LUCINDA WILLIAMS

Born: Lake Charles, Louisiana, 26 January, 1953

Genre: Country, Blues Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998)

Hit songs since 1990: "Still I Long for Your Kiss," "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," "Get Right with God"

Perfectionist, impressionist, and unmistakably southern, Lucinda Williams is a singer/songwriter whose most commercially and critically acclaimed work, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998), came after spending two decades in the music business. Williams is known in music circles for being stubbornly principled; she is so painstakingly precise in her approach to the entire process, from the inception of a song to an album's final mixing, that years often go by in between albums. Williams struggled for most of the early part of her career not only to develop her particular voice but also to find a record label that respected her as an individual and not as a marketing tool. Car Wheels earned her scores of kudos, ending up on many music publications' year-end lists and winning three Grammy Awards, in disparate
but not totally unrelated categories—Best Country Song, Best Contemporary Folk Album, and Best Female Rock Vocal. Williams is uncompromising and skilled, and writes songs that feel like the rough-hewn but well-written diary of a restless wanderer with a feisty spirit.

A Born Wanderer

Williams was raised throughout the South by Miller Williams, her English literature professor father. They moved from one college town to another, with stops in Mexico City and Santiago, Chile. Her mother, Lucille, a musician, was a great influence as well, though her parents' divorce at age eleven put Lucinda in her father's custody. Early in life she earned an appreciation for the blues and rock, showing a particular affinity for the guitar by age twelve and an enthusiasm for Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. Later she got into blues greats including Robert Johnson. By the time she was twenty-one, she had moved to Austin, Texas, and was part of a scene of singers and songwriters that included Patti Griffin and Lyle Lovett.

After moving to Texas in her early twenties and spending a good deal of time playing her own material and a mix of traditional blues and folk in clubs and bars, she landed a deal with Folkways Records. In 1979 the independent label released her debut record, Ramblin' on My Mind. Her career did not really take off until she moved to Los Angeles, California, but she was again stymied by a development deal with CBS Records in the mid-1980s that ended abruptly and with little explanation. Finally, in the late 1980s, after earning the respect of her peers, who helped her gain exposure by letting her sing on their albums, Williams released a couple of albums that landed her a little closer to rock: Lucinda Williams (1988) and Sweet Old World (1992). The latter includes a cover of a Nick Drake song, illustrating her kinship with beautiful, intricate melodies that are emotionally compelling and distilled to their essence.

From the late 1980s to early 1990s, Williams appeared on tribute albums for Merle Haggard and Victoria Williams, and Mary Chapin Carpenter scored a hit with Williams's song "Passionate Kisses." She got lucky again when "Still I Long for Your Kiss," a song she contributed to the soundtrack of the immensely successful Robert Redford film The Horse Whisperer (1997), became a hit, the same year she released her Grammy Award-winning album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

A Perfectionist at Heart

Both Sweet Old World (1993) and Car Wheels on a Gravel Road lingered for three years in production before Williams was satisfied; such attention to detail ensured that the end result was nothing short of perfection, which critics were quick to point out after both releases. Her restless, nomadic nature prevails throughout the aptly titled Car Wheels, especially on the title track. The refrain simply repeats the name of the song, but the imagery in the verses provides a snapshot of her childhood. Other highlights of the album include "2 Kool 2 Be 4-gotten" an homage to one of her musical heroes, Robert Johnson. On "Can't Let Go," Williams takes the lusty, slide-guitar shuffle penned by Randy Weeks to new heights. Her wrecked, wrought voice sings, "I'm broken down / Like a train wreck / It's over / I know / And I can't let go." Atop a bed of jangly guitars, woeful, wailing slide guitars, and mandolins, Williams's voice dips, wavers, and breaks off at all the right emotional moments, simultaneously conveying innocence and experience. Car Wheels, which mixes blues with folk, rock, and country music, features guest appearances by a stellar roster of well-regarded folk-blues musicians, including Emmylou Harris ("Greenville"), Jim Lauderdale ("Lake Charles," "I Lost It"), Buddy Miller, and Steve Earle.

After endless touring, Williams took only a few years before releasing the critically hailed Essence (2001). The title track is the emotional centerpiece of the album, which conveys a more subdued side of Williams, although contemplations on religion ("Get Right with God") are present. But Essence, critics were quick to point out, did not compare to Car Wheels ; there are no foot-stomping, kick-up-some-dust rockers because the album's emotional core is far more unadorned and intimate.

In Spring 2003 Williams released the raw, rocking, sultry blues-rock album World without Tears, another stunning example of her meticulously detailed lyrics and blistering honesty, especially evident on the midtempo, smoldering tune "Righteously" and the straightforward, Rolling Stones–influenced "Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings." Williams even dabbles with spoken word on "American Dream," and the title track is a thoughtful, hopeful ballad with an eye toward the future.

Williams's signature style is literate narration, which remains a constant on all her albums. From the dusty, blues-rock travelogue of longing, desire, and confusion on Car Wheels, to the honest, unadorned structure of Essence, to the rock of World without Tears, Lucinda Williams displays a unique blend of rock, blues, country, and folk.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Lucinda Williams (Rough Trade, 1988); Sweet Old World (Chameleon, 1992); Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (Mercury, 1998); Essence (Lost Highway, 2001); World without Tears (Lost Highway, 2003). Soundtrack: The Horse Whisperer: Songs from and Inspired by the Motion Picture (MCA, 1998).

carrie havranek