Lucinda Williams – Chimes of freedom
Easily half of the album’s contents, especially languorous meditations such as “Fancy Funeral” and “Everything Has Changed”, would have sounded at home on any of Lucinda’s studio records from Car Wheels forward. Not, however, the cracked violin descant on “Come On”, a ravaged kiss-off, or the pulsatronic “Rescue” (Willner’s favorite track on the album), or the cymbal triplets, creeping fiddle lines and shimmering funk guitar on “Where Is My Love?”
Furthest out, in many respects, is “Wrap My Head Around That”, a recriminating, nine-minute rap pricked by spikes of freeform violin and guitar. The closest analogy to what’s happening productionwise on the album might be Tropicalia, not in rhythmic terms, or even necessarily in affect, but in terms of imagination, the sense of play that attends even the darkest moments on the record. Freed from the strictures of Americana, or even rock, yet still grounded in them, Lucinda sounds positively unbound.
The first glimmer of this abandon and absence of self-censorship in her work came after Car Wheels, the second consecutive album she labored and labored to deliver. “It wasn’t until I got to the Essence record that I suddenly found a window of freedom where I went, ‘OK, can I get away with this? Can I do a song like ‘Lonely Girls’? You know, more of a pop song, where the words are real simple. Or ‘Feel Your Love’ or ‘Are You Down’, where the music kind of takes over a little bit from the lyrics.
“I found it liberating. After Car Wheels I’d set some really high standards for myself, and I felt like everybody was looking at me through a microscope and I was like, ‘What am I going to do? I’ve got to come up another album’s worth of songs that are like the ones on Car Wheels.’
“I’d gone through that before and was really struggling. It was terrifying. I was getting pressured to get songs written because we had to get a record out. That was when I kind of turned and decided to try different styles. I didn’t know how people were going to react, and sure enough, I got a little flack about Essence in the press. They said it was such a slow record, that it wasn’t like Car Wheels and this and that.
“So that’s kind of what started me to move in a different direction. I was starting to write more for myself I guess. It was a combination I think of getting more experienced in the studio, and a little more confident, and a little braver. It’s still not a totally relaxing experience for me, but I’m getting better at it, and I’ve certainly grown a lot as a writer and musician and a singer. Just being more relaxed about what I’m writing — you know, not feeling like everything has to be a long, involved narrative song.”
When wracked with doubt, she says, she looks to the career of Bob Dylan for encouragement. “I’ve been a fan of his since I heard Highway 61 Revisited in 1965,” she began. “I’ve watched how his records changed over the years and the criticism that he got,” she went on, alluding to everything from Dylan’s “going electric” to his fundamentalist Christian phase to his perennial refusal to give his audience what they want.
“It became really evident to me about the time I was doing Essence. Time Out Of Mind had just come out. I thought it was beautiful, just gorgeous and musical, but it was really different. But I remember reading a review — this was when I was still living in Nashville. The reviewer in the Nashville paper gave it a bad review. The guy said, ‘What is this? He’s not saying anything. The lyrics are too simple.’
“I sort of had that same thing when Essence came out, some of the reviewers saying, ‘What is this song “Lonely Girls?” She just repeats that line over and over, and the album’s too slow.’ But now, when I play live, people yell out for that song. It’s been one of those things that it’s taken people awhile to accept.
“I’ve seen the same thing happen with a lot of Bob Dylan’s records and Neil Young’s records. Artists like that, they’re still with it, doing their thing, and it’s because they’re doing their own thing. So it’s helped me to look to them for support and backup. It’s like they’re saying to me, ‘It’s OK. You can’t please everybody.'”
If the process of making Essence set this experimental license in motion, Lucinda’s move to the west coast consolidated it. “There weren’t so many ghosts out here,” she said, referring to Los Angeles. “When I go back to Austin there are so many ghosts there. That’s where I lived with Clyde Woodward, who I wrote ‘Lake Charles’ about.
“And the same with New Orleans. It would be hard for me to go back there now. It goes so far back. I used to play at this little place called Andy’s on Bourbon Street, which was this little folk club back in the early ’70s. My mother [who died in 2004] lived there after she and my dad split up. It’s always been one of my homes.”
Then there’s Nashville, where there are ghosts too. “I’ve gotten into some trouble down there, hanging out with R.B. Morris and Bo Ramsey and Dub Cornett,” Lucinda said, laughing under her breath. “I have fond memories of that time but Nashville’s a hard place to be in when you’re single, and I’d been involved in this relationship and it wasn’t working out. It was just time to move on.”
Lucinda had previously lived in Los Angeles before she moved to Nashville, but instead of phantoms out west, she discovered camaraderie and inspiration. “I came back and found this really thriving roots music community similar to the one that was here when I left in the mid-’80s. People like the Lonesome Strangers, Rosie Flores, Victoria Williams and Peter Case and the Blasters. It was interesting to find that a lot of those people were still here. Then there were the new people I met. This big family of musicians and clubs had grown. It was really invigorating.”