BARRY'S NOTES - July 2003

BARRY'S NOTES - July 2003

Lucinda's tour with Neil Young continues, and there are some excellent newspaper articles, including this one which preceded the show in Toronto, Canada:

Lucinda Williams arguably at the peak of her musical powers at age 50

DAVID BAUDER
Canadian Press
Thursday, June 19, 2003

Musician Lucinda Williams poses in this undated publicity photo. (AP/Danny Clinch)

NEW YORK (AP) - It's morning for Lucinda Williams. Actually, it's 4:30 in the afternoon. But that's early when you were drinking with Ryan Adams and other pals until 6 a.m.

John Coltrane is playing on the hotel room stereo, and the bed is unmade. Williams is living the rock 'n' roll life at age 50. There's a new tattoo, a buff body toned by boxing class. She's arguably at the peak of her musical powers, having just earned an enthusiastic thumbs-up from her toughest critic - her dad.

It's worth lifting a lyric from her new album - "I been tryin' to enjoy all the fruits of my labour" - and asking, "Are you?"

"I don't know," she said. "I'm trying."

It's not an easy question.

"Sometimes we have a hard time feeling OK about having good things come to us," she said. "You have to feel like you deserve it. You have to get used to it."

Williams is two years removed from being labelled the best songwriter in the U.S. by Time magazine - the kind of weighty accolade that could either boost confidence or paralyze with pressure.

For Williams, it was a confidence-raiser that's evident in the grooves of World Without Tears, her latest disc and most varied, adventurous work.

Williams' music has always been an uncategorizable mix of country, folk, rock and blues. Here, she stretches even those boundaries with some half-spoken, half-sung numbers that are almost blues-rap, some gutbucket blues, a show-stopping rocker and country ballads that could have been written for Patsy Cline.

Glowing reviews, she's used to that. What she hadn't received before was an unqualified thumbs-up from her father, poet Miller Williams. Whenever she completes an album, she sends a copy of the lyrics to her father, and always gets a marked-up copy in return.

Not this time.

"He didn't have any criticisms - not one single one, which was a first," she said proudly. It made me feel great. I said, 'Does that mean I've graduated?' "

He said: "This is the closest thing to poetry that you've done."

Williams has always been a meticulous writer, constantly looking for the perfect image. That's the polite version. During the six years before Car Wheels on a Gravel Road in 1998, she did so much rewriting and re-recording she was considered a neurotic perfectionist.

You don't hear that as much anymore. World Without Tears is her second album in three years, and she doesn't skimp on the vivid imagery.

Others might say to a lost lover: "I miss you." Williams' version: "Scorpions crawl across my screen, make their home beneath my skin, underneath my dress stick their tongues, bite through flesh down to the bone. And I have been so (expletive) alone."

She gives some credit for her prolific streak to a common songwriting hero, Bob Dylan. Williams said she's writing fewer narratives now and more about emotions after seeing Dylan go in a similar direction lately.

One good example is the jumble of images in Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings, a searing rocker that's a tribute to singer Paul Westerberg, whom she considers a kindred spirit.

The public support she's received has also made her more confident in her work, she said.

"My feeling is that she's real comfortable with her career, the way that it's progressing," said Luke Lewis, president of Lost Highway, Williams' record company.

Williams seemed to listen to a lot more music before making this album, he said. She's always been well-steeped in the music of the 1960s and early '70s, but this time she seemed to delve into more blues, he said.

"Her tastes have always been varied and I'm not so sure why a lot of her records hadn't been that way before," he said.

Lewis recounted a dinner he had in New Orleans with Williams recently, where he was trying to sell her on the idea of making a first-ever music video. He was making some progress until the people at the next table politely asked Williams for an autograph.

"She turned around and said to me, 'If I make a video, that's going to happen twice as often. I don't want to do it.' "

Williams admits that it's cliche, but she sometimes feels that success isn't all it's cracked up to be.

"I've achieved everything I have ever dreamed about, basically," she said. "But I'm also going through that transition in my life now. I'm not 25, I'm 50. It didn't start happening for me until I was in my 40s."

Like fellow travellers Stevie Nicks and Sheryl Crow, Williams has learned that professional success comes with a personal price. It's tough to maintain relationships, particularly when your pool of available men is filled with other musicians.

"To me, this is a lot harder than it was when I was sleeping on someone's couch and playing for tips in Austin, Texas in 1974," she said. "There wasn't the pressure. People didn't know who I was then. Most of the day-to-day struggles were in trying to pay my rent."

Coltrane's over. Now playing is Neil Young, whom Williams is supporting on a lengthy summer tour. Williams has another meeting.

She ushers a visitor to the door, saying not to hesitate to call if anything is unclear.

"I know how important it is to get the details exactly right," she says.

Prior to her gig in Chicago, this article appeared in a local paper:

Chicago Daily Southtown - June 16, 2003
Great expectations
By Alan Sculley

Few artists face bigger expectations with each album than Lucinda Williams.
The past decade-plus has brought a string of records that have consistently landed Williams on year-end top 10 lists, beginning with her 1988 self-titled CD and continuing through "Sweet Old World" (1992), "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" (1998) and "Essence" (2001).

In 2001, Time magazine named her America's best songwriter, a notion that would probably be seconded by her fans. Williams' affecting blend of country, blues and rock, coupled with lyrics that are earthy, honest and often jarringly emotional make her albums a deep and powerful listening experience.

The fact that Williams has also begun to enjoy considerable commercial success — the Grammy-winning "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" went gold and brought her to the cusp of mainstream stardom — has only raised the stakes for each new CD.

But to hear Williams tell it, she long ago figured out how to keep the pressure of great expectations from affecting her creative process.

"I already sort of got through the hump of that," said Williams, who recently released a new CD, "World Without Tears," and who opens for Neil Young and Crazy Horse Tuesday at the United Center in Chicago.

"I actually had a harder time after I did (her 1988 self-titled release on Rough Trade Records), before the next one after that ("Sweet Old World").

"That's when I really felt the pressure because I wasn't used to (the pressure) of just having to write and put another record out. All of a sudden, everybody really discovered me with that Rough Trade record. That was when all the attention came in and I wasn't used to it. That's when I really felt that pressure. But now I'm kind of, I've gotten comfortable with it."

As Williams hinted, she had some difficult times after the "Lucinda Williams" album (her third overall) arrived and established her as a major emerging talent on the music scene. Although that CD made few waves with record buyers upon its release, it earned stellar reviews and included a pair of songs that later gained major attention when they were covered by other artists "Passionate Kisses" (a big hit for Mary Chapin Carpenter) and "The Night's Too Long" (covered by Patty Loveless).

But "Sweet Old World" took four years to complete, as Williams scrapped two versions of the CD before recording a third version she felt was worthy of release.

"Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" also went through a protracted birth, with Williams doing three recording sessons with three different producers before completing the CD. Six years after "Sweet Old World," the "Car Wheels" CD finally arrived in stores.

Williams doesn't deny the creative struggles of those two albums, but said disagreements with her record labels were bigger factors in the long waits for those two CDs.

"Between Rough Trade (which went under after the 'Lucinda Williams' album was released) and 'Car Wheels,' I was on three different record labels, or four actually," she said.

Mercury released "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," and then Williams shifted over to Lost Highway Records, a Nashville label owned by the same parent company as Mercury, where she has found a compatible label home.

So perhaps it's no coincidence that both "Essence" and now "World Without Tears" have been released in prompt succession. And both CDs have continued to cement Williams' stature as a premier artist.

What's more, Williams continues to stretch as a songwriter and performer.

Producer Mark Howard (known for his work with Bob Dylan and U2) helped Williams achieve her most raw and edgy, yet intimate CD yet by recording Williams and her band live in a room of a 1920s mansion in Los Angeles.

Lyrically, "Word Without Tears" has plenty of strengths, too, whether it's the raw passion in "Righteously," the heartbreak and disappointment of "Those Three Days" or the sympathy and sadness of "Sweet Side," which chronicles how childhood abuse continues to hamper a lover's attempts at intimacy.

In fact, for all the praise Williams' earlier lyrics have drawn, she is most proud of her efforts on "World Without Tears." A main source of this feeling is Williams' father, the noted poet Miller Williams, who has served as a sounding board on all of her records.

When Williams asked her father for feedback, he said he wouldn't change any of the work and told her the lyrics to her new songs were the closest she had come to poetry.

Lucinda Williams

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday
Where: United Center, 1901 W. Madison St., Chicago
Tickets: $35 to $85
Information: (312) 559-1212 or www.ticketmaster.com
Etc.: Neil Young and Crazy Horse will headline

Here is an article from a few months ago, when the new CD was released:

>From the Chicago Tribune
A few firsts flow from Lucinda Williams' `Tears'
By Glenn Gamboa
Tribune Newspapers: Newsday

April 17 2003

AUSTIN, Texas -- Lucinda Williams is apologizing -- in her own way.

"I'm torn," she tells the packed Austin Music Hall. "What do I do? I'm trying to introduce y'all to some new material. If we had two hours, we'd play the new stuff and the old. But we don't."

At this point in her recent showcase at the South by Southwest Music Conference, she has played "Drunken Angel" from her classic "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" album and followed it with seven new songs from "World Without Tears," her latest album.

It's clear she's debating whether she wants to please the crowd with some familiar songs or if she wants to please herself. Williams pauses, looks at her bandmates and nods her head -- before launching into the new album's title track. She follows that with another new song, "Atonement," before she has to leave the stage because she has gone over her allotted time.

"That's the music business for you," she says as she leaves the stage. "Music and business, they try to get along, but somehow, they manage to [expletive] each other."

So much for fans' worries that Williams was growing too cozy with the music industry.

Sure, "World Without Tears," which arrived in stores Tuesday, comes an industry-friendly two years after her last release. Yes, it's got some possible radio-friendly hits such as the stunning ballad "Over Time" and the first single, "Righteously." And Williams will be the first to say she is embracing parts of the L.A. lifestyle -- the yoga, the nightlife, the ocean.

Recording is challenging

But fans can rest easy. Williams, dubbed "America's Best Songwriter" by Time magazine, hasn't changed too many of her ways. Recording a new album is still a challenge, no matter how well they seem to turn out.

"I'm just so damn hard on myself," Williams says a few days before the Austin concert. "It's ridiculous. I'm my own worst enemy. Making a record for me is such an arduous process. It's just painstaking. It's just -- uhhh -- the attention to detail is agonizing, everything from the inside photos and the booklet. I choose to be in control 24/7. Consequently, that means that I'm exhausted all the time.

"It'd be a lot easier if I just went in and said, Whatever, `if I could hire a producer and just say, Produce me,"' she continues, laughing at the sheer impossibility of the prospect. "Yeah, Produce me."'

Of course, albums like "World Without Tears" don't happen very often. An early front-runner in the album of the year sweepstakes, the ambitious "World Without Tears" marks a lot of firsts for Williams. It's the first album, other than her debut, that she recorded after road-testing the material. It's the first time she's recorded with her touring band -- guitarist Doug Pettibone, drummer-keyboardist Jim Christie and bassist Taras Prodaniuk. It's also the first time she raps. Yes, that's right, Lucinda Williams raps.

In fact, her rap on the song "American Dream" sounds natural enough. "I had the song, sort of. I had the melody and the `Everything is wrong' chorus, but I wasn't sure what to do with it," she says. "The band deserves a lot of the credit. We just started jamming on this thing, and Jimmy Christie set up this loop thing, which was a whole new thing to me. I jumped onstage and started speaking the lyrics, and it sort of worked. I thought, `This is cool.' "

She knows the song may take some of her fans by surprise, especially the ones yearning for the lilting alt-country of "Still I Long for Your Kiss" or "Right in Time." The song surprised her as well. "Sometimes, when something is so new and different, it kind of scares you at first," she says. "But I think it's great."

Williams, whose spoken-word style owes more to Allen Ginsberg than Lauryn Hill, says the song's lyrics were inspired in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "I was thinking of the knee-jerk patriotism happening after it," she says, before the war in Iraq began. "I've always had issues with that. I mean, I got kicked our of school in 1969 for not saying `The Pledge of Allegiance' during the Vietnam War."

"Anyway," she continues, "it's kind of a general reminder that we're not perfect. Other countries make mistakes, and we make mistakes. This song was a reaction to the overly patriotic movement that swept over the country all of a sudden. After it [the Sept. 11 attacks] happened, I pulled out the Dylan song `Masters of War' and started playing it in my sets because I thought this was appropriate. About one percent of my audiences or fanbase or whatever reacted negatively, but these people would say things like, `If Lucinda doesn't like it here, she should go over there.' I was shocked. It was like, `What happened to the rebels?' Can't we talk about how we feel?"

Ode to a different kind of rebel

Another departure is "Bleeding Fingers," Williams' ode to a different kind of rebel, former Replacements frontman Paul Westerberg. "I had just discovered his solo records, and he's a great writer, really underrated," she says. "There aren't that many great songwriters, not that many great lyricists. But he and Ryan Adams have a really great literary slant to them. They have that Dylanesque style of writing. I love the idea of pairing in-depth lyrics and a really great rock 'n' roll backdrop."

That's a stretch for the woman who helped create the whole alt-country movement, but she's fine with that.

"I like to think that I'm continuing to grow and explore," she says. "I certainly don't want to keep making the same record. I'm glad to try things that are a little bit different. It's real liberating.

"That's why I like being enigmatic," she adds with a laugh. Williams freely admits she is awash in contradictions.

"I think I'm tough and sweet," she says. "I'm traditional, but I experiment. I'm a performer, but I'm shy and old-fashioned."

Yoga is helping her deal with the anxiety of releasing "World Without Tears."

As part of that, Williams is trying to embrace the process of releasing a record -- the appearances, the interviews, the concerts. She's doing OK, except for one thing: "I hate doing photo shoots and TV shows -- maybe because it's kind of out of my hands.

Here's a review of Lucinda & Neil's show in New York:

THE VILLAGE VOICE - The Sound of the City July 2 - 8, 2003
Passionate Kiss-Offs

On a shimmering incantation to "Blue," Lucinda Williams finds a jukebox to "see what a quarter will do." A lover may be food and drink, but popular music allows intimacy to go public, and Williams exploits this fact with more guts than anyone in alt-country. Opening for Neil Young's "Greendale" tour, she had 30 minutes to come across to people she didn't know with material they didn't know. Clarity yielded control in "Still I Long for Your Kiss," which smoothed the way for "Righteously." The almost-capacity Garden became a confessional for the whispers of "Essence," and then, in case anyone thought Tom Petty had the keys, Williams "Changed the Locks" before stomping through "Joy."

From here, Young could have easily outed himself as the gravelly voiced soul singer of last year's Are You Passionate? Why he didn't was "Greendale," a 10-song cycle played by Crazy Horse, whose sound was crowded out by 30 or so actors playing small-town residents with even smaller minds. Clunky and message-laden—the anti-materialist Grandpa laments, "people used to wear what they had on"—it nevertheless casts John Ashcroft as a bad guy and, in a single pronoun, pegs blame with the banner slogan, "Support Our War." These images morphed into pleas to save the planet as eagles soared and a flag waved. The pageant's also priggish about women: Virginal protagonist Sun Green stays in at night doing homework and Carol, the only female in a miniskirt, gives Grandpa a heart attack.

To not do "Greendale," Young told the Times, would have shown "disrespect," but to whom? As we braved on, our politeness was finally rewarded by the guitar-sawing anthems we'd come to hear, and the jubilant chorus of (Keep On) "Rockin' in the Free World" celebrated Young's lifelong work to make that title a meaningful statement. Drenched in squall, we participated in the music we helped make possible—unsquashed by Young's theatrical ambition, and that restless monster of a muse. —Georgia Christgau

Lucinda & Neil Young played in Mansfield, near Boston, on July 1st & my wife & I were in the audience. We had a nice visit backstage after her opening set. Here is a review of the show from the Boston Globe:

MUSIC REVIEW
Neil Young tests fans with 'Greendale'

By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff, 7/2/2003

First things first: A hearty round of applause for indefatigable Neil Young, who keeps going out on one artistic limb after another in the name of his own ever-expanding envelope. A musical novel - complete with lip-synching cast, animated- and 8mm- film footage, cardboard cutout set, and a plot involving murder, media manipulation, corporate greed, and environmental activism - may be the last genre left for him to plumb.

That said, ''Greendale'' is a confusing, ambitious jumble of an artwork. Young and Crazy Horse performed the entire 95-minute opus, which won't be in stores until next month, for a Tweeter Center audience that was by turns incredibly generous and understandably impatient as Young wove his tale of three generations of a fictional family turned upside down by nearly every evil known to modern society.

The band was book-ended on stage by a front porch and a jail cell, which were variously inhabited by Earl and Edith Green, their children Sun and Jed, and Grandma and Grandpa. Several themes emerged during the show, whose musical component consists of laid-back three-chord rock tunes and a solo guitar ballad, all with lots and lots of lyrics. (Young relayed much of the background between songs; family trees, street maps, and a complete text can be found at www.neilyoung.com.) As the meandering story leapfrogs from Earl's psychedelic paintings to Jed's cocaine-stuffed glove box, and a dancing devil who lives in the jailhouse to Grandpa's heart attack at the hands of pushy cameramen - and a ''Fame''-style finale featuring dozens of dancing youngsters - we learn mass media is bad; big corporations are worse; we're destroying the environment; and the youth are the hope for the future.

There's not much more linear sense to be made of Young's rock opera; it's a mish mash of familiar - if noble - political statements and chord changes. It would be hard to overestimate the rush and release when Young and Crazy Horse returned for an uncorked four-song encore of ''Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black),'' ''Like a Hurricane,'' ''Powderfinger,'' and ''Rockin' in the Free World.''

Lucinda Williams opened with an hourlong set weighted heavily toward her new album, ''World Without Tears.'' Supported by a crack three-piece rhythm section - including the phenomenal guitarist Doug Pettibone - Williams scaled back the raucousness of the disc to a warm, languorous lope early on, busting out with a distortion-drenched ''Righteously'' and setting fire to a final stretch of songs. She dedicated ''Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings'' to the late Mark Sandman and closed with a hard-won read of ''Joy'' - masterfully boiling her music and her message down to hard nuggets of truth.