Lucinda Williams
News, Reviews, & E-mail
Written & Edited by Barry Brooks
Email Barry
Visit the Lucinda Williams Resource Site.
Check out Barry's Newsletter Archives.
Photo (above) of Lucinda Williams by Barry Brooks.

 
BARRY'S NOTES - JUNE 24, 2001

Since my previous column, my wife & I were away on a Scandinavian cruise.  Now that we are back, there are lots of reviews & articles to use in this column, including many postings by fans. But I will start with a fine, well-written  article from a recent Sunday Telegraph from London that was sent to me by Angela Reynolds, a Lucinda fan in the U.K.
 

Heartache spoken here

Sunday Telegraph magazine 2 June 2001

For 30 years singer songwriter Lucinda Williams has paid her dues, overcoming professional rejection and a string of ill-fated affairs. Only now is it beginning to pay off.

By David Gritten.

‘I’m a late bloomer, I guess,' sighs Lucinda Williams, in an exquisite piece of understatement. Well, it's one explanation for the fact that widespread recognition has only recently come her way, after a career of almost 30 years as a singer-songwriter of breathtaking talent. At 48, she is just starting to reap the kind of rewards that the music industry typically bestows on artists in their mid-20s. `Hmmm, the music industry,' she says witheringly. ‘Even when I started out I had a stick- to-my-guns attitude. I was adamant I wouldn't sell out. I wouldn't be commercial or wear what people wanted me to wear. I grew up with a long history of rebels in my family. It's in my blood.'

It's in her music, too. Williams is a tough artist to categorise. Her bluesy songs carry traces of country, folk and rock, but though she lives in Nashville, her music is too abrasive to be country. It's also too gritty for the folk crowd, too contemplative to count as rock.

For years, this dogged her commercial progress. Then in 1998 Car Wheels on a Gravel Road - her collection of evocative narrative songs about death, alcohol and loss delivered in her raw, rasping voice, finally provided a breakthrough. Many music critics voted it their record of the year, comparing it with the short stories of Raymond Carver, and Southern writers such as Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It won a Grammy (in the contemporary folk category, oddly), and some 500,000 people bought it.

Car Wheels had an unnerving emotional directness. Its devotees tend not merely to like it, they love it deeply and champion it with irrational passion. Williams acknowledges its potency: ‘Still, it didn't exactly put me up there with U2,’ she says drily.

It certainly didn't. When I arrive at her home, a two-storey townhouse in a suburban development on a hill west of Nashville, she swiftly announces, ‘They're about to raise the rent by $400 a month, so I have to get out of here.' It
seems a narrow financial margin for an artist of her stature. But she shrugs it off: ‘Anywhere I've ever lived, I've always had one foot out the door.'

In truth, the townhouse's, bland, affluent exterior doesn't compute with the caustic, free-spirited persona one associates with her songs. Inside it's a different matter. Williams is obsessed with Latin-American culture and fascinated by the fringe religions of the South: Pentecostalists, snake handlers, poison drinkers, people who speak in tongues and writhe on the ground in near-orgasmic religious ecstasy. An array of gaudy Mexican crosses hang on her living-room walls, while lined up on shelves are small wooden multi-coloured shrines, inlaid with shiny stones and tiny sections of mirror. Day of the Dead artefacts feature little models of skeletons dancing, playing instruments and having fun. On a coffee table is a garish snake with scaly skin made from dozens of beer-bottle caps. In her kitchen, kitschy refrigerator magnets depict Jesus and the Virgin in Dayglo 3-D. ‘I can't stop collecting this stuff,' she confesses. 'I love the art of it.'

Williams has greeted me at the door in blouse, jeans and bare feet. Her sharp, intelligent features, suggesting a life lived to the full, are topped by an unruly blonde mop. Pencil-slim, she stands a mere five-foot four, but knows how to command a room. For two hours she talks affably, even if she can turn spiky when she feels a question contains a misperception about her. She gives the impression of a woman accustomed to fighting her corner.

Over the years, of course, that is exactly what she has done. She began singing in bars and on street corners in her hometown, New Orleans, when she was 17. In 1974, four years later, she moved to Austin, Texas, where she lived for 10 years. ‘I learnt my craft, played where I could. I was a troubadour basically, singing, playing my guitar, paying my dues.' She made two albums for the tiny Folkways label that sold in hundreds rather than thousands.
 She moved to Los Angeles in 1984. ‘Only then was I introduced to the music industry. I was so naive. I had no publishing deal, no manager, so it was a whole new world. It was really hard. Nobody knew how to market me. I fell in the cracks between country and rock. Every label sniffed around, came to see me play. But then they turned me down; all the big ones, then all the little ones. No one would touch me with a 10ft pole.

In this period she married Greg Sowders, drummer of the countryish LA band the Long Ryders: ‘He was a nice guy. But when we first met, he was always on tour. When he stayed home, that was it for the marriage.' They split after 18 months. Disillusioned, she planned her return to Texas. ‘I was tired of being seduced, then rejected.' But Robin Hurley, West Coast boss of Britain's Rough Trade records, heard a tape of her songs, phoned her and asked her to cut a record. ‘Typical,' Williams snorts. ‘All those Americans heard me, and it took an English punk label to sign me. It was that European mentality of not pigeonholing me. They just appreciated the art of it.'

The resulting 1988 record, Lucinda Williams, was less pivotal for its modest sales than for the cachet it gave her among her peers. Three eminent singers snapped up songs from it: Passionate Kisses, about a woman wanting it all, gave Mary Chapin Carpenter a Grammy-winning hit; Emmylou Harris covered Crescent City, Williams's paean to New Orleans; and Tom Petty turned Changed the Locks, a spirited end-of relationship song, into a defiant anthem.

Unhappily, the US division of Rough Trade folded (it recently started up again), and a small American label, Chameleon, released her next album, Sweet Old World, in 1992. Its country-tinged tunes are deceptively easy-sounding, but the title song is addressed to a lover who killed himself ‘See what you lost when you left this world/ This sweet old world' - followed by a litany of life's small pleasures: the touch of fingertips, dancing barefoot, the sound of a midnight train. Another song, Pineola, is a near-factual account of this same man's suicide.

It is hard to talk to Williams without broaching the tricky subject of men. Her many affairs have been ill-fated, and often painful. These guys - charismatic, flawed, inadequate or just plain bad news - hover like ghosts in her songs. For her part she wears her sexuality on her sleeve, seemingly entranced by men who spell trouble: on her 1988 album, in the character of Sylvia, a waitress, she sings, ‘I'm tired of these small-town boys/ They don't move fast enough/ I'm gonna find me one who wears a leather jacket/ And likes his livin' rough.'

Pineola and Sweet Old World were both inspired by the self-inflicted death of Frank Stanford, a handsome, gifted but philandering young poet with whom Williams fell in love in the late Seventies. But that same album is dedicated to the memory of Clyde Woodward, a hellraising bass player with whom she lived for four years before their break-up; he died of liver failure, aged 40. He's the subject of Lake Charles, an elegiac song featured on the Car Wheels album along with Metal Firecracker, an account of her sexual adventures on a tour bus with Chris Isaak's bass player, Rowland Salley. The song Drunken Angel is about Blaze Foley, an overweight Austin musician who lived in almost heroic poverty and was stabbed to death in a fight. Until last summer, Williams had a steady five-year relationship with Richard Price, a strong, silent, leather-clad dude who rejoiced in the nickname ‘Hombre'. He played bass, too; it's not hard to discern a pattern here.

At present, however, Williams (who has no children) is unattached. ‘Yeah,' she muses. ‘I enjoy it. I like it. It helps to have somebody to think about, though; someone to wonder about and lust after.'

Ah, lust. The subject is never far from Williams's lyrics, and many of her songs are expressions of barely controlled desire. It's as true as ever on her new album, Essence: its title song contains the verse: ‘Baby, sweet baby/ Kiss me hard/ Make me wonder/ Who's in charge.' That same song contains a four-letter word, which will be obscured by a single loud guitar note for radio airplay.

Williams relishes such controversy. Three years ago she was due to sing Right In Time, a tribute to the joys of female auto-eroticism, on an American TV network breakfast show. Its producers asked her to cut a verse, ‘that one about me lying on my back and moaning at the ceiling,' she recalls cheerfully. ‘I told them, either we do the whole song, or we're not doing the show.' The producers relented.

This kind of empowering female behaviour endears her to women fans who write to say her songs have inspired them to leave oppressive relationships and stand up for themselves. Perhaps with these accolades in mind she has attached another magnet to her fridge, one that has nothing do with Mexico or religious icons. It reads simply, ‘White Trash Goddess.'
 In fact, she is nothing of the sort; she grew up in a bookish, Left-leaning family, albeit one that moved around with alarming frequency. Her father is Miller Williams, now one of America's most popular poets; he read his verses at President Clinton's second inauguration in 1997. But for years Miller, another late bloomer, struggled hard to make a living, and trailed his three children around various college towns where he held down modest academic jobs. Miller's stubbornness appears to stem from his own father, a socialist Methodist preacher who enraged his Southern congregation with his support for the civil rights movement. A long line of rebels, you see.

Lucinda's first publicly defiant act took place when she was 16. While handing out leaflets for a radical group, Students for a Democratic Society in her New Orleans high school, she refused to say the daily pledge of allegiance to the flag because of US involvement in Vietnam, and was suspended. Miller's reaction? He declared the school's action unconstitutional and threatened to hire a civil rights lawyer.

For the next year and a half, he educated her himself. ‘Just threw a pile of books at me,' she reports. ‘I read them all.' Her new songs on the Essence album have the economy of first-rate poetry, and she acknowledges her father as her mentor: ‘I've always shown him my stuff. lt's been an apprenticeship. I've learnt from his suggestions in a trial and error process. The more I've done it, the less he's had to say. It's like I've graduated.' Father and daughter have appeared together in half a dozen concerts: she sings and he reads his verse.

Miller had another profound influence on her work. When Lucinda was 12, her parents separated, and Miller won custody of her and her younger siblings, Robert and Karen. His travels took them to Chile and Mexico - they lived one year in each country - and towns in Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia and Louisiana. It is no accident, then, that on the Car Wheels album more than a dozen Southern towns receive name-checks; from Baton Rouge to Opelousas, from Slidell to Greenville. ‘I think it adds something if a song is geographically specific,' she muses. ‘And I'm proud of being from the South. People used to think it was all rednecks and hillbillies. But everyone wants to be from the South these days.'

With the success of Car Wheels On a Gravel Road, much American press centred on Lucinda Williams's perfectionism, which allegedly made her a prickly collaborator. Certainly Car Wheels was a long time coming: four years to record, and six since her previous album. She cut three versions of it in three different cities, scrapping two versions. One of its producers, the great Texan singer-songwriter Steve Earle, quit in exasperation, announcing it had been a miserable experience.

She bristles now at these criticisms. ‘What's the alternative? That I should settle for the record being second best? People really liked the work. So if you like the end result, don't criticise the process.'

It's a fair point. Yet Williams does seem a contradictory personality, subject to mood swings and frequent changes of heart. During our conversation, she mentioned her loathing of country music radio: ‘I can't tolerate it at all. It's not even country music any more. I don't know what it is.  It used to be rural working-class music, and it's not that any more. Now it's white, middle-class and suburban.' She almost spat in disdain.

Later she threw on a black biker's jacket and we adjourn to a Nashville music club, 12th and Porter, which has a small restaurant. We were joined for dinner by Luke Lewis, head of her new label, Lost Highway Records, who shares her views about the blandness of the current crop of country artists. But over dinner he said casually, ‘Know what? I bet we could get your new record on country radio.' And she gave him an adoring, overwhelmed look, as if he were some Prince Charming, showering gifts on her. It was as if our earlier conversation had never happened.

Certainly Williams likes to shake her life up from time to time. Last summer she was feeling discontented; she had not written a new song in five years. In a short space of time, she parted company from the band, who had been with her for 10 years, and hired new musicians. She ended her affair with Richard ‘Hombre' Price, and moved into the townhouse. ‘Then I got into this writing frenzy,' she explains. ‘I wrote for 10 days straight. I'd never done that before. In the end I came up with 14 songs in six weeks.' Given that her previous output consisted of some 35 lovingly crafted songs in three decades, this was remarkable. And so are the new songs on Essence; more simple, direct and introspective, and less ‘literary'. On one melancholy song, Blue, her voice quavers with emotion. ‘It's a growth thing,' she reflects. ‘I like to think I'm always learning new things. I don't want to stand still in the same spot.'

Nor does she want to compromise - not when she's managed to get this far without having to. Her best-known song, Passionate Kisses, remains a perfect statement of her philosophy, 13 years after she recorded it. It's a list of the things she wants from life: a comfortable bed that won't hurt her back, food, warm clothes, pens that won't run out of ink, cool quiet and time to think. ‘Is it too much to ask?' she asks. ‘Shouldn't I have all of this - and passionate kisses 'from you?' That's Lucinda Williams for you - always wanting it all, always striving for perfection. And, of course, always with one foot out the door.

‘Essence' (Lost Highway Records) is released on Monday

My previous column ended with Lucinda performing in New Jersey, so I will pick up from there.  Here is a posting from Ben Horowitz:

Barry:
I'm a big Lucinda fan, look regularly at your Web page, and I sometimes write music reviews for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.

I reviewed the Lucinda concert at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, N.J. on June 8. Elvis Costello was there and performed one song, "Drunken Angel," with her. Thought you might be interested in posting my review at your site.
So here goes:

Lucinda Williams appeared at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, N.J. on June 8.   This review appeared in The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. on June 11.
By Ben Horowitz

On her new album, "Essence," Lucinda Williams is mostly in a pensive, introspective mood as she explores the vagaries of life during a sad, quiet return to her blues roots.

But Williams' nearly two-hour concert Friday night at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank was rarely sad and only occasionally quiet. Williams and her crackling guitar band delivered a triumphant, authoritative performance of hard and soft blues and country-rock that had most of the crowd on its feet during 35 minutes of encores.

Williams was at her most exuberant late in the encores when she was joined onstage in a surprise appearance by Elvis Costello, who had been sitting in the center of the theater for the entire concert and had cheerfully conversed with fans during breaks. After Williams asked, in her playful Louisiana drawl, "Is Elvis in the building?" Costello came up and joined her. Costello added a slashing touch on rhythm guitar and sang harmonies during a hot and heavy rendition of Williams' Southern-rock-flavored "Drunken Angel."

"This is it," Williams said dreamily after Costello embraced her and left the stage."I'm humbled. This is the best gig I ever had in my entire life."

The 47-year-old Williams, who today is among the leading heroes for both the alternative-country and singer-songwriter crowds, has lots to celebrate at this stage of her career. After taking six years and three producers to put out her 1998 album, the Grammy Award-winning "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," Williams took just three years to release "Essence."

And now Williams, who tours only sporadically, is on the road with a new band of veteran musicians who sound like they've been playing together for years. Featuring the deft Bo Ramsey on lead and slide guitar, the band's only indication that it hasn't backed Williams for long came on the fact that nearly all the songs it played came from the two latest albums. A slew of great material from Williams' two earlier albums of original songs went ignored.
This was a minor problem, to be sure. The excellent "Car Wheels" songs, now firmly implanted in the minds of Williams and her fans, became fodder for imaginative forays by the band.

An intense, chord-crashing version of "2 Cool 2 B Forgotten" was dedicated to the late Joey Ramone. The band sounded positively sensational with a chiming, Byrdsy wall of sound on a country-rocking "Right in Time."

On the quieter fare from "Essence," Ramsey led the band in fleshing out the subtle pleasures of those soft, sparse tunes. These songs provided one of those unusual occasions when a guitarist drew lusty yowls from the crowd not for a flashy rock-star performance or a meandering jam-band lead, but for an intricate, lyrical, actually quiet solo that might provide the perfect backdrop for a late-night drive on a deserted highway.

The syncopated, dreamy "Are You Down" offered darting guitar licks with the texture of rain as it linked the breakup of a relationship to the aftermath of a rainfall. On the bluesy ballad of dislocation, "Out of Touch," Williams showed her trademark skill with lyrics that describe an uneasy feeling that's often hard to articulate:

"We speak in the past tense and talk about the weather/ Half-broken sentences we try to piece together/ I ask about an old friend that we both used to know/ You said you heard he took his life about five years ago."

Williams seemed happiest and loosest at the end of the show, when she and the band hit a hard-rocking blues groove. The new album's title song, "Essence," a sexy delight that's akin to slow-cooked, ultimately sizzling barbecue on the album, became a rocker's paradise in concert. Williams also sounded particularly sensual on Howlin' Wolf's "Come to Me Baby."

The opening act, Kasey Chambers, a country-style singer-songwriter from Australia, offered a compelling set. Backed by a five-man band that included her father on guitar, the 22-year-old, sweet-voiced Chambers sounded like she was about 17 on twangy country-rockers and torchy tunes that included "The Captain," a sparse, dramatic, lonely-at-the-top ballad featured in "The Sopranos."

Here are several reports from postings on the IDD newsletter:

Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2001
From: Adam
Subject: Lucinda in Red Bank

Just got back from the Lucinda Williams show at the Count Basie theater in Red Bank tonight. Great show...most of the new album, plus a few older goodies, a Howlin' Wolf cover, and a version of "Too Cool To Be Forgotten" dedicated to Joey Ramone.

As if that were not enough, Mr. Elvis Costello himself was in the audience, and when he shouted out a request for "Drunken Angel", Lucinda called him up on stage to perform it with her.

All in all, this was a classic show. Lucinda's new band is fantastic and the new album sounded great live. She was even better than at NO Jazzfest.

Anyway...that's it for now. Bedtime.
*********************************************************************************************
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001
From: Tim
Subject: Kasey Chambers/Lucinda Williams: Count Basie Theater 6/8/01

As you read in Adam's late night review, the Lucinda Williams/Kasey Chambers show last night at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank was a special one. Here's my take on the evening:

Having not seen Kasey Chambers before, I was curious but didn't really know what to expect. What a wonderful surprise- she was fantastic! A fine, strong voice, solid songs, quick sense of humor and a crack band that included her dad Bill on guitar (her mom was out front selling t-shirts. I guess it's true what they say about the family that plays together.). Polly was markedly impressed, despite never having heard a note of Kasey's music.

After playing several songs from her current album "The Captain," Kasey asked the crowd, "Do you like country music?" (Roaring approval from the audience.) She then began a humorous conversation about Nashville and all the "rules" you have to follow in the mainstream country world: "Country songs have gotta be about love, someone's gotta die in every country song, it's gotta be sad and you have to mention Texas in every country song." This rap was very reminiscent of the spoken word passage and final verse of David Alan Coe's "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" in which the song's composer, Steve Goodman, strives to write the "perfect" country song. Kasey continued, "That doesn't sound very hard, I thought, I can do that, write myself a #1 country hit. So I tried it out and this is what I've come up with- I've only got a chorus after 7 years, but I'm gonna try it out on you anyway:"

Don't look up my dress unless you mean it,
Don't you put your hand upon my thigh,
Before you stick that in you'd better clean it,
I hope I go to Texas when I die.

Very funny! Once the laughter died down a bit, Kasey told us, "I've got a new album coming out in September and I'm gonna do a couple of numbers from it, if that's alright (big audience cheer). Kasey laughed, "Well, you haven't heard it yet- you don't know if you even like it! Here's the title track, 'Barricades and Brick Walls'." It was a mournful number built on a foreboding riff. That song over, she added, "Here's another new one. This is a song I wrote about all the radio stations around the world that play Britney Spears and not me." While she didn't
introduce it, I think the name of this song is "Why Do You See Right Through Me?" The first verse is as follows:

Am I not pretty enough?
Is my heart too broken?
Do I cry too much?
Am I too outspoken?
Don't I make you laugh?
Should I try a bit harder?
Why do you see right through me?

If there's any justice, that song will eventually knock Britney off the playlists. Introducing the next selection, Kasey said "My album is called 'The Captain'- it's a whole lot of songs that I've written over the last 15 years of my life and I put them all on an album finally. It's like 22 years rolled into 42 minutes. We're gonna do the title
track- you might have heard it on 'The Sopranos' if you watch that show (big cheer). I don't know, I've never seen the show myself but I'm glad it was on there!" The crowd obviously appreciated the NJ reference.
Talking about her final song, "We're All Gonna Die Some Day," she explained, "We wrote this song for anybody who takes life just a bit too seriously." Thus ended one of the best opening acts I've seen in forever. Can't wait for her to return in the fall.

After intermission, the lights dimmed and Lucinda walked out to say, "Hello, everybody. This is a nice room!"
I took one look at Lucinda and thought, "Hoooweee, girl, does your mama know you left the house lookin' like that?" In her little pink tank top, tight pleather pants with floral embroidery up the legs and across the butt, high-heel cowboy boots and a whole bunch of makeup, Lu was glammed out to the max. The dudester behind me, eyeing her pants, yelled, "Hey, nice trou!" In all seriousness, she looked great. It's just that it was a marked change from some of her former, I-just-rolled-out-of-bed-and didn't-comb-my-hair looks. The new record
company must've kicked in for a stylist! Whatever the case, she seems really happy and in a good place mentally so that's all that matters.

The setlist was pretty much identical to the Appel Farm performance, at least initially. Here's the rundown:

1. Metal Firecracker
2. Right In Time
3. Lonely Girls
4. Blue
5. Reason to Cry
6. Are You Down?
7. 2 Cool 2 B 4-Gotten
8. Out of Touch
9. Changed the Locks
10. Essence
11. Joy

ENCORE
12. Bus to Baton Rouge
13. I Envy the Wind
14. Drunken Angel (w/Elvis Costello)
15. Come Down That Big Road
16. Come to Me Baby
17. Get Right With God

The first four or five songs were good, the band was tight and Lucinda didn't have to glance at her music stand cheat sheet too often. Still, I wasn't quite feeling the spark yet, that intangible something that would lift the performance from good to great. That something came as Lucinda said, "This next song is called '2 Cool 2 B 4-Gotten' and it goes out to Joey Ramone." Drummer Don Heffington began the shuffle intro and the band's energy level took a decidedly upward turn (the spirit of Joey, perhaps?). Sensing the adrenaline increase, the crowd responded in kind. In fact, a few couples tried to go down front and dance but security squashed those efforts quickly. The over-zealous security staff was the only negative factor of the show and venue for me. Well, that and the fact that the restrooms are way too small. Imagine, having to wait in line for the men's room! (I'll pause a moment while all the women appreciate the role reversal.)

While the final chord faded, Lucinda gushed, "This is the best band I've ever had in my entire life! We are having some big fun up here." She also felt comfortable enough to own up to a mistake: "I just realized I was playing an 'A minor' instead of an 'A' there. I knew somethin' sounded weird. I fucked it up- y'all couldn't tell? Did it sound okay,
though? It was kind of a dissonant thing." At this point, Lu introduced the band and once again, I failed to catch the bass player's name. I think it's a one-word thing- Teross, maybe? Where's a program when you need one?!

The momentum established in "2 Cool" continued through the balance of the set. After a feisty version "Changed the Locks," the "BROOOOOOOOCE!" calls started in earnest. Was the Boss here? Would he grab a guitar and walk on to this familiar stage as he has done so many times before? The rumors had been circling all night. Lu and the band ignored the shouts and flowed into "our 'proverbial' single, 'Essence'" (same spoken intro as she used at Appel.). After "Essence," an emotional Lucinda told the audience, "Thank y'all for coming out tonight. This has really been a great place for me to play. It's a cool vibe here. I want to say a special, warm, heartfelt 'hello' and
'thank you' to Elvis Costello and his wife Cait for comin' down tonight. It really means a lot to me that you're here. Really an honor." Whoa, you mean Elvis Declan Patrick Alowyscis Costello is here? Yep, he was and he good-naturedly waved to the crowd. As I turned around to see him, I realized, "Hey- I have better seats than Elvis!" Moreover, I appreciated the fact that tonight, he was just another fan. Rather than glimpse the show from the wings VIP-style, he chose to sit among the commoners and shout requests along with the rest of us. Good for you, Mr. McManus!

The regular set ended with an extended rendition of "Joy" and Lucinda once again sang the litany of southern destinations where she hoped to find that emotion. All I can say is, if you're looking for "joy" in Slidell, you ain't gonna find it there! I've been to Slidell and it is well below Mudville on the joy-meter. The crowd rose in a standing
ovation as the band finished the song and exited the stage. What would be next, we all wondered?

Coming out for the encore, Lucinda said "We're gonna do a slow, swampy number if that's okay. This is from the new album and it's called 'Bus to Baton Rouge.'" I was thrilled to hear a live version of my favorite song from "Essence." The sad 6/8 meter waltz recalls better days gone by and is the lyrical successor to other Lu songs like "Lake Charles" and "Greenville." If only I'd brought my accordion! No need, though, as the band handled it fine all by themselves. Another melancholy new song, "I Envy the Wind" came next. Not more than 2 seconds after the song ended, the "BROOOCE!" birds began squawking again. By now, it was getting annoying. Once was fine, but this was Lucinda's show and she would bring Mr. Springsteen out if she so chose. Over the Bruce exhortations, the true fans yelled requests for older material. One especially boisterous fan called for "Drunken Angel" and Lucinda replied, "Okay we'll do it. Was that who I think it was asking for that one? I KNOW Elvis knows this song. You want to sing it with me? OHMIGOD- Elvis Costello is going to sing a song with ME! I'm so honored!"

So ordered, Elvis left his seat and walked down the aisle toward the stage. He was wearing a grey jacket, khaki pants and had his hair very closely cropped, buzz-style. He also looked about twenty pounds heavier than when I saw him a year and a half ago (it happens to the best of us, E). "Give this man a guitar!" Queen Lu ordered and the guitar tech complied. The song got off to a slightly bumpy start but soon kicked in nice and hard. Elvis was beaming, enjoying himself tremendously between furtive glances at the other guitarists' hands to ascertain the next chord. Lucinda was so into it that she forgot to share the mic with Elvis during the choruses. Ever the trouper, Elvis shouted the harmony line over her shoulder and more often than not, his voice found the mic. "Elvis Costello!" Lucinda announced at the song's conclusion. "We have to record that together. This is it- I'm in the moment. These are the good old days. I'm so honored- I'm humbled."

Setlist now abandoned, Lucinda called out songs on the fly as the band scrambled to get the right instruments for her next whim. After the whole band suited up, she changed her mind again, dismissing all but guitarist Bo Ramsey. "Bo and I are gonna play some blues for you. Blues from Lu!," and indeed, they played a blues number as a duo. Calling back the rest of the band, Lucinda began the guitar intro for Howlin' Wolf's salacious "Come to Me Baby." She was so overcome that she started the song in the wrong key! Realizing her mistake after a few bars, she waved her hands in the air to stop the band (who had followed her in the new key, as a good band should). Finding the correct key, she restarted the song with a huge grin on her face. In response to rapturous applause, Lu replied, "This is the best gig I've ever had in my entire life! I sweartoGod, man. And I'm so fucking hoarse and shit.
But hey, you know, I never claimed to be a great singer. That's why I started writing songs so that I wouldn't have to have to worry about singing." Near the front of the stage, a fan shouted another request. "We did that one already, honey. Where were you?"

Lucinda cautioned the crowd before playing her last selection, "Get Right With God," to not "be scared. Don't be scared." During the uptempo romp, I turned around to see how Mr. Dudester was reacting (presumably, this song was the cause of his earlier pronouncement) but he was already gone. Having a cappuccino somewhere and pontificating about something, no doubt. The rest of us jumped to our feet and cheered wildly as the band left the stage for the last time. No Bruce, but no matter: it was an unforgettable show on its own merits. Come back soon, Lu. And change those clothes before your mama sees you!

 Tim
*************************************************************************************************

Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001
From: Tim
Subject: Lucinda & Kasey

Dennis Dubrow wrote:
>Great Great show by Kasey Chambers & Lucinda Williams in trendy Red Bank Friday night. I want to make >what many will consider a pretty lame observation. Both Kasey & Lucinda were from the same "mold", that's not >to in any way shape or form classify them, as these are two vibrant woman who write really great songs and >deliver their music with all the heart and soul one could ask for. The only thing that struck me, didn't bug me mind >you, it just struck me was how they both approached their performance one song at a time. Other than pacing the >night with tempo, there was no theme to the songs. It seemed to me, and I don't know either of the ladies work
> real well, that each song was presented on it's own account.

Dennis makes a valid observation about Kasey and Lucinda. Both of these performers have heavy roots in country music and I think this is the reason for the song-by-song approach. In country, the song is EVERYTHING and Nashville has built an entire industry dedicated to churning out material for all the Hank and Patsy wannabes. Much of the resulting repetoire is trite trash, but the occasional gem does surface. If you've ever heard George Jones sing "He Stopped Loving Her Today" you know what I mean.

Futhermore, as Kasey noted, characters tend to die in country songs and it's very hard to sustain a narrative when you keep killing off your protagonists! (Although that never stopped the Sopranos.) Instead, each song in a country performance is a mini-drama, confining agony and ecstacy within a roughly 3-minute time limit. A few of the genre's artists, notably Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, have recorded concept albums but this is the exception rather than the rule. At their best, country albums are like a collection of great singles, any one of which would sound great on the jukebox. In a live setting, the country artist is like a human jukebox, serving up each song on its own merits.
**********************************************************************************************

Here are some observations from IDD postings about the new CD:

Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001
From: Steven Lederman
Subject: Essence
 
I am truly taken with "Essence". This album may be as important to  Lucinda Williams as was "Car Wheels". Charlie Sexton has done a fantastic  job co-producing. Lucinda's voice sounds better than ever and her
songwriting is starting to move into new territories. For example, "Are  You Down" has a very blusey guitar and organ to it, but the bass line has  almost a reggae lilt to it. Song for song it may not stand up to "Car  Wheels" (it's damn close) but it is a very important step.

And I noticed that the album is number one in sales on Amazon. How cool  is that!!!!

*****************************************************************************************

Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001
From: Kim
Subject: Essence of Lucinda

Dear Fellow IJJITTS,

Though I've always had respect for her song writing ability, I was never a  rabid Lucinda Williams fan. If memory serves, the first Lucinda album I ever bought had her on a porch in a wispy summer dress. That's always seemed to
be an accurate visual to accompany her music. Earthy and homespun. Stepping  out of the kitchen just long enough to share a campfire ditty. Not quite  dark and meaty enough for my tastes. (Don't flame me. I speak out of
ignorance.)

But, swear to God, this "Essence" song makes me drunk.

Someone gave me the single a couple of weeks ago (which, oddly, has both the  album version and the clean edit partially de-fucked in the same way). The  cover is a shot of pink and red flowers on a baby blue background. More of  the same, I thought. Open the cover up and find a color-saturated shot of a  good ol' boy in ripped jeans and a flannel plaid, leaning against what  appears to be an El Camino. On closer examination, you see that this good  ol' boy has breasts.

Ah, this is what Lucinda looks like AFTER church. Well, after 1980, anyway.

I've tried to dissect what makes "Essence" such a hot-n-throbby song. It has  the necessary lumbering grindy-ness, but the lyrics seem unremarkable on  first listen (or listens one through ten, actually). But that's her style,  isn't it? Deceptively flat lyrics which sneak underneath you like a spatula  and flip your ass through the air. That "bracelets, and everything" lyric  comes to mind.

So infectious are "Essence's" lyrics, that they came up the other day, as I  brunched with The Girls. (When you see us in our white gloves and Sunday  bonnets, do not be mislead, we are STILL talking trash.)

And the way Lucinda dips her voice into the gutter water, just breaking the  surface before pulling back out, making us wonder whether we heard what we  heard.

This song is the most evocative tale of sexual obsession I've heard in a  while. Makes me wanna try to write songs.

And fuck.

Sorry. Did I say that out loud?

KissKiss, ~ Kimberly "Waiting On Your Back Steps" Massengill
************************************************************************************
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001
From: Geoff
Subject: Re: Essence

Kim writes:

>But, swear to God, this "Essence" song makes me drunk.
>This song is the most evocative tale of sexual obsession I've heard in a while.

You think it's hot on the record? You MUST see it live when Lucinda returns to the area.

Saturday at Lucinda's performance in Northhamptom, MA, during what can only be described as a dangerous rendition of "Essence", the first 17 rows of the crowd spontaneously combusted. Live, Lu and the band have morphed this song into a sultry, smoldering, guitar-fed monster that leaves all witnesses fully engorged on all levels. Puts the album version (as incendiary as it is) to shame. Fueled by a riff in the verses that sounds like Keith Richards with a high-grade fever, it was as steamy as I've ever heard a song get. Ever.

Good to see the Lucinda Bug bite another one! She's the real deal. But if I see her again, I'm wearing asbestos overalls and taking a licensed fire professional with me.

Back to Lurkville,

Geoff

*********************************************************************************************
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001
From:
Subject: Asbestos

I guess I'm alone here on the digest when I say that I enjoyed Lucinda more when she was miserable, bitter at not being more popular, but mostly more subtle in her lyrics and phrasing, and more of an artist and  less of a performer.

However, as I've said before - the fact that she can fill up Roseland and no doubt other large halls is great - it's nice to see talented artists make a few bucks once in a while.

I am having this opinion because I've seen Lucinda a number of times over the past 10 years, including a solo show at The Bottom Line, a performance with Gurf at the Philly Folk Festival (in all my years there she's the only performer who ever left a gig early because she was upset with the sound), at the Mercury Lounge and at Tramps. And now at Roseland with the big arena sound which she no doubt observed last summer opening a bunch of big shows for the Allman Brothers.

George in Brooklyn
*********************************************************************************************

Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001
From: Bob Cohen
Subject: Is OK Lucinda better than no Lucinda?

George,

You may have liked Lucinda better before, but it only took her 3 years to come out with a record that you were disappointed with. Would it have been better if it would have taken her 6 years to come up with a disappointing
record?

And after the last 3 Lucinda records that were among the best of their respective decades for me, I expect "Essence" to show up in the 2nd half of my top 10 of 2001. Unless it's an unusually good or bad year for music.
Which it doesn't seem to be.

But maybe it will grow on me ("Essence" not 2001).

Brother Bob
*********************************************************************************************

Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001
From: Kristin/Krip
Subject: lucinda

She was hothothot and I second/third/fourth Kim's assessment of "Essence" (the song in particular):
It burns.
It seethes.
It trembles.
It makes me weak in the knees.

Kristin/Krip
********************************************
Date: June 14, 2001
From: Steven Lederman
Subject: Essence

KissKim - your description of Lucinda's "Essence" is so on the money. The song has such a slow burn to it and it just creeps inside you and twists around your soul. Without a doubt it is one the best songs about longing and lust in quite some time.

*********************************************************************************************
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001
From: rbaus
Subject: Lucinda

Dear Idiots,

Back at home again after spending the week in Dallas. Been reading all the reports on Lucinda which I've really enjoyed. I've been a big Lucinda fan for 5 or 6 years. Living in Austin where Lucinda lived in the 70's one gets
to see her above and beyond the major tours she's wont to do to support the new CD's. I've seen her in small coffee houses (Cactus Cafe on UT campus) and large halls (Austin Music Hall) here. One thing I've firmly come to
realize about her is the strength of her voice. The important ingriedient and finishing touch to the passionate lyrics.

This new LP has still not grown on me. As I wrote during SXSW I was displeased with the debut live performance during the music festival when Lucinda played the "Lost Highway" showcase. I think a combination of things led to what I considered a bad performance that night the most notable being it was a big hall. These songs are intimate songs and she found herself debuting them to a big chunk of Austin. The band just limped through the songs never grabbing the energy of the crowd which has always been the case in all my previous experiences with her and band. I'm glad she's hitting stride out on the road. I hope she comes back to Austin on the rebound to finish with another bang.
*********************************************************************************************
From: "Jean-Jacques MURA"
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2001
Subject: Buscadero n°225

Hello,
I'm writing (with a bad english, sorry !) from France after visiting your site.
I'd like to let you know (If you don't yet) that an Italian magazine called Buscadero made his cover with Lucinda Williams for n°225 of June.  There is another article about Lucinda Williams with some pictures on the N° 224 of Buscadero.  "Essence" is record of the month with **** 1/2 ( 5 is the higher note). If you want more informations www.buscadero.com

Thank you for all the news, photos and other good things about Lucinda Williams.
With my best wishes,`
Jean-Jacques, Marseille, France
*************************************************************************************************9

Here’s a posting from the Steve earle Exit 0 newsletter:

Subject: Re:El Romantic

If you have Lucinda Williams Car Wheels, You'll love the new CD Essence. KPFT has been playing cuts from the CD for weeks now, and I saw Lucinda here in Houston a few weeks ago, She sang most all the songs from this CD
and it is just so good. I stayed up last night just to see her on David Letterman's show and I hardly will ever stay up past my bedtime to watch Letterman exceptto see Steve, I have to say David letterman & his crew have great taste in music, Someone said that he has had Fred Eaglesmith on but I must have missed that show. I have a male friend at work who said after he heard Lucinda's song Essence that he felt like he needed a smoke. He's right its
that good.

After playing a show in Northampton, MA, Kasey & Lucinda had their next stop in Boston.  Here are two newspaper reviews sent in by Gary Feldman:

Hi Barry,

Lucinda was here in Boston Sunday night for a fine show on the waterfront at (formerly Harborlights) Fleet Pavilion. A big sellout crowd on hand (Lucinda remarked how the audience has noticeably grown in size) was treated to a beautiful Sunday night of excellent songwriting and music by both Kasey Chambers and Lucinda. Lucinda's show started off a bit rocky, as she seemed out of sorts and withdrawn during the opening couple of numbers (Firecracker and Car Wheels). She was using a lyric stand and clearly lost her place and fumbled with the lyrics a couple of times in Car Wheels, which was surprising. They were awkward moments, and gave cause for some degree of anxiety in the crowd, as if we were about to watch a total meltdown. But Lucinda recovered nicely and soon she seemed to be herself. The new material played great. Seemed to be a longer show than previous ones on this tour (at least as compared to NYC)- she came out for 2 encores and played to 11:15. Here are the reviews from the Boston Globe and Herald, if you wish to post them:

Williams loosens up, slowly

By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff, 6/12/2001

Lucinda Williams's show at the FleetBoston Pavilion was as slow-building and frankly confounding as her 22-year recording career, which has endured long dry stretches, glowed with triumphant artistry, and produced a mere five albums of original music.

Williams's songcraft is indisputable; the woman is a heat-seeking missile for the raw spot where rock, folk, country, and blues collide. But notorious perfectionism and what appeared to be a proportional dose of nerves (or a wicked bad mood) combined to strange effect Sunday. Early on, her stage presence was frozen, her delivery stiff. It wasn't until halfway through the set that Williams found her voice.

She's on the road to support a new album, ''Essence,'' which just came out last week, but Williams opened with a trio of gems from 1998's breakthrough ''Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.'' Decked out, appropriately enough, like a cowgirl rocker in painted-on leather pants, red satin blouse, and a white Stetson that kept her face in shadows, Williams looked and sounded distracted during note-for-note reproductions of ''Metal Firecracker,'' ''Right in Time,'' and the earlier album's title track, the words of which she forgot in several places.

''Lonely Girls,'' the lead track from the new disc, followed, and it came off like a measured mantra from one who's spent time under the heavy blankets and styling the pretty hairdos the song describes. Williams performed about two thirds of ''Essence'' - including ''Blue,''
''Out of Touch,'' ''Reason to Cry,'' and the title track. On the whole, it's a lower-key collection than the handful of rough-and-randy tracks she played from ''Car Wheels,'' and Williams's detachment served a song like ''Are You Down'' - a jazzy tune marked by cool, spare phrasing - well.

It was the new material that inspired Williams to come out of her shell, The audience's warm reception freed her, it seemed, to return their warmth and energy. ''Thank you for accepting me in all my weathered glory!'' she gushed, finally speaking directly to 2,900 fans after a round of applause.

For the second half of the 90-minute set, Williams unearthed the grit and sauciness that saved the show. ''2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten '' (dedicated to the late Joey Ramone), ''Drunken Angel,'' and 1988's chugging ''Changed the Locks'' rocked and twanged along a searing emotional edge.

The band followed her lead. Ringing slide-guitar work poured like water from a broken dam, courtesy of Doug Pettibone and Beau Ramsey, on back-to-back performances of ''Joy'' and ''Essence.'' That crackling pair of tunes, the evening's highlight, brought Williams's performance to a sensuous peak: whittling desire to the raw, exposed bone.

One could hardly blame Williams if she was hard-pressed to follow her opening act. Newcomer Kasey Chambers - an Australian singer-songwriter described by Williams as her favorite young artist - captivated the crowd with a sweet and seasoned voice and a set of powerhouse country tunes from her debut album, ''The Captain.'' She was backed by a crack band that chose notes as economically and beautifully as any in recent memory. Chambers got a standing ovation from an audience who had probably never heard her name before. It was a rare - and well-earned - accomplishment.

This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 6/12/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.

From Monday's Boston Herald:

Pavilion crowd enjoys the Essence of Williams
by Sarah Rodman
Monday, June 11, 2001

Lucinda Williams, Kasey Chambers at FleetBoston Pavilion last night.

It was a gorgeous night for some heartbreak by the Harbor.  Country maverick Lucinda Williams brought four great musicians, a catalog of some of the most evocatively heartaching songs this side of the Mason-Dixon line and her inimitable voice to the FleetBoston Pavilion last night and the result was pure performance gold.  Williams played much of her terrific new album Essence alongside several songs from her critically acclaimed 1998 release Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and just one older song. Although Essence was just released Tuesday, the doting, close-to-capacity audience already seemed familiar with several songs and eager to hear them.

Clad in snug black leather pants, a fluffy low cut red blouse and trademark cowboy hat, Williams began the evening with the amiably ambling ``Metal Firecracker'' extolling the healing virtues of ZZ Top played at full volume. The Grammy-winning songwriter - who's been covered by artists such as Mary Chapin Carpenter and Tom Petty - appeared flustered on the sweet, mandolin-laced Car Wheels On a Gravel Road, losing her place in the lyrics a few times.

That was the night's only moment of unsteadiness, however, as Williams gracefully eased into undulating midtempo rocker "Right in Time."  A trilogy of tragedy followed as Williams opened up the throb valve in her gorgeously grainy voice for the rainsoaked-full-pint-of-Ben and Jerry's weepers "Lonely Girls,'' which sounded like a lost Roy Orbison classic, "Blue'' and the tear-in-my-beer ballad "Reason to Cry.''  The latent reggae rhythms of  "Are You Down'' were bolstered by two piercing solos from guitarists Bo Ramsey and Doug Pettibone and led nicely into the lazily sweet  "2 Cool 2 B 4-Gotten,'' which Williams dedicated to the late Joey Ramone.

Deadline obligations meant missing the encores but Williams rocked the regular set to a cathartic close with the down and dirty riffage of  "Changed the Locks,''  what she termed the pure unadulterated lust of the forceful "Essence" and the purposeful, almost menacing barn burner "Joy,'' which again showcased the nimble fretwork of Ramsey and Pettibone.

The show was also reviewed in the Cape Cod Times:

Lucinda Williams sings sharply etched tales of love and loss
By BILL O'NEILL, LIFESTYLE EDITOR, Cape Cod Times, June 12, 2001

BOSTON - Lucinda Williams won't be invited on stage with the VH1 Divas any time soon.
A songwriter I know described Williams' voice as being like faded jeans that are just a little tattered, and you like them because they're faded and tattered.

Williams is the first to admit that her voice doesn't have the slick gloss of a Mariah Carey. "Thank you for accepting me in all my road-weathered glory," she drawled midway through her just-shy-of-sold-out Sunday concert at the Fleet Boston Pavilion.

It's easy to over-emphasize the raggedy nature of Williams' voice, which means many overlook her vocal talents. An hour into the show, she proved on "Changed the Locks" that she can smoothly hit the high notes when she wants.

It's just that leaving a bit of burr on the edge of her vocals fits her songs, most of which are about longing and loss. If dark highways and empty Budweiser bottles could talk about the things they'd seen, these are the stories they'd tell.

On "Out of Touch," a gem from her latest CD, "Essence," Williams sings about the awkwardness of random encounters with an old lover in a town that just can't be big enough for the both of them:

"Once in a while we might pass on the street.
"We nod and we smile and we shuffle our feet.
"Making small talk, standing face to face,
"Hands in our pockets, 'cause we feel so out of place."

It's the sharply observed details - the placement of those hands, for example - that elevates Williams' songs. With most writers, simple language gives you simple songs. But with well-chosen simple words, a writer can convey vivid images, the kind that make you think "Yeah, that's just how it feels."

Williams is a master at capturing those images.

The emotional accuracy of her songs derives in large part from her decision to leave fictional storytelling to others. "They're all autobiographical, every single word," she said of her songs in a recent Associated Press interview.
You didn't have to look at the giant video screens on either side of the stage to see the ache in her voice while she sang "Out of Touch." And her biggest smile of the night came during the middle of "Are You Down" - a blow-off song that rivals "Hit the Road, Jack" in its celebratory "I am so done with you" spirit.

With so many songs about fractured relationships, why did people leave smiling? Maybe it was catharsis or maybe it was appreciation of a brilliant performance? A little of both, I'd guess.

Dressed in black leather pants, a low-cut silky ruby blouse and a cowboy hat, Williams led her band through 17 songs, all but two from "Essence" and her previous CD, the Grammy-winning "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road."
The band was as good as any that Williams has performed with, and the players' résumés show how difficult it is to succinctly describe Williams' musical style. Guitarist Doug Pettibone described his own band, Paint, as being part Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, part the Mavericks. The other guitarist, Bo Ramsey, plays with contemporary folkie Greg Brown as his main gig. Bass-player Taras Prodaniuk has played on most of Dwight Yoakam's recordings, but when he teamed up Sunday with drummer Don Heffington, the result was a Creedence Clearwater Revival kind of groove.

"You all feel like you're in tune with that Louisiana swamp thing?" Williams asked before launching into the second encore.

Williams is often categorized as alternative country, but how many country singers would dedicate a song ("2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten") to Joey Ramone?

Opening act Kasey Chambers is another genre-jumper. The Australian's impressive debut album, "The Captain," sounds like it came straight out of Nashville, but she showed off a heavy rock sound on several new songs - think Nanci Griffith filling in for Neil Young at a Crazy Horse gig. Chambers' next CD, set for a fall release, will likely have her headlining shows on future trips to Boston.

After Boston, the next stop was Montreal, Canada, followed by Toronto, where the following review appeared:
 

TORONTO SUN – June , 2001
Lucinda Williams’ recent breakup inspired her latest CD
Essence of her creativity
By Jane Stevenson

The Essence of Lucinda Williams’ critically-acclaimed songwriting isn’t easy for her to pin down.
What the Nashville-based singer does know is that eight of the 11 songs on Essence, her latest album of alt-country-folk-and-blues, came quickly to her. They were written during the two-month period following the end of her five-year relationship to bass player Richard “Hombre” Price.

The other three tunes were older material, including Out Of Touch, which was first conceived in 1981, that just took their time to be fully realized.

“My personal breaking-up, that always does it,” says Williams, 48, from her home in Nashville, just before heading here for her show at Massey Hall Wednesday. “Any time there’s a big sort of cataclysmic change, whether it’s breaking up with someone after five years, or just meeting someone and falling in love, or even just moving to a new city. It’s gives you a sense of freedom. And when you’re by yourself, you have that freedom to fantasize more.”

Williams, whose biggest breakthrough of her 21-year-career came with 1998’s Grammy-winning Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, isn’t sure if it’s simply easier to write when you’re less settled.

“I don’t know what it’s like to be in a relationship where I’m content and happy,” she says. “If I were really content and happy, I think I would be writing. I like to think that I could have both things. But see I don’t know, because I’ve never had that. I don’t have anything to compare it to.

“I’m not trying to put Richard down; it’s certainly not his fault. But I hadn’t written anything in five years, and that’s one of the things that propelled me to question the relationship. For some reason I’ve always battled with that. Being in a long-term relationship means not writing anymore.”

Williams, who has released only five albums since her 1979 debut of folk and blues called Ramblin’, doesn’t anaylze these things easily in the press.

“I hate to talk about it, ’cause it sounds like I’m blaming the other person — ‘It’s all your fault I haven’t written a song in five years!’” she says. “But, see, I don’t know. God, I feel like I’m in a therapy session all of a sudden.”
“But that’s what makes me move up and move on. Because I have to write. I can’t deal with not writing. I’ve got to have that. I have to have that edge, that thing, or whatever it is that pushes me into that creative place.”
Williams, whose father is university professor-poet Miller Williams, also frustratingly sees lots of happy people around her creating up a storm.

“I grew up around writers, poets, novelists. They’re all married with kids running around and, you know, nine-to-five jobs teaching at the universities, and they all wrote all the time,” she says.

“My dad wrote constantly, he’s still writing. He’s never stopped, it didn’t matter what was going on. He was always able to shut off his environment, I think.

“I can’t write if anybody else is in the house. I have to be completely alone. They can’t even be in another room. I have to have that space around me.”

Williams does want it to be known that she remains good friends with Price. She thanks him on Essence’s liner notes for helping her “Get Right With God,” which is also a song on the record. “I can’t deal with not writing. I’ve got to have that. I have to have that edge, that thing, or whatever it is that pushes me into that creative place.”
Believe it or not, Starbucks isn’t the only coffee company in the world. The tour by singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams is being sponsored by an Austin-based coffee company Ruta Maya.

Williams came up with the idea to approach them when she wanted to get a second bus for her tour.
“We didn’t want to go with the typical, big corporate company,” she says. “So I suggested Ruta Maya ’cause it’s my favourite coffee — I’m not just saying that. They were all for it. It was just really good timing.”

A politically correct coffee company, it gets its beans from Chiapas, Mexico, and gives a percentage of the profits back to the growers, she says. ”And it’s so good. It’s the best coffee. Everybody I’ve turned this coffee onto agrees. (My manager) Frank says, ‘It’s not just coffee, it’s elixir.’ I hate to go on and on about it, but I love it.”

Here is a review of the new CD from the Atlanta paper:
 

ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION – June 14, 2001
Running with the blues

When it comes right down to it, Lucinda Williams is all about the blues. She may twang them up with leather fringe or scuff them down with juke-joint grit, but they are the heart of her "Essence."

Lonely, wanton, mournful or downright needy, the blues course through all six of the singer-songwriter's albums, but maybe none so deeply as her latest.

Where 1998's long-time-coming "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" was a literate travelogue of way stations along one woman's highway, this record feels like a Polaroid into her soul, taken just the other day.

Much has been written about the breakup (with longtime partner, bassist Richard "Hombre" Price) and subsequent writing jag that made this album come together so fast, and it's impossible not to hear the heartache.

A hypnotic repetition of plain phrases - heavy blankets, sweet sad songs, pretty hairdos - gives opener "Lonely Girls" a meditative air until she turns it back on herself: "I oughta know, I oughta know, I oughta know about lonely girls." Love is the drug and she wants her some, if it means thieving, ("Steal Your Love"), going elemental ("I Envy the Wind") or shooting up ("Essence").

But mainly, the quick turnaround provided a musical continuity that feels new. The songs are kin, intimate in scale (Nick Drake laying low in the Delta) and a little on the raw side.

But this time it's not so much what happens in the words - deliberately stripped down and repeated, like incantations - but in the groove underneath, where the right languid bass riff or churchy Hammond B3 lends an intensely moody eloquence.

Whether this is a new direction or just the latest chapter in the evolution of a truly Southern original isn't really important. What is, perhaps, is where it leads: Will she learn how to marry this deeply rooted musical groove with the kind of fully realized songwriting that made her famous?
-- Eileen M. Drennen

Lucinda's next stop on the tour after Toronto was Pittsburgh:

Concert Review: Lucinda Williams delivers night to remember
Saturday, June 16, 2001
By Ed Masley, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Pop Music Critic

There was nothing especially festive about the way Lucinda Williams led her band through the heartbreaking country-rock beauty of songs like "Blue" or "Out of Touch" or even the rowdier Neil Young-worthy rock of "Drunken Angel" last night at the Three Rivers Arts Festival.

She's more about the art -- to the point of refusing to censor herself in an f-word-inclusive rendition of "Essence," the title cut to yet another brilliant album, or stopping "Right In Time" because the sound was bad -- and as she told the crowd, "I can't do a good job if I'm uncomfortable."

After taking the song from the top in a vocal performance as committed as any you're likely to find, she thanked the people for their patience and said, "I don't know how that sounded, but hopefully, it sounded OK."

Which it did. In fact, it sounded flawless, as did everything about the set, a slow-burning wonder that started quietly enough with "Metal Firecracker," Williams in her cowboy hat asking a former flame not to tell anybody the secrets she told him while remembering how "We'd put on ZZ Top and turn 'em up real loud."

It took a while for Williams and her band to turn 'em up real loud, though, in a set that for the most part focused on the gorgeous country-rocking balladry of tunes as inspired as "Blue" and "Reason to Cry" or, at its most intense, mid-tempo rockers on the order of the title cut to "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" or "Are You Down."

She sent out a bittersweet, gently-rocking "2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten" to Joey Ramone and said she's come to realize "Drunken Angel" could've been written for Kurt Cobain, but the closest Williams came to punk was a set-closing "Joy," with a venomous vocal performance that found her spitting out such lines as "I don't want you anymore 'cause you took my joy" like Courtney Love after reading a bad review of her latest hairstyle.

As cathartic as it may have been for Williams and her audience, her greater strength will always be in quietly sharing the weakness that comes with opening your heart to the dangers of living. That's what makes her latest album such a treasure and her performance a night to not only remember but cherish.

Pontiac, Michigan was next, and then Chicago, where Lucinda & the band played at Navy Pier:

Saint of outlaw caste stresses the song

By Greg Kot
Chicago Tribune rock critic
June 20, 2001

Lucinda Williams dresses like a cowgirl bum-rushing the Sunset Strip with her leather pants and wrangler's hat, sings like a blue angel and writes songs so vivid we recognize ourselves in them. She calls attention to the details of everyday life with a writer's eye, honing in on the overlooked, the forsaken, the taken for granted, until they take on new meaning, sometimes so miraculously that the hairs on the back of a listener's neck can't help but stand at attention.

She's become the patron saint of the tweener-singer-songwriters who don't fit with any scene or genre and who have paid for their lack of instant packaging by being refused entry onto most commercial radio formats. That Williams broke through to a wide audience in 1998 with her gold-selling album "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" suggested that there was indeed hope for other members of this outlaw caste, one of whom opened Monday's show: Australian honky-tonker Kasey Chambers.

The coin of the tweeners' realm was encapsulated by the late Townes Van Zandt, who titled one of his finest compositions "For the Sake of the Song." It is songs that matter, and Williams--relying heavily on the two most recent of her six albums--chose wisely Monday at the sold-out Skyline Stage on a blustery Navy Pier. She was greeted with an enthusiasm that suggested there is not just an appreciation for what she has to offer, but a hunger.
The Louisiana native apologized for her "road voice," but she needn't have. If anything, Williams' music errs on the side of clarity and cleanliness, and the grit in her throat restored some of its earthen essence. Road-weary or not, her voice is an attractive instrument. Its tone is thick, clinging like moss to a stone, hanging like humidity in the air. She makes music as sexy as a Destiny's Child single, but she conveys eroticism not by removing her clothes, but by revealing herself in her songs.

"Right in Time" and "Essence" were prime examples, raising physical need to spiritual heights even as their unabashed imagery was enough to melt the hubcaps off a pink Cadillac. Deeper still were a trio of songs about the aftermath of a love affair: What to do after the intimacy is gone, but two lives remain? Try desperately to erase the past, as in the blazing "Changed the Locks"? Walk wider circles around each other, as in the poignant study of awkwardness, "Out of Touch"? Or make one last heartbreaking plea for discretion, as in "Metal Firecracker": "Don't tell anybody the secrets I told you."

Williams invested each of these songs with a plainspoken passion free of histrionics, each subtle accent embellished by a fine band. The backing quartet's primary job was to frame that immaculate song, but occasionally they broke free behind the twin-guitar dynamics of Bo Ramsey and Doug Pettibone. Stretching "Joy" to 10 minutes, Williams and the band didn't just reclaim her right to happiness, the snatched it back with a Doberman's bite.

As intimate and vulnerable as she allows herself to become, Williams made it clear that she would not play the victim in the relationships she sings about. Instead, her pursuit of joy is what makes all the hardships worth enduring in the first place, and lends her songs their richness.

Kasey Chambers opened with a set drawn largely from her debut album, "The Captain," including the atmospheric title track and the rollicking "We're All Gonna Die Someday." Chambers' writing isn't in Williams' league yet, but her big voice and feisty attitude more than compensated.
***********************************************************************************************

The June 15 issue of Entertainment Weekly has a beautiful 4-page article titled "Cowgirl Uninterrupted" which also has some very nice photos.  Here is the text:

COW GIRL UNINTERRUPTED 
 
RECKLESS AND RAW, LUCINDA WILLIAMS HAS MADE LUST, HARD LIVING, AND HEARTACHE THE 'ESSENCE' OF HER SONG by Alison Dyer
 
A black volvo pulls up and a big man with a goatee steps out. "Lu's in a bit of a pickle," he says.

I've been here for about an hour, sitting on the stoop in front of Lucinda Williams' town house in Nashville, periodically ringing the doorbell. The big man ambles up and introduces himself as Dub Cornett; he's a producer, filmmaker, and general bon vivant on the Nashville music scene, and one of Lucinda's friends. We chat about books until his cell phone rings. It's Lucinda. "Yeah, he's right here," he tells her. He hands me the phone.

"Hi, Lucinda," I say.

"I'm sooo embarrassed!" she says. She talks fast, like a teenager trying to win her daddy's amnesty while keeping the details of an all-nighter willfully muddled. She's on the other side of town. She let a friend borrow the truck and he was supposed to be back in a couple of hours but he didn't come back so she was stranded without her keys and now she's wondering whether we should meet at her house or the studio or the restaurant or the club. Dub nods and smiles in a manner that suggests, Be firm.

Come to the house, I offer. (Something tells me that if we don't pin down a rendezvous point right now, the entire evening might sputter away.)

After warm goodbyes, I hand the cell back to Dub. "She's a genius," he says. "That explains it."

Lucinda Williams has, to be sure, an almost superhuman flair for the manipulation of time. ("I need to work on that," she'll later say. "People let me get away with it. Not my dad, though. He doesn't think it's endearing at all.") She comes when she comes. Her music--a rough mix of folk, country, rock, gospel, and the blues, with lyrics so unflinchingly candid that a listener feels like a spelunker in the caverns of her heart--comes when it comes too. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, the soul-baring Stars 'n' Bars travelogue that went gold and won a Grammy and finally fixed a permanent place for this perennial cult darling in the pop cosmos after four albums and two decades of struggle, came forth in 1998 only after six years of excruciating parturition. Loose and ghostly, her new album, Essence, was delivered after a different worry-fraught delay--one that suddenly gave way to a whiplash surge of motion.

Which is how it feels to meet her. When she hops out of her Chevy Silverado, another hour later, it's as if a tiny rogue twister has touched down among the condos and ripped out a power line. She's compact and limber, like a gymnast, and undeniably sexy at 48 in tight jeans and a blondish, punkish shag. Words tumble out.

I ought to see the "hillbilly hoodoo," she tells me. Inside the house Dub goes off to find this repository of good-luck charms--a box full of stones, chips, dirt, and snakeskin. Almost every shard in the hoodoo is a talisman from some holy site in the saga of American roots music. A hunk of tin from the roof of the Carter Family's store in southwestern Virginia. A knot of wood from Dock Boggs' front porch in the Appalachian Mountains. An orange prescription bottle clumped with sand from the confluence of the Clinch and Powell rivers. When Lucinda was in Minneapolis recording Essence, Dub mailed the "hillbilly hoodoo" to her, "just to have some good vibes in the studio and stuff," she says.

If a box of scattered mementos is a fine metaphor for Lucinda's famously itinerant childhood--as the daughter of a poet-professor, Miller Williams, and a pianist, Lucille, she shuttled around the South from one college town to the next--it's also a way to capture the pan-Confederate sound of her music. There's creek silt and rusty tin and splintery pine and rattlesnake hide in her voice; songs like "Changed the Locks" and "Sweet Old World" and "Joy" come dressed up in Mardi Gras beads from New Orleans, cotton from the Mississippi Delta, floral bonnets from a Memphis gospel breakfast, petticoat lace from a bluegrass night at the Grand Ole Opry. Even roaming around her town house feels like crossing through a time warp to a place where Pottery Barn caters to devout 19th-century pioneers at the cusp of the westward trail. Folk-art skulls, skeletons, Blessed Virgins, and sorrowful Christs peer out from every nook. The Bob Dylan album that served as an inspirational touchstone for Essence has a title that's apt: Time Out of Mind.
 

She whirls off to the kitchen. She's making a big pot of Ruta Maya coffee ("...it's from Chiapas, Mexico, and they sell it in Austin, Texas, and you can't get it here, so I have it brought over...") and recalling how devastated she felt about the death of Joey Ramone ("...I started crying and stuff, I got real emotional...") and musing that her landlord is raising her rent $400 and wants to sell the place so she'll probably have to move out ("...I guess I'm just gonna put everything in storage temporarily, I don't have time to look for something..."). Dub pauses by the front door on the way out. "You know, your keys are in the door, baby," he calls back to the kitchen. She's absorbed in the task of making coffee; Dub gently takes the keys out of the lock and places them on a nearby table.

Lucinda scurries upstairs to change. She comes down 45 minutes later and notices that I'm carrying way too much baggage for a real Nashville honky-tonk night.

"Why don't you just leave that stuff here?" she says.

A natural mistake.

You know the day destroys the night/night divides the day..."

The sun's down and we're cruising in Lucinda's truck, listening to the Doors. "I've been in this Doors mode lately," she says. "It's erotic. Erotic. I don't know. It's so sexy."

A few minutes later she's parking the Silverado when I ask whether she's dating anyone. "No," she says with a profound chest heave. A pause, then a monologue of amazing vulnerability and sweetness. "That doesn't come easily for me because men are all afraid of me," she says. "That's the only way I can figure it out. It's a real dilemma. They get drawn in but then they get scared.... It's horrible being single in this day and age. It's not like it used to be. There's a real fear of intimacy in this world--it's just horrible. I've heard everything from 'Let's just be friends for now' to 'I love you but it doesn't fit into my agenda right now.'"

Those twin obsessions, lust and heartbreak, simmer close to Lucinda's skin--in song and in conversation. The spur for Essence, in fact, was her breakup last spring with her boyfriend of almost six years, bass player Richard Price. "Any time there's a major change, whether it's going into a relationship, getting out of a relationship, moving to a new city, a death--that usually provides a catalyst for an explosion of creativity," she says. After a five-year dry spell--time chewed up by the perfection and promotion of Car Wheels--she suddenly plopped down at the kitchen table in the early summer of 2000 and started banging out new songs ("Lonely Girls," "Steal Your Love") and bringing old stragglers to completion ("Out of Touch," "Bus to Baton Rouge"). (Granted, there was plenty of emotional material bottled up; in the wake of Car Wheels her old band split up and her longtime drummer, Donald Lindley, died of cancer.) "I thought I was going to go to the desert," she says. "I never made it out of my condo, much less out of Nashville." Much of the work poured out in a marathon fortnight. She finished the rest over six weeks.

For a woman with an elastic sense of time--and deadlines--this was weird. "I couldn't believe it, at first," she says. "I thought, I don't know, are the songs good enough?" She took heart from Time Out of Mind, the 1997 album on which the wonder bard shaved down his lyrics to a kind of stark, shuffling, Gary Cooper-on-his-deathbed haiku. "It's just a different approach to writing. It's more about the groove and the melody, and everything's a lot more sparse," she says. "It was real liberating for me to get to that place with these new songs, because at first I was kind of questioning it. Like 'Are You Down.' Four little-bitty verses that I then repeat. My first thought was, Well, this is a good idea for a song, but I have to fill it in. And somehow I got to this place where I just went, You know, this is cool like it is. I'm just gonna let it go."

She let it go in the studio, too, nailing Essence's basic tracks with members of Dylan's and Neil Young's touring bands in five or six days--the sweet relief of surrender after the slowpoke agony of Car Wheels. The crushing ballad "Broken Butterflies" transpired in one take, with no rehearsals. "When that song arrived, I don't know if I've ever had a moment like that in the studio," says producer Bo Ramsey, who oversaw the basic tracks. "It was magical." Which is not to say that Essence came easily; Lucinda stayed in Minneapolis throughout the iciest months to squint over every nuance of the overdubbing and mixing process. "Poor thing, she was there forever," says Essence's producer and guitarist Charlie Sexton. "She went there to do the record, and by damn, she wasn't leaving 'til it was done." Says Ramsey: "She's very intense in the studio, and very meticulous, but at the end of the day I have an appreciation for it, because her instincts are so good. She'd hear something that maybe a lot of people wouldn't hear, and if she thought it was wrong, she would stay with it until it was fixed."
 

There's fiscal security in Lucinda's life now, rental fluctuations aside: She's the flagship artist at Universal's twang-oriented Lost Highway label after years of being kicked from one dubious deal to another. But that just means that her old style of self-inflicted, sweat-the-small-stuff wretchedness feels more like the thumbscrew than the rack. "I'm always going to be tortured, no matter how much money I make," she says. "Don't worry about that. There's enough torture to go around and last me for the rest of my life."

And she's right, there is a fear of intimacy in this world. But even in a pop marketplace clogged with airbrushed, machine-tooled, coached-and-choreographed robo-stars, Lucinda Williams remains, for better or worse, an unfiltered, unfettered, impulsive, intimate...human being. After dinner we go to a nightclub, then we wind up at a saloon called the Gold Rush, where she's flirting and gabbing and tossing back Stoli-and-tonics until the wee hours of the morning. "I just like to kiss and hug people!" she's saying. "That's what I do! I'm physical!" Although my bag's still waiting back on her couch, Lucinda gives no signal that she's eager to head home. "You left your stuff at her place?" a bystander says, grinning. "You never shoulda done that."

So Lucinda does something generous and unthinkable: She suggests that I sneak into her house. More precisely, she gives her keys and the security-alarm code to a friend of hers, without hesitation, and kisses me goodbye, and the friend drives me back to the condo, and I wander in and grab my stuff.

It's only then, when I'm back on the stoop, that I realize the night has ended exactly as it began: I'm at Lucinda's house, and she's out there, somewhere, without her keys.

*****************************************************************************************

Feel free to send e-mail with news, comments, whatever to either Marq or Barry or both.

Please note this is not an official Lucinda Williams site.

Copyright © 2001 All names, images, music, and other items contained within are copyrighted material of the respective artists and/or their representative agents unless otherwise specified (where known). All material presented is strictly intended to increase public exposure and awareness of the music of Lucinda Williams. If anyone has objections to the use of any of these, please contact Marq and said items will be removed.

Visit the Official Lucinda Williams Website

Back to the unofficial front page