughter write about similar themes, regular everyday life. "If you know his writing, and understand Southern literature, you would understand why I write about the things I write about," she says. "For me and the world I grew up in and what I was exposed to — my dad’s work and other Southern writers — it all just makes sense.... It never occurred to me that because I’m a songwriter it should be any different."
It took a while for the music industry to recognize her because her music didn’t fit into one genre, making her hard to market. "That’s why I’m such a late bloomer," she says.
Live @ the Fillmore (2005) is her eighth album in 26 years, since Rambling on My Mind in 1979. She wasn’t able to fit everything she wanted on the live album, her first. "It’s hard to make a good live record," she says. "I had to pick the songs that I thought fit on there, and the songs that came out." "Lake Charles" and "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" are missing because they just didn’t turn out well. That frustrates her, but she has plenty of time and material to make other volumes of live recordings. "We can put out another one later," she says.
Lucinda also has 24 new songs that run the gamut of styles. She has never before had that many songs written, ready to record. One of them, "Jailhouse Tears," started with the line: "I’m crying jailhouse tears." She took this image that intrigued her and created a traditional-style country song that’s like a duet, "a conversation between two people."
She has been trying out the new songs on audiences in recent months, assessing the response and what needs to be reworked. "When you go out on the road, that’s part of the process," she says.
She and the band made rough mixes of the songs before leaving on their tour, and they’ll go back into the studio in April with another producer to finish it. They’ll record at Sweet Tea Studio in Oxford, Miss., with Dennis Herring, who produced the last Elvis Costello album, The Delivery Man, on which Lucinda sang.
Lucinda won’t release all the songs at once — probably half on one CD and half on another. The first CD will be released next year, possibly in the fall.
The Fayetteville library collection includes two of Lucinda’s CDs. And it also has a book called Shout, Sister, Shout!: Ten Girl Singers Who Shaped a Century, which lists Lucinda with Ethel Merman, Judy Garland, Joan Baez, Bette Midler and Madonna. From the feedback at shows and fan mail, Lucinda is starting to realize she’s a role model for young girls — possibly the next generation of singer-songwriters. "It’s come to my attention that I am. You’re not aware of that yourself. People tell me that," she says.
Though influenced by Hank Williams and Dylan, Lucinda had many female musical role models: Baez, Loretta Lynn, Bobbie Gentry, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary. She’s flattered to be considered one herself. "I’m old enough now. I forget sometimes," she says. "I’m in that league now.... There’s already been a whole new generation of girls with guitars learning from my music, and I’m sure from other artists, too."
She recalls a woman bringing her maybe 8-year-old daughter to a recent show, where she sang the f-word in a song lyric. She apologized, but realized the woman had purposely brought her daughter to hear her songs. "That made me feel really important. I thought, ‘ Wow, I have a real responsibility here, ’" she says.
Father and daughter say no poetry or songs have yet come from the recent hurricane damage to New Orleans and Louisiana. Those things have to sit for a while, they agree. Lucinda was born in Lake Charles, grew up in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and played music early on in New Orleans bars.
Lucinda’s mother, divorced from her dad in the daughter’s teen years, died in March 2004. Lucinda’s still dealing with that, and, "now, the city that she was from is gone," she says. "There has just been a lot of loss over the last year or so," she says.
She’s touring with a Lafayette, La., native, CC Adcock. During several shows, she also collected donations to the American Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity. "I’m playing my Louisiana songs. It’s really helping other people deal with it, too," she says.
Lucinda says she thinks people need an outlet during crises, like when Woody Guthrie sang songs in Great Depression days. "It seems like the harder things are, the more people need music and the arts," she says. "I kind of feel like I’m a modern-day traveling troubadour out here helping people deal with things."
Lucinda lives in Los Angeles now, but says she could live about anywhere and do her job. She attended two semesters at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville when her dad first moved here in the early 1970s, and she has always considered Fayetteville and New Orleans her two homes.
From his Fayetteville home, Miller, now 75, recalls when Lucinda sent him the songs for World Without Tears (2003). He told her: "Lu, I don’t have any suggestions," and that they were as close to poetry as she has gotten. "Does that mean I’ve graduated?" she asked him.
He says he supposes it does. "It’s sort of been an apprenticeship. I’ve always looked to him as sort of a mentor," Lucinda says.
She says he always encouraged her to work at the craft, to avoid cliches and to seek input from others. "He really taught me a lot about the economics of writing ... just knowing what words to use when, and how to state things eloquently and simply, and interesting ways to say things," she says.
In her songs, Lucinda takes ordinary people doing ordinary things "and makes those moments extraordinary," her dad says. "She’s always insisted on keeping it simple," he says. Lucinda would like to get into producing records, "when I’m too old to tour, whenever that is," she says. It won’t be anytime soon, though. She’d also like to try writing short stories. Fellow musician Rosanne Cash asked the songwriter to write a story based on one of her songs, for a story collection Cash was putting together. She was going to try it with "Pineola" or "The Night’s Too Long," but couldn’t do it. "You would think it would just be like rolling off a log," she says. "It’s a whole ’nother thing."
As Miller flips through a small cardboard box of letter-size papers and newspaper clippings, he finds a review from the Austin American-Statesman. A complete archive of press coverage of his daughter is in a room downstairs. He keeps in touch with her mostly by phone, and says they’re also best friends.
With her growing fame, their public relationship has also evolved. But he doesn’t mind. "She used to be known as my daughter," he says. "Now, I’m known as her father." SPECIAL EVENT "Poetry Sung... Poetry
Said" Featured performers: Lucinda and Miller Williams 7 p.m. Tuesday, Walton Arts Center, 495 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville Admission: $100, $50 and $35 (479) 443-5600 www.waltonartscenter.org
Later, when Miller put his 5-year-old daughter to bed, she asked to go check on the caterpillar. They found it floating in the water, dead.
After tucking her in and offering a comforting "Honey, they don't live very long," Miller turned to leave Lucinda's room. That was when she gave him the closing line to a poem he had not known he would write:
"I think he thought he was going in a straight line."
Today Miller Williams, an internationally known poet and former University of Arkansas professor of 30 years, uses the story behind "The Caterpillar" to illustrate how to end a poem properly.
"The poet moves forward, and at the end, he turns around and looks back. He changes from the concrete to the abstract to sum up the situation," he explained. "You want every reader to say at the end, 'That poem was about me.'"
And so the simple caterpillar undergoes a metamorphosis, emerging not as a butterfly but a metaphor.
"All poems are about people," Williams said. "All people think they're going in a straight line sometime when they're really going in circles."
That was perhaps the first time Lucinda, now a three-time Grammy winner, helped her father with a poem, but it wasn't the last. They will celebrate their shared love for words on Tuesday when they perform "Poetry Sung É Poetry Said" at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville.
Sponsored by Friends of the Fayetteville Public Library, the event commemorates the first anniversary of the new library's opening. Proceeds from ticket sales will benefit FPL children's activities and programs.
It will be the eighth time the duo have done the show, which begins with a poem followed by a song, then another poem and so forth. The vibe is casual and spontaneous, Williams said, with neither he nor Lucinda knowing what the other has chosen to perform.
"We also go back and forth chatting in a way that includes the audience," he said. "It's like a big living room."
They have performed the program in Chicago, Dallas, Memphis, Tenn., and Pittsburgh, where it was taped and aired on National Public Radio. But, true to its mood, it began with the pair entertaining friends in the family's living room.
"Lucinda knew from the time she could talk that she wanted to be a musician," Williams said. "At about 7 or 8, she started to write poems like her dad and then began to sing them."
In 1979, Lucinda released her first album, "Ramblin' on My Mind," a collection of traditional blues, country, folk and Cajun songs. Her follow-up, 1980's "Happy Woman Blues," was her first album of original songs.
She has since produced six more, the most recent being this year's career-spanning "Live at the Fillmore," recorded at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium.
Her compositions have been covered by such artists as Patty Loveless, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Emmylou Harris and Tom Petty, and she was profiled in The New Yorker in 2000.
Williams denies that Lucinda's musical prowess came from him. Although he played clarinet and saxophone in his high school band, he refuses to sing in front of anyone but Sister, his Shih Tzu.
Originally from Hoxie, Williams taught
at universities in Louisiana,
Chile and Mexico before arriving at the
UA in 1973.
He is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Prix de Rome in 1976 and The Poets' Prize in 1990. He was also named one of the 20th century's 500 most important poets in the world by an international board of teachers, librarians and writers for Roth Publishing Co.'s "Poetry of Our Time."
The majority of Williams' work is what he calls spontaneous poetry, which begins with an image and takes off in its own direction, he said. However, he has been called upon four times to write occasional poems: Jimmy Carter's homecoming in 1980 after his re-election defeat, J. William Fulbright's 1995 funeral, Bill Clinton's 1997 presidential inauguration and a ceremony dedicating FPL's new building in 2004.
Williams is at work on another book of poetry, though he doesn't yet have a time frame for its publication.
'POETRY SUNG, POETRY SAID'
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Walton Arts Center, 495 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville
Tickets: $35/$50/$100, available at the WAC box office, by calling 443-5600 or visiting www.waltonartscenter.org
They shared the Walton Arts Center stage Tuesday night : He read his works from behind a podium and she sat on a stool with her guitar. For nearly two hours, the crowd alternately chuckled and sat in thoughtful silence as the Williamses wowed them with their talents as wordsmiths.
Hearing them together makes understanding them alone even simpler.
The show was stripped down musically, with just Lucinda on guitar and Doug Pettibone, guitarist from her band, backing her up. Flipping through her binder of song lyrics, she chose a tune appropriate to the poetry just recited.
Lucinda seemed comfortable and at ease from the start, opening with “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” highlighting her strong voice with a unique edge.
Father and daughter both filter their lives through poetry and songs. They grapple with issues big and small, refining them to lines of words. Using vivid imagery, their phrases and meanings leave listeners that much more able to relate to one another.
Miller read “A Poem for Emily,” which is most often included in anthologies. Though it sounds as if he’s speaking to his newborn granddaughter, the poem truly arrived “five yellow legal pads and six months later.” It’s a powerful poem about the hope and promise a new life holds ; a grandfather’s love can’t be any better understood or expressed than he did in those lines.
Working with a theme of observing, Lucinda followed with “Pineola” — “a song based on a true story, as they all are.” She changed the religion from Catholic to Pentecostal, because “it seemed to fit the song better,” and based it on a poet’s suicide that happened in Fayetteville when she lived here in the 1970 s.
In that pairing of works, Miller and Lucinda Williams spoke volumes about birth and death, and things in between.
Lucinda dedicated “Crescent City” to victims of recent hurricanes in Louisiana, where she grew up. Then, Miller went into another witty, poignant poem called “Ruby Tells All.” Lucinda called it one of her favorites, “such a short story.” Then, her aching sound cut through the words to a deeper meaning in “The Night’s Too Long.”
Miller recited his poetry with the inflection, tone and pacing he intended. With articulate delivery and his slightly gravelly voice, his words came alive and lingered in one’s mind long after he finished.
The love and admiration was obvious between this pair as they celebrated the talent they share and success achieved in their respective 75 and 52 years.
Most impressive were four new songs from Lucinda. “Jailhouse Tears” was a nice countrystyle duet, and “The Knowing,” a slow, smooth, love song, also is the title of her next album.
“What If” was an intriguing combination of whimsical lyrics and beautiful melody. Its intent was reminiscent of John Lennon’s “Imagine” but more lighthearted, with lyrics like : “If cats walked on water and birds had bank accounts, if we loved one another in equal amounts.”
“Adjusting to the Light” was Miller’s humorous take on what might have been said after the biblical Lazarus awoke from the dead.
Several times, Lucinda pumped her fists in the air showing enthusiastic respect for her father’s writing.
At one point, he reciprocated his admiration, saying, “It’s just a matter of raising your daughter right.”
The funky groove of “Joy” was hypnotic, Lucinda’s voice filled with attitude. Her voice was both strong and soft, and continually entranching, on “Blue.”
For the final song, she put aside her guitar and sang “Get Right With God,” asking the audience to sing along with the hip-shaking spiritual.
Staff columnist Mike Masterson is the former editor of three Arkansas daily newspapers.
And so one starts to doubt the market for poetry.
With poetry out of steady work, it goes underground and hustles. It sets up shop in the back rooms of respectable establishments like massage parlors and check cashing stands. You hurry past a pack of rough-looking boys in the street and maybe catch a whiff of its illicit sticky scent. Maybe you smile and remember the days when you might have been one of those boys—louche, with doom in your blood. But these days you’re into Thomas Friedman or the Fox News bunch. You have a mortgage and little enough time for books that don’t teach you how to improve yourself.
You could look at what’s happening down there in another way. It’s the kind of “cultural event” that occurs every few weeks or so in our college towns. The kindly old professor and his folksinger daughter are giving a show to benefit the new library. How nice for us, how good of them. (And how good of us to buy the tickets. ) Or you, you cynic. You could say that it’s my friend and his daughter, a little domestic dance of the fairies. You could accuse me of wasting valuable newspaper real estate on a concert that doesn’t matter to you and besides has already taken place. I don’t know what to say. Except that you should have been there.
One of the pitfalls of being a newspaper columnist in a place like Arkansas is you sometimes tend to forget that not everybody has been a party to the ongoing conversation. (Somebody the other day thought to ask me when I was ever going to get around to writing about Buddy Holly. I thought I’d exhausted that field, but perhaps it’s fallowed long enough. ) So I should say here—again, and not for the last time—that the poet Miller Williams is more like family than friend to me. We are close. And while I do not really know his daughter, I have met her on a number of occasions and I believe Lucinda Williams is among a handful of genuinely great American singers. I would put her in the first rank—among names she would never invoke on her own behalf. Hank Williams comes to mind, but so does Sinatra, and Nina Simone. And Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash and Bessie Smith and Bruce Springsteen. And Elvis. Sometimes it feels like too much, and like Bob Christgau did in his Rolling Stone review of one of her albums, I feel the temptation to dock her one-half star for simply being alive and in our midst, for being so obviously human (and therefore capable of error and misjudgment ). But who would I go to on the night my life was wrecked, my house burned and my loved ones carried away ? Either Lu or Robert Johnson.
I was her fan before I ever met her father.
All of which would tend to disqualify me, by the conventions of journalism, from reviewing this show, “Poetry Sung... Poetry Said,” which is going on down there on the stage of the Walton Arts Center. Fair enough, this isn’t a review but something like a prayer of thanksgiving, for it is good to be reminded now and again of what fine things our kind can produce.
So I will not waste your time with my observations about the chromatics of love or the way happiness manifests itself in a certain incandescence about the cheekbones or the way the right word in the right place at the right time can raise your heart six inches in your chest. I’ll just say that Lu sang great, that she’s never sounded better, and Doug Pettibone accompanied her on guitar with the particular precision and empathy of a witchy familiar. And that light like tongues of fire danced above their heads.
Yet, while the music was as excellent as expected, in the end this was Miller’s night. It had to be—it was his town, his daughter, his colleagues and students and his crowd. And his ungaudy language, which he’d passed on to Lucinda—plain word after plain word, pulled from stacks of yellow legal pads, scratched out with an archaic fountain pen, mined from an imagination as deep and humane as Lincoln’s. He is a clever old coot. A charmer. A poet. His DNA was all over the stage, the hall and I think—I hope—he knew it. There was one poem he read I didn’t know. And so I asked him about it later (it’s my column, I am able to ferry back and forth across time and tenses ). Turns out it is a new poem, to be published in his next collection. It is called “Helping a Lady of Eleven Get Her Lessons,” and the fourth strophe begins : So now she wants to know what it would cost to make things right. I tell her, honey we’ve tossed the question back and forth from time to time, but to make things right, you have to know they’re not. It may be that the work of the artist is to make us finer people, more attuned to the commonalities of our species than our superficial differences. It may be that people like Miller and Lucinda Williams exist to coax us toward our better selves, toward the day when we might find poetry in the newspaper.
pmartin@arkansasonline. com
Southern
discomfort
Digging the roots
of Lucinda Williams and Shelby Lynne
BY
FRANKLIN SOULTS
Boston Phoenix - July 8-14, 2005
Lucinda Williams’s Live @ the
Fillmore (Lost Highway) and Shelby Lynne’s Suit Yourself (Capitol)
are crisp, attractive major-label releases by major-name artists who stretch
the definition of country farther than any radical alt-country artist on
indies Bloodshot or Sugar Hill. Although both albums have some pedal steel
and mandolin, neither twangs much — their spare arrangements center on
acoustic or electric guitar. Williams’s nearly two-hour double CD was recorded
on two nights at the end of her 2003 tour with her ace three-piece back-up,
and all but four of its 22 tracks come from her previous two albums, Essence
and World Without Tears (both on Lost Highway), the former a
woozy dose of singer-songwriter folk, the latter a piercing, groove-oriented
rock shot. Lynne’s 12-song album alternates between modified home demos
and a five-piece studio band featuring two rock-minded musicians, Tom Petty
and the Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench and former Wallflowers
guitarist Michael Ward. Lynne produced it all on analog equipment, and
when I ask her about the new albums she was listening to, she mentions
only the White Stripes’ alt-everything home recording, Get Behind Me
Satan.
Both discs are being hailed by fans whose attitudes toward country otherwise range from distrust to disdain. (One blogger describes himself as a "vehement anti-country listener.") Even so, I suspect that the image these albums will shore up is so traditional, it might make even Bloodshot and Sugar Hill devotees blush: the tough, sexy female country singer whose bitchy persona and DIY career are shot through with vulnerability and self-destructive impulses. (Think Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn.) It’s an image that the best Nashville music has been moving beyond at least since Lynn’s 1973 smash "The Pill." Or maybe I just mean that Nashville has been covering up
Williams, who plays the Opera House on July 12, and Lynne, who headlines the Paradise on the 17th, arrived at this traditional image by paths as different as two Southern anti-belles could take. Born 52 years ago in Louisiana, Williams grew up in a household kept on the move by her dad’s temporary teaching positions. In 1969, she started to wander on her own, venturing into Austin’s roots-music scene after being expelled from high school for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Raised in Alabama, the young Shelby Lynne Moorer had it far harder: she and her younger sister, Allison (now also a successful singer), witnessed their alcoholic father shoot their mother to death in the family driveway before killing himself. About a year later, Shelby landed a deal in Nashville.
"I was doing mainstream country crap," she says on the phone from home. "And I was 18 years old, 19 years old, 20; I wanted a hit. It was not until I was like 4000 that I figured out: ‘Fuck the hit, make a great album, it’s the only way you’re going to survive.’ " That’s when the hit came. After a dozen years in Nashville, Lynne moved back to Alabama and released 2000’s Grammy-winning I Am Shelby Lynne (Island), a Dusty Springfield–like Southern Gothic masterpiece. But it proved nothing more than a rest stop as she went on to 2002’s widely disdained pop move, Love Shelby (Island), and then 2003’s Identity Crisis, a self-produced debut for Capitol whose musical eclecticism could seem formulaic and whose oddball lyrics often sounded sloppy. Lucinda Williams has never released a weak album, yet her career has been equally tumultuous, marked by strife with labels and fellow musicians and by a legendary perfectionism that’s limited her to seven studio releases in the past quarter-century.
At this point, the two artists settle down only to shore up their unsettled personas. Lynne’s opening "Go with It" sets the loose, spontaneous mood with its studio chatter, simple groove, and mantra-like chorus: "You do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it/Just let go." That philosophy almost guarantees that Suit Yourself won’t be another I Am Shelby Lynne, but the impromptu spirit and the spare arrangements also focus Lynne on the moment and help her recapture the melancholy of her masterpiece in a lighter shade of gray. "I Cry Everyday" and "I Won’t Die Alone" sway lightly on a blue groove. "You’re the Man" and "Johnny and June" capture the immediacy of her outrage and sorrow as she hears the news of a chemical plant’s indifference and a legend’s passing. And the craft in the two tunes by Tony Joe White ground the disc just when it starts to drift.
Williams’s Live@ the Fillmore is even better. Building from the folk-country melancholy of Essence through the freewheeling jams of World Without Sorrow, it’s worth the price just for its balance between execution and passion, for the way it summarizes a catalogue while painting a portrait of an artist living in the moment. Williams isn’t a natural performer like Lynne, but where she was once tentative, her shows have over the past few years become unpredictable and impassioned, and here she balances restraint — minimum crowd noise, almost no patter — with a willingness to let her vocals fray and her band unwind. Both Williams and Lynne emerge as Southern artists who have willingly and gracefully surrendered to their romanticism, defining Southernness as a life haunted by the past as it wanders far from home. That might be the definition of all American music.
Lucinda Williams | Opera House, 539 Washington St, Boston | July 12 | 617.228.6000
Shelby Lynne | Paradise, 967 Comm Ave, Boston | July 17 | 617.228.6000
After appearing at The Opera House in Boston, Lucinda played at the Beacon Theater in New York City.
By Claudia Perry
-- New
Jersey Star Ledger - August 5, 2005
Williams unveiled the first new song of the set three tunes into things. "Learning How to Live" is sharply focused on the singer's journey to wholeness. At her best, Williams is poetic, sensual and hesitant to give in to carnal or intellectual abandon. This song captured all that and then some.
Her excitement about the new songs -- she performed five during the course of the show -- was fueled by the audience's enthusiastic response. "What If," a song she described as being political and spiritual, was a series of mad hypotheses of a world turned upside down. Like the most lasting statements of this type, it said everything it needed to without bogging down in specific indignities.
It's not as though Williams dutifully slogged through her old favorites. "Drunken Angel" sounded more harrowing and pleading than ever. The ode to her friend songwriter Blaze Foley, who was shot to death in Austin some years back, was amazing. This was due in no small part to her phenomenal band -- guitarist Doug Pettibone, bassist Taras Prodaniuk on bass and Jim Christie on drums and percussion. She's calling them "The Love Band," and it fits.
Another revelation was her nearly syncopated version of "Righteously." Williams' drawled vocals nailed the intoxicating properties of sexual heat. This was a performance that delivered goose bumps and soft murmurs of recognition.
Oh yeah. Costello wasn't too terrible either. He joined Williams for an exuberant version of "Changed the Locks," which was followed by another new song, "Come On," a kiss-off to an inept lover. Costello wasn't part of that one. However, if you are well-schooled in his catalog of venomous love songs, you know the mood.
Costello returned after "Knowing" for the final song of the night, a duet on "Jailhouse Tears." According to our sources in Williams' camp, Costello had only heard the song five minutes before going onstage to sing it in the encore. You would have never known.
There was nothing to dislike about the show. Even Williams' between-song comments, which have veered into the surreal on a few occasions, were interesting. She gave shout-outs to many of her friends in attendance -- people who had let her crash in their East Village apartments, steered her to gigs in the folk clubs here. It was a wonderful way to remind the crowd how generosity of spirit can help creative people pursue their craft.
It was great to see Williams enjoy herself, awash in inspiration and backed by a group of sublime musicians. A lot of fans may buy into the idea that depression and misery makes the best art. Williams is happy and we know it. Prepare to clap your hands.
Lucinda
had scheduled a European tour for the last two weeks of July in Amsterdam,
Scotland & various stops in England. The tour was cancelled due
to the subway terrorism in London & will be rescheduled at a future
time. On August 3rd Lucinda & her band appeared on the David Letterman
TV show where Lu sang "Changed The Locks." The U.S. tour continued
in August with gigs in Philadelphia & New Jersey. The show on
August 7th at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. was broadcast live online
by NPR. Next were shows in Raleigh & Atlanta, where this pre-gig
article appeared:
SOUND CHECK:
MIX TAPE: LUCINDA WILLIAMS: Songs full of hurtin', lovin'
Shane Harrison -
Staff - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, August
11, 2005
IN A CAREER that spans 25 years, Lucinda Williams has released only six albums of (mostly) original material. The notoriously meticulous Louisiana-born singer-songwriter has been a tad more prolific in recent years, but she's already got a catalog that's notable for its quality and consistency. Her distinctive drawl and the grit-and-grime detail of her songs have made critics weak in the knees for years. Apparently, her fans feel the same since her Botanical Garden show tonight is sold out. But if you want to get a taste from all of her releases, these are the tunes we'd pick.
1. "Greenville" --- Williams uses one of her prettiest tunes to tell a bad-tempered ex to "go on back to Greenville."
2. "Passionate Kisses" --- This one's better known from the hit version recorded by Mary Chapin Carpenter, and that killer chorus will ensure that this tune will be covered by many more artists in years to come.
3. "Righteously" --- One of her grittiest rockers is also among the most sensual songs she's ever recorded. The sexy Southern sultriness of her voice is awe-inspiring.
4. "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" --- Williams rides on a Southern groove as Hank and Loretta drift from the radio, a screen door slams and the gravel crunches beneath the tires.
5. "Side of the Road" --- A yearning fiddle drifts atop this plea for space and solitude that also seems like an affirmation of love.
6. "Essence" --- A slow-burning tale of romantic obsession from her quietest album, "Essence."
7. "Lafayette" --- A love letter to Louisiana with shout-outs to everything from gumbo to zydeco pioneer Clifton Chenier. (Also check out "Lake Charles.")
8. "Changed the Locks" --- A bluesy kiss-off in which the narrator changes everything, down to the tracks under the train, to get away from a lover that still inspires an unhealthy attraction.
9. "Sweet Old World" --- Death, especially suicide, haunts the album "Sweet Old World." In the title track, the pain is soothed by the gorgeous melody and Williams' gentle delivery.
10. "Little Angel, Little Brother" --- A sad, sweet tale of a life that took a wrong turn. This tragic tune earns its tears without a hint of schmaltz.
The tour continued in Chattanooga & then Knoxville. Here is a pre-gig article from the Knoxville News:
Lucinda Williams, the 'scrupulous' songwriter
Lucinda Williams isn't a perfectionist, but that doesn't mean she doesn't want everything just right.
Few modern singer-songwriters are as revered as Williams. Until the late 1990s, Williams was sort of an underground legend. A handful of small-label albums and EPs put her name on the lips of critics and songwriting peers. Emmylou Harris and Tom Petty both recorded her songs. Mary Chapin Carpenter took Williams' song "Passionate Kisses" to the top of the country charts in 1993.
In 1998, Williams released the album "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," which topped critics' best-of-the-year lists and earned respectable sales. It was at that point that Williams' cultish fan base burst into the mainstream.
"It surprises me that that record stands out so much for people," says Williams. "I've tried to analyze it. Maybe there are more narrative songs on there."
It was also the disc that earned Williams the "perfectionist" tag. She had recorded the entire album, but then liked the sound of a duet she had done with Steve Earle so much that she rerecorded the disc with Earle and Ray Kennedy as producers. More tweaking followed, and then the disc sat finished for a year while labels angled for the rights to release it.
While Williams is always conscious of the sound she wants, it is the songs themselves that are the core of her appeal. Although eloquently written, they seem more raw and true than those of most modern songwriters. Songs about love affairs are blushingly frank. And, like the songs of Leonard Cohen, Williams' songs blur the many meanings of the word "passion."
"Art is supposed to be about self-expression," says Williams. "The seeds of that are my emotions. It's almost like journaling for me. The more sensitive it is, the better it's going to be. I try not to censor myself. I can't let that get in the way. I look at it as therapeutic. It seems like now a lot of people have forgotten what it means to be an artist."
Williams learned about art early. Her father, Miller Williams, is a poet and college professor. Her mother, Lucille Morgan, who died in 2004, was a pianist.
As her father took different teaching jobs, Williams moved frequently during her childhood. One constant, though, was music. She remembers her father taking her to see blues singer Pearly Brown perform on a street corner.
"My dad took me to see him when I was about 6 years old," says Williams. "He was playing on the streets of Macon, and he put out an album - it was just very real and raw."
Brown made an impression on Williams. When Williams recorded "The Great Speckled Bird" for her first album, "Rambler," in 1979, it was based on Brown's version. However, Williams says she knew being simply an interpreter of songs was not her path.
"I never felt real confident about my voice," she says. "That's why I wrote songs. People I listened to, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, were always criticized about their singing, but they were accepted because of their songs. Early on, I decided I was gonna have to write good songs if I was going to make a go at this."
Now Williams has so many beloved songs that she was criticized for not putting more of them into her recent two-CD concert album "Live @ the Fillmore."
She admits that she wasn't sure she wanted to release the album at first, but she considers the recording a representation of 2004 concerts, not some career benchmark.
With 25 new songs already recorded in rough form, Williams is ready to move on to a new disc. However, she smarts a little from critiques of the live album by fans who may have taken Williams' reputation on for themselves.
"I saw a comment on the Web site - which I realized that I just can't look at anymore - where some guy said I had too much phlegm in my voice. Oh, you know - whatever!"
Aspen,
Colorado was the next stop, where the Aspen Times had this to say before
the show:
Tucson, Arizona was the next stop. Here is a brief pre-show article:
Published: 09.08.2005 - Arizona Star
After a show in Anaheim, California, Lu's next show was in Saratoga, California, where fans John & Nancy Griffin sent me the following:
Hey Barry --It was an amazing concert! Lucinda played many new songs (all great) and her new CD is coming out next year. For her encore, she paid tribute to Louisiana by playing "Lake Charles", "Bus To Baton Rouge" and "Crescent City." Below is a a review of the show from SF Gate, and also a photo of my wife Nancy & I with Lu after the show. Best regards, John Griffin.
Lucinda's bayou blues
The houses and people in
Williams shows
why she's a treasure
By Dan Nailen
The Salt Lake
Tribune 9/16/2005
Not many performers actually
make sense when they say a song has "music inspired by ZZ Top, and lyrics
inspired by Flannery O'Connor," but that's the breadth of experience and
curiosity that makes Lucinda Williams one of America's true treasures.
"Atonement,"
the song Williams referred to as a mix of Texas' bearded boogie-band and
the Georgia-raised author of Wise Blood, came at the close of an
often-stunning performance by Williams and her three-man band, guitarist
Doug Pettibone, bassist Taras Prodaniuk and drummer Jim Christie.
A native of
southern Louisiana who began performing publicly in New Orleans in the
early '70s, Williams deferred any mention of the hurricane-induced wreckage
of her native stomping grounds until the encore. Kingsbury Hall's pristine
acoustics inspired Williams and Co. to create the show on the fly.
"Y'all have
made us so comfortable that we're going to do a couple of new songs," Williams
said early on, after gently boiling performances of "Reason to Cry," "Over
Time" and "Those Three Days." "They weren't in the set list, but the set
list needed to be changed."
Breaking out
untested material is risky for any artist, but the move took the show to
new heights. Williams discussed her inspiration for the new songs, and
the band clearly loved playing them. "How to Live" was a mid-tempo rocker,
while "Well, Well, Well" came on as a mix of Southern gospel and Appalachian
mountain music. "Jailhouse Tears" recalled the hard-boiled honky-tonk country
of Waylon Jennings. "Knowing" was a gorgeous ballad Williams said was a
nod to the style of Sam Cooke and the Muscle Shoals soul sound.
Among the older
songs, "Still I Long for Your Kiss" absolutely killed, as did a raucous
take of "Change the Locks" and the yearning "Essence." Before the encore
that launched with "Crescent City," Williams talked about her mother, a
New Orleans native, and her death a year ago.
"I can't begin
to tell you how much my heart is breaking with what's going on in Louisiana,"
Williams said. "I haven't even begun to be able to deal with he loss of
my mother, and now I'm dealing with the loss of the city my mother grew
up in."
ouple of new songs," Williams
said early on, after gently boiling performances of "Reason to Cry," "Over
Time" and "Those Three Days." "They weren't in the set list, but the set
list needed to be changed."
Breaking out
untested material is risky for any artist, but the move took the show to
new heights. Williams discussed her inspiration for the new songs, and
the band clearly loved playing them. "How to Live" was a mid-tempo rocker,
while "Well, Well, Well" came on as a mix of Southern gospel and Appalachian
mountain music. "Jailhouse Tears" recalled the hard-boiled honky-tonk country
of Waylon Jennings. "Knowing" was a gorgeous ballad Williams said was a
nod to the style of Sam Cooke and the Muscle Shoals soul sound.
Among the older
songs, "Still I Long for Your Kiss" absolutely killed, as did a raucous
take of "Change the Locks" and the yearning "Essence." Before the encore
that launched with "Crescent City," Williams talked about her mother, a
New Orleans native, and her death a year ago.
"I can't begin
to tell you how much my heart is breaking with what's going on in Louisiana,"
Williams said. "I haven't even begun to be able to deal with he loss of
my mother, and now I'm dealing with the loss of the city my mother grew
up in."
The tour continued in Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico and Dallas, Texas. Lu then performed at the Austin City Limits Festival in Austin, Texas:
New gems from Lucinda Williams
Reports
from the Austin City Limits Festival,
Austin American-Statesman
By John Davis
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Unlike year before last, when a lyric sheet malfunction sent Lucinda Williams into a tailspin, this year’s performance by the once and perhaps future (who knows?) Austinite was blissfully free of incident. Not only did Williams look as if she were having a devil of a good time wowing the scorched crowd in front of the SBC stage, but she also treated the audience to that rarest of gems at a Lucinda show — new material.
Kicking off with deceptively downbeat back-to-back renditions of “Drunken Angel” and “Pineola,” Williams ranged across the breadth of her career, from “Crescent City” (dedicated to the victims of Hurricane Katrina) to the bleak-yet-beautiful “Out of Touch” and “Real Live Bleeding Fingers (And Broken Guitar Strings),” a song Bob Dylan wouldn’t eschew from his repertoire.
But it was the new stuff that proved enthralling. “Jailhouse Tears” revealed a rarely seen playful side of Williams the writer; a country spoof with lines like “They locked me up … you locked me out” and “I used to be a user … You’re a three-time loser,” the song might have been a throwaway, but it will be playing on the radio in your head after one listen. Her other debut, “Un-Suffer Me,” was another kettle of fish entirely. Similar in intensity though totally a polar opposite in mood to “Hot Blood,” the dirgelike blues was a nakedly raw plea for emotional rescue: “Unlock my love, undo my fear…Unlock my love and set me free,” she sang in a slightly raspy voice. It was a riveting performance that seemed to darken the sunny afternoon.
Williams’ show ended on a roller coaster peak, not a trough, however. “Get Right With God” sounded tentative when she first began performing it, but it has metamorphosed into a showstopper, with snake-handling guitar, snare-popping drums and Williams shimmying across the stage like Little Egypt, clapping hands and flashing her horse-laugh grin. Hey, even blues-singin’ girls just wanna have fun.
The next
two shows scheduled for Corpus Christi, Texas & Lafayette, Louisiana
were cancelled due to the hurricane. Nashville, Tennessee was the
next stop.
Thursday, 09/22/05 - The
Tennessean.- Nashville, TN
Wildcard: Lucinda
Williams
Millions of stories evolve each day from the singular event known as Hurricane Katrina.
Lives have been shattered, some to be rebuilt, but all forever changed, and most of the stories never will be told.
Lucinda Williams has long been a storyteller versed in the chronicling of human suffering, and surely someday she will ruminate on the destruction visited upon her home state. But not quite yet.
"I can't begin to tell you how much my heart is breaking with what's going on in Louisiana," Williams told an audience in Salt Lake City late last week. "I haven't even begun to be able to deal with the loss of my mother (who passed away last year), and now I'm dealing with the loss of the city my mother grew up in."
Williams' show this week at Ryman Auditorium also will serve as a donation point for the American Red Cross. It's one thing Williams can do as an artist to keep the recovery effort in the spotlight until she inevitably puts pen to paper to remind us of some of these untold stories.— Lucas Hendrickson
Lucinda Williams performs at 7:30pm Tue., Sep. 27, at Ryman Auditorium, 116 Fifth Ave. N. Tickets are $27.50-$37.50, available through Ticketmaster.
Next stop was Louisville. This critic was mean-spirited when he dissed Lu's newer songs, despite his upbeat review overall.
Friday, September 30, 2005
By Jeffrey Lee Puckett
Louisville Courier-Journal Critic
Maybe that doesn't sound like a big deal to a generation raised on pyrotechnics, but for Williams it's roughly equivalent to KISS setting an entire stadium on fire and throwing screaming roadies into the flaming pit.
This, after all, is a woman whose big rock 'n' roll move used to be blinking once or twice - and the first time she played Louisville, at the Phoenix Hill Tavern more than a decade ago, she didn't even do that.
Everything about Williams is looser and more carefree these days, including, unfortunately, her songwriting.
The five new, unrecorded songs she performed Thursday night comprised more than a quarter of her set, and only "Where Is My Love" offered any real surprise or wonder. A torch song filled with plain-spoken imagery, it was a potent combination of Dinah Washington and Tammy Wynette. Williams wrang it dry.
But the others came off as limp echoes of older songs, only not as finely detailed or painstakingly crafted. Toss in a couple of lesser recent efforts, such as "Righteously," and you have a show that hit nearly as many low notes as high.
The highs were classic Williams, however.
"Pineola" ached with a deep-blue regret, a perfect example of the singer-songwriter at her best - the lyrics have the density of poetry without the pretensions and she she sang it hard and true.
"Essence" was a sad, slow burn as was "Fruits of Our Labor." Williams was devastating on "Joy," a break-up song fueled by righteous anger and a fierce sense of entitlement. "Lake Charles" was simple, pretty and perfect. Williams closed with "Get Right With God," a rafter-shaking gospel that first inspired her to launch into a Pentacostal shimmy before climbing onto the riser. No roadies were harmed.
Opener Strays Don't Sleep, a new project fronted by songwriters Matthew Ryan and Neilson Hubbard, was an extremely nice surprise. The spare, wide-open songs had a crazy-big heart and atmosphere to burn, at times sounding like the love child of Lloyd Cole and Paul Westerberg, and culminated with the epic "Cars & History." A band to watch.
Chicago was
the next stop:
Hillbilly Williams broke out of her shell at the Vic
Monday, October 3, 2005
By Marlene Lang
Staff writer - Chicago Daily
Southtown