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It was a little after 10 p.m. on Tuesday, and Lucinda Williams had just sauntered out of the back room. She faced a small crowd of something like 150 people, about to play a private show christening the bar she\u2019s blessed with her name. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna play music and have fun because that\u2019s what this bar is all about. Dirt and sweat,\u201d she said. Then her band broke into the rollicking \u201cLet\u2019s Get the Band Back Together,\u201d the 2023 song she wrote with Jesse Malin and her husband, Tom Overby.<\/p>\n
Malin is a prince of punk who was 12 when he helped start the hardcore band Heart Attack, a \u201cmayor of the East Village\u201d type who has also opened bars like Niagara. In 2019, he tapped Williams to help him on his album Sunset Kids. The two musicians have remained friends. (This past December, she joined Elvis Costello, J Mascis, and more onstage for a benefit concert for Malin, who had suffered a rare spinal stroke.) Now, Malin has acted as a connector to bring Williams downtown: The \u201cDrunken Angel\u201d singer has lent her name to the bar, Lucinda\u2019s<\/a>, at a storied downtown address.<\/p>\n The space that was once home to Brownie\u2019s, the bar that Vice once called \u201cthe Manhattan venue to catch non-terrible indie rock,\u201d will officially reopen to the public tonight. After Brownie\u2019s closed, its booker Mike Stuto opened HiFi, which was home to a 4,000-song jukebox. It closed in 2018. Most recently, the space was home to Heaven Can Wait and some remnants of that space (like the big lightbulbs above the stage) remain. Williams is one of three partners in the bar, along with Laura McCarthy (who opened Niagara with Malin and was an owner of Brownie\u2019s among other bars) and Kelley Swindall, a folk musician and East Village bar manager. \u201cI\u2019m kind of going through this realization that, Wow, this is actually happening. There\u2019s going to be a bar in New York City named after me,\u201d Williams told me on Monday. \u201cIt\u2019s funny because somebody said last night how in Nashville all the big country stars have bars. Tim McGraw and whoever else. But I\u2019ve got one in New York City.\u201d<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Williams played a ten-song set that was a mix of newer songs like \u201cLowlife\u201d and classics. When the band went into \u201cDrunken Angel,\u201d one audience member started crying tears of joy and didn\u2019t stop for several more songs. Laura Cantrell, the Nashville-born and Jackson Heights\u2013based country artist, was the opening act. The bar was buzzing all night, people drinking High Lifes. A paper on the wall advertised a blitzing mix of tequila and Cherry Heering. A woman was in a black cowboy hat and dark jean jacket with \u201cSin City\u201d embroidered on the back, a dude was wearing a floral western shirt.<\/p>\n \n Williams performed at her new bar earlier this week. The walls are decorated with framed art from the rock-and-roll photographer Danny Clinch, outsider artist Mike Worthington, and Waco Brothers member Jon Langford. There\u2019s memorabilia like a \u201cJimmy Carter for President\u201d poster and a Sister Rosetta Tharpe varsity jacket. Muddy Waters gets a heavy feature, via a memorial poster on one wall and a concert bill on another. Williams helped with all the art, and she\u2019s also curated the playlist that she said is heavy on Delta blues. \u201cI want it to feel like those kind of bars where you go in and it has local flavor. I mean that was kind of the reason for the southern folk art and the Delta blues music and that sort of thing,\u201d Williams told me.<\/p>\n On the jukebox upfront, there\u2019s a lot of Tim McGraw, Drive-by Truckers, the Carter Family, Ray Charles, and a \u201cToby Keith Mix.\u201d They\u2019ll have plenty of live music, too. Fridays are for live-band country karaoke, and songwriter open mics are on Sundays. On August 28, they\u2019ll host East Village Cxntry Club, a queer country party. When we spoke, I shared with Williams one of the common complaints among New Yorkers these days: that so many smaller venues have gone the way of Brownie\u2019s. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly it. We wanted to have a place that we would want to go to, you know?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n What they wanted, she went on, was a laid-back bar where the music is cool but not too loud.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, she closed out her set with \u201cJoy,\u201d from her record Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. The crowd looked thrilled and so did she. \u201cThank you all for being here at Lucinda\u2019s little old dive bar in little old New York City,\u201d she said, before exiting the stage.<\/p>\n \n Inside Lucinda\u2019s. EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Grub Street newsletter.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/6c641d9fdf35c5f7521052a7432aead9f0-1-2--.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Vivian Wang\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/2fc84b981b5d03adfe9010296c909824bb-2-7--.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Vivian Wang\n <\/p>\n