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Lucinda Williams | page 1, 2
And her father influenced her music in other ways. As the Williams family followed Miller's career and restlessness to various Southern university towns, "Cindy" got to know the places that would later figure prominently in her songs. And the music she heard as she was growing up -- Miller was a devoted Hank Williams fan (the family is not related), while her mother leaned more toward Joan Baez -- had a lasting impact on her sensibility. When Williams was 12, she picked up a guitar a friend had left at her house and tried to play. "The first songs I did were from John and Alan Lomax's books of folk songs," she told the Washington Post in 1989. "I literally sat down with those books and my folk records. I can't read music, so I would listen, figure out the melody from the records and find the words in the books. That's all I did; I had no other interests." She eventually took guitar lessons, but only learned specific songs to build a repertoire; she never has learned to read music. Bukka White, Robert Johnson, Neil Young and Peter, Paul and Mary were some of her early favorites. But it was Bob Dylan who really grabbed her. "Highway 61 Revisited" came out in 1965, the year she started playing guitar, and, as she told the Journal of Country Music, "That was it for me. I had somehow found the combination, the link of heavy, intense, brave lyrics -- he'd obviously listened to a lot of blues -- great melodies, and a voice that wasn't perfect." She could have been describing her own music. Williams' voice is unforgettably, gorgeously "flawed." It twangs, purrs, quavers and cracks, conveying strength and vulnerability, release and dammed-up emotion at the same time. It has a raw casualness that, given Williams' attention to detail, can only be the result of study and practice. "I've always had an awareness of my voice being distinct," she said in the JCM. "A lot of the time I feel kind of limited vocally. I can hear it in my head, but I can't pull it off. I'm restricted because of my range. I just don't have that kind of voice, that kind of range -- you know, like even Emmy has, or like Joni Mitchell. When I first started out those were the voices I wanted to sound like. Eventually, though, you have to come to terms with your limitations, which, in turn, become your trademark." Williams had just started playing in bars in New Orleans -- doing covers of Dylan, Baez and Joni Mitchell as well as her own songs -- when her father got a teaching job in Mexico City and the family moved south of the border. Some of her father's friends at the State Department suggested that Williams and Clark Jones, a family friend, perform concerts at Mexican schools as a goodwill gesture. "We went to high schools, colleges. It was a little scary," she told the JCM. "We were famous American folk singers as far as they were concerned. They made these big posters and would always misspell his name: 'Clarck Jones and Cindy Williams!' Like it was Peter, Paul and Mary to them." She wasn't a famous American folk singer -- yet. Back in the U.S., she displayed her father's rambling tendencies and split
her time between the music scenes in Austin and Houston for about 10 years. She later drifted through Los
Angeles and New York before settling in Nashville, where she lives today
with her boyfriend of about four years, bassist Richard Price. Until meeting
Price, Williams had a rocky love life (as reflected in her many songs of
breakups and loneliness), including a short-lived marriage in the mid-1980s
to drummer Greg Sowders. "Richard's the only man I've ever been involved
with who wasn't threatened by my success," Williams told Us magazine last
year. In 1980 she cut her first album of original work, "Happy Woman Blues," which seamlessly mixes musical traditions. With an economy of words, she conjures images and moods that take the listener to Dixie. The raucous "Lafayette" is an anthem for a town where "we danced all night long to a sweet Cajun song/Drinkin' and jivin' till dawn." "Maria" is a profile of a woman who was "born to roam." And there's a foot-tapping, carefree version of "I Lost It," which appears in a slower form on "Car Wheels." It was her next album, however, that put Williams on the map. After CBS turned her down, she took her demo tape to the British indie punk label Rough Trade, which immediately signed her. "Lucinda Williams" came out in 1988. Dobros and mandolins mix with electric and acoustic guitars. Romance gets a variety of treatments in these songs, from the irrepressible "I Just Wanted to See You So Bad" to the slightly paranoid "Changed the Locks" to the self-preserving "The Side of the Road." Now available as a reissue from Koch, the album was highly acclaimed and sold close to 100,000 copies -- a small coup for an independent label. "Sweet Old World," released on Chameleon in 1992, was not the breakout album fans were expecting after the eponymous album. It can seem too traditionally folky for the eclectic Williams. As always, though, the songs are meticulously written. "Pineola" is a picture of stunned grief inspired by the suicide of her friend poet Frank Stanford. The title track is also about suicide: "See what you lost when you left this world," Williams croons. And she covers "Which Will" by Nick Drake, the British folk singer who killed himself in 1974. Fans got what they wanted with "Car Wheels," though. And the six long years they had to wait only sweetened the reward. Williams has always focused on the art, not commercial success -- how many musicians fight to get out of their major-label contracts? Still, she must be pleased with her new popularity. For one thing, it amounts to a big "I told you so" -- she has been doing things her way all along and now it has paid off. And it's unlikely anyone will try to force her to compromise again. That's good news for Williams fans. Few musicians today produce songs that are so closely linked -- in form and content -- to the South. Certainly none do so with as much originality, eclecticism and literary artistry as Williams. "I like to pay homage, it's like a respect thing almost, like being proud of where you're from and proud of your roots," she said in an interview this year with Addicted to Noise. "I think everybody should be proud of where they're from."
- - - - - - - - - - - - Sound off Related Salon stories Road warrior The rocky path to Lucinda Williams' "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" was paved with good intentions.
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