Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Lucinda Williams is on the phone from Los Angeles, where she lives with husband and manager Tom Overby.<\/p>\n
That is, when they\u2019re not in Nashville, where the couple also have a home. Or New York, where she celebrated the release of her politically charged album, World\u2019s Gone Wrong, earlier this year at Lucinda\u2019s, the Lower East Side country bar she co-owns.<\/a> (And where she programmed the jukebox.) <\/p>\n \u201cI feel like I always have one foot going out the door,\u201d says the singer-guitarist who was an obvious choice as one of the 30 greatest living American songwriters on the New York Times, otherwise highly debatable rage bait, list this month.<\/a> (Philly-centric objection number one: Where are Gamble & Huff?) <\/p>\n Williams has been habitually on the go reaching back to a childhood with her late father, poet Miller Williams, with whom she moved a dozen times before she was 18, living in college towns throughout the American South as well as Mexico City and Santiago, Chile.<\/p>\n Those travels gave names to evocative Williams songs like \u201cCrescent City,\u201d \u201cLake Charles,\u201d and \u201cPineola.\u201d Filled with longing and regret, joy and sadness, they map a Southern gothic upbringing with rough-cut elegance and literary flair. \u201cA little bit of dirt, mixed with tears,\u201d is how she put it on her 1998 classic Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. <\/p>\n The next stop on Williams\u2019 ongoing road trip is Philadelphia, a city she has played numerous times over the years<\/a>, with shows at the long gone Chestnut Cabaret, recent dates at the Scottish Rite Auditorium in Collingswood<\/a>, and multiple stops at the Theatre of the Living Arts on South Street.<\/p>\n One night she remembers her band taking her for a cheesesteak, brought back to the car with a cup of hot chocolate. \u201cAnd I have to tell people, that is the most amazing combination,\u201d she says in her immediately identifiable Louisiana drawl. \u201cIt was like 3 in the morning, and the best thing I ever had in my life.\u201d Where was this magical combo? She can\u2019t recall. <\/p>\n Williams will play two shows in support of World\u2019s Gone Wrong at Union Transfer on Monday and Tuesday<\/a>, with a band including guitarists Doug Pettibone and Marc Ford, bass player David Sutton, and drummer Brady Blade. She hasn\u2019t played guitar on stage since suffering a stroke in 2020.<\/p>\n \u201cI always wanted to have a band,\u201d says Williams, 73, whose first two albums, Ramblin\u2019 On My Mind (1979) and Happy Woman Blues (1980) were recorded for the Smithsonian Folkways label. She gained wider renown in 1988 with Lucinda Williams, whose songs would be covered by Tom Petty, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Emmylou Harris. <\/p>\n \u201cBut I was looked at as a country or folk singer \u2014 you know, a singer-songwriter \u2014 because I played acoustic guitar.\u201d As explained in her 2023 memoir Don\u2019t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, she always aimed to be \u201ca literary rock singer.\u201d She cites Patti Smith and particularly Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders as role models.<\/p>\n The artist of that ilk, who has shaped Williams immeasurably, is Bob Dylan, who released an album of his own called World Gone Wrong in 1993. \u201cOf course, my favorite album for forever has been Highway 61 Revisited,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n She met Dylan at Folk City in Greenwich Village in the 1970s, and last year, when doing dates together on Willie Nelson\u2019s Outlaw Music Tour, she was summoned to speak with him. <\/p>\n Dylan expressed admiration for Williams\u2019 version of \u201cHard Time Killin\u2019 Floor Blues,\u201d a song by Mississippi bluesman Skip James, who\u2019s buried in Merion Memorial Park cemetery in <\/a>Bala Cynwyd<\/a>. <\/p>\n Gospel great Mavis Staples<\/a> \u2014 who joins Williams on a cover of Bob Marley\u2019s \u201cSo Much Trouble in the World\u201d on World\u2019s Gone Wrong \u2014 had told Williams that Dylan was aware a journalist had referred to Williams as \u201cthe female Bob Dylan.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI mentioned that to Bob,\u201d Williams says. \u201cAnd then this is the part that made my entire life: He looked at me and said, \u2018Well, who else would it be?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Williams began to write the songs on World\u2019s Gone Wrong, which includes a duet with Norah Jones on \u201cWe\u2019ve Come Too Far to Turn Around,\u201d during the first Trump administration. <\/p>\n \u201cThis just happened organically,\u201d she says. \u201cThere was just stuff in the news that was insane every single day, on TV, or in the paper. It was pervasive. And I was in writing mode, so it was top of mind.\u201d <\/p>\n Williams has been remarkably consistent and productive over the past 30 years, with career highlights like 2001\u2019s Essence, which she thinks might be her best record. Underrated gems include the 2014 double album Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone and 2018\u2019s Vanished Gardens, with jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd. <\/p>\n She writes \u201cregularly, all the time. When the muse strikes, I\u2019m always ready with a pen and paper, just in case. I look at it like baking cookies, almost. They\u2019re in the oven, but they\u2019re not ready yet.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cSongs like \u201cDrunken Angel\u201d and \u201cLake Charles\u201c [from Car Wheels], those took a long time.\u201d Her supernatural masterpiece, \u201cChange the Locks,\u201d however, came quick. \u201cThat one just sort of fell out of me.\u201d <\/p>\n She prefers \u201ctopical,\u201d rather than \u201cprotest,\u201d to describe World\u2019s Gone Wrong songs like the title track, which brings to life a woman for whom \u201cdark days are getting long, so she looks for comfort in a song.\u201d <\/p>\n Addressing the state of the world, she was wary of sounding didactic.<\/p>\n Topical songs \u201care hard to write. It\u2019s easy to get overly sentimental and preachy. Or like \u2018Everybody hold hands and stand around in a circle.\u2019 It\u2019s harder to write something like [Dylan\u2019s] \u201dMasters of War\u201d that really stands the test of time.\u201d<\/p>\n A blood clot in her brain caused her stroke in 2020. It\u2019s had lasting effects, but Williams praises the care she received after being rushed to Nashville\u2019s Vanderbilt Medical Center. \u201cI was fortunate. They got me into physical therapy right away, and I think that made a big difference,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n \u201cAt the risk of sounding not humble enough,\u201d the health scare \u201cmade me realize I have an inner strength that maybe I didn\u2019t know I had before.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know if I was going to be able to stand up in front of a microphone. I might have to sit in a chair. But then I started to get strong enough to stand up and walk, and I was able to sing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was kind of scared. Kind of nervous about it. I wanted to make sure I did a good enough job. I didn\u2019t want to let my stroke turn into a \u2018feel sorry for me\u2019 thing. So I just sort of barreled through. That surprised some people. That comes from my stubbornness, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n An Evening with Lucinda Williams and Her Band at Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden<\/a> St., at 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday. utphilly.com.<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min Lucinda Williams is on the phone from Los Angeles, where she lives with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":803131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,327006,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-803130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-lucinda-williams-bob-dylan","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116590667924368521","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}