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Guitarist Singer Songwriter Lucinda Williams
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Three-time Grammy winner Lucinda Williams reveals her lyrical sensuality, heart-wrenching honesty and incisive songwriting in her music. The object of cultish adoration for years, singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams was universally hailed as a major talent by both critics and fellow musicians, but it took quite some time for her to parlay that respect into a measure of attention from the general public. Despite an endless series of troubles, Lucinda Williams (Louisiana-raised but bcased in Texas) has managed to craft a strong persona of progressive country-rocker and songwriter a` la Gram Parsons. Part of the reason was her legendary perfectionism: Williams released records only infrequently, often taking years to hone both the material and the recordings thereof. Plus, her early catalog was issued on smaller labels that agreed to her insistence on creative control but didn't have the resources or staying power to fully promote her music.
After an introductory collection of covers, Ramblin' On My Mind (Folkaways), Williams painted a humble fresco of southern female issues on Happy Woman Blues (Folkways, 1980), a loose mixture of bar ballads, rock riffs, square dances (I Lost It), catchy refrains (Maria, Hard Road). The album failed so badly that Williams did not re-enter a studio for nine years. In 1984 she moved to Los Angeles.
Williams was born in Lake Charles, LA, on January 26, 1953. Her father was Miller Williams, a literature professor and published poet who passed on not only his love of language, but also of Delta blues and Hank Williams. The family moved frequently, as Miller took teaching posts at colleges around Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas, and even Mexico City and Santiago, Chile. Meanwhile, Lucinda discovered folk music (especially Joan Baez) through her mother and was galvanized into trying her own hand at singing and writing songs after hearing Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. Immersed in a college environment, she was also exposed to '60s rock and more challenging singer/songwriters like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. She started performing folk songs publicly in New Orleans and during the family's sojourn in Mexico City. In 1969, she was ejected from high school for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and she spent a year working her way through a reading list supplied by her father before leaving home. Williams performed around New Orleans as a folk artist who mixed covers with traditional-styled originals.
In 1974, she relocated to Austin, TX, and became part of that city's burgeoning roots-music scene; she later split time between Austin and Houston, and then moved to New York. A demo tape got her the chance to record for the Smithsonian's Folkways label, and she went to Jackson, MS, to lay down her first album at the Malaco studios.
Ramblin' on My Mind (later retitled simply Ramblin') was released in 1979 and featured a selection of traditional blues, country, folk, and Cajun songs. Williams returned to Houston to record the follow-up, 1980's Happy Woman Blues. As her first album of original compositions, it was an important step forward, and although it wasmuch more bound by the dictates of tradition than her genre-hopping later work, her talent was already in evidence. However, it would be some time before that talent was fully realized. Lucinda Williams (Rought Trade, 1988) aligned her original blend of country, blues, cajun and gospel with the alternative rockers rather than the Nashville crowd. This album alone included more standards than most Nashville stars can use in an entire career: the jangling folk-rock of I Just Want To See You So Bad, the violin-drivenm, soulful Crescent City, the slow passionate singalong The Night's Too Long, the catchy tex-mex melody Big Red Sun Blues, the bluesy Changed the Locks, the poppy Passionate Kisses, the "Hawaian" lullaby Am I Too Blue, the stately hymn Side Of The Road. Williams then took four more years to release Sweet Old World (Chameleon, 1993), boasting her poppiest tune, Six Blocks Away, besides love songs such as Something About What Happens When We Talk, the thrilling Hot Blood, Lines Around Your Eyes, and the funereal elegies He Never Got Enough Love, Little Angel and Sweet Old World.
Needless to say, the record won rave reviews once again, and Williams toured Australia with Rosanne Cash and Mary Chapin Carpenter. On that tour, Carpenter decided to record "Passionate Kisses," the key track and statement of purpose from Lucinda Williams. It shot into the country Top Five in 1993 and won its writer a Grammy for Country Song of the Year. Other artists soon started mining Williams' back catalog for material: avowed fan Emmylou Harris recorded "Crescent City" on 1993's Cowgirl's Prayer and cut "Sweet Old World" for her 1995 alternative country landmark Wrecking Ball; plus, Tom Petty covered "Changed the Locks" for 1996's movie-related She's the One. As the buzz around Williams grew, so did anticipation for her next album. With Chameleon having gone under, she signed with Rick Rubin's American Recordings label and began sessions with Morlix again co-producing. Dissatisfied with the results, Williams' rigorous retouchings led to Morlix's departure from the project and her backing band.
Lucinda Williams then relocated to Nashville and began the painstaking process of assembling Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (Mercury, 1998), only her fifth album in a twenty-year career. The raw, energetic, straight in your face, style of Drunken Angel and Metal Firecracker is at odds with her traditional austerity. The nostalgic vignettes of Jackson and Lake Charles, the plaintive blues Can't Let Go, the delicate romance of Right In Time, the lyrical elegy of Still I Long for Your Kiss and the philosophical stomp of Joy show middle-age issues leaking through the juvenile strength of the music. After that artistic triumph, it is a surprise to listen to Williams' suddenly reborn voice on Essence (Lost Highway, 2001). Aided by guitarist Charlie Sexton, the 48-year old Williams has composed a concept album about the sore ending of her relationship with a long-time companion. But the sorrow and the anger are channeled mostly through pop songs like Out Of Touch and Lonely Girls, hardly the Williams who caused panic with Drunken Angel.
The track "Get Right With God" won Williams her third Grammy, this time for Best Female Rock Vocal, which further consolidated her credibility as a singer, not just a songwriter.
2005 saw the release of two live recordings, one (Live @ The Fillmore) for Lost Highway and the other (Live from Austin, TX) for New West. The mark of a true artist is to synthesize various musical elements and then create something
that’s so completely original. Lucinda
Williams has definitely captured that spirit and sense of artistic vibrancy.
Jacks Mannequin - Andrew W/ Lucinda Williams
NPR Radio - Lucinda Williams Live
Lucinda Williams' performance from the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. originally Web cast live on NPR.org on August 8, 2005 as part of a series of live shows from NPR Music's All Songs Considered. Previous concerts are listed at right. Set list Ventura Fruits of My Labor Those Three Days Pineola Drunken Angel Jailhouse Tears I Lost It Knowing Out of Touch Still I Long For Your Kiss Righteously Where is My Love Essence Joy Encore Lake Charles Blue Unsuffer Me Sweet Old World Doors of Heaven Come to Me Baby
NPR Radio - Lucinda Williams Live
Updated: 3/4/07
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