Speaker 1: Pushkin. Lucinda Williams is defining convention while most of her
Speaker 1: peers have settled into a well worn groove. The sixty
Speaker 1: seven year old alt country icon just released an album
Speaker 1: that's way more punk than country. Lucinda's early projects worth
Speaker 1: Folkways Records, and sonically she fit right in with the
Speaker 1: label's other releases by Wittie Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Leadbelly,
Speaker 1: But her first big success came in the late eighties
Speaker 1: after she left her folky persona behind in favor of
Speaker 1: a more modern sound, something like a Bonnie Rate meets
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen, and now she's changing it up again. She
Speaker 1: compares her latest albums Raw Grit to early Stooges Records.
Speaker 1: Lucinda's snarling and growling all over the place like she
Speaker 1: was iggy pop, and she's getting critical acclaim. Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: says her album is electric fine and calls it her
Speaker 1: best release in years. Lucina spoke with Bruce Headlam from
Speaker 1: her home in Nashville about her evolving sound and how
Speaker 1: her new album was influenced by politics and an abusive relationship.
Speaker 1: This is broken record, Liner notes for the digital age,
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmonds here's Bruce Headlam and Lucinda Williams. We
Speaker 1: should mention we are doing this over a zoom. You
Speaker 1: just lost part of your roof in a tornado. Youre
Speaker 1: in a tough few months, but there's been real losses too,
Speaker 1: and I don't to dwell on it. But two people
Speaker 1: you knew, John Prime and Hold Wilner who records. Could
Speaker 1: you just tell me maybe about the first time you
Speaker 1: met John Prime? Yeah, well, I was. Yeah. We found
Speaker 1: out about both of their deaths on the same day,
Speaker 1: by the way, which was yeah, the day from hell. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: I was living here in the nineties in Nashville, and
Speaker 1: in no way a minute. I met John before that,
Speaker 1: after I first moved to Los Angeles in the mid eighties,
Speaker 1: and I want to play at the It's a famous
Speaker 1: folk festival in Canada that's been going on for a
Speaker 1: long time. Yeah, I think it was a Miraposa Folk
Speaker 1: festival and John was there. He was on the bill,
Speaker 1: and I have a photograph of us actually that somebody
Speaker 1: took from there. And that's when I first met him,
Speaker 1: And then flashed forward several years later, I'm living in
Speaker 1: Nashville as he had. He was living here it's a
Speaker 1: fairly small city, and it was even smaller then, and
Speaker 1: you know, so we crossed paths again and he asked
Speaker 1: me to open some shows farm and then. But the
Speaker 1: story that I always remember that gets that I always
Speaker 1: loved to tell is when John and I decided to
Speaker 1: try to write together. And so we met for drinks
Speaker 1: and dinner at this cafe and then we went over
Speaker 1: to the Old Boys studio, his studio at Old Boy
Speaker 1: Records on Music Row at the time. And it was
Speaker 1: when I was working on the car songs for Car
Speaker 1: Wheels and I had Drunken Angel I'd been working on forever,
Speaker 1: and I was stuck with that song. I couldn't seem
Speaker 1: to finish it. So I thought I would show it
Speaker 1: to him it see if you had any ideas for it.
Speaker 1: And so he came up with some a couple of
Speaker 1: longs that were great for John Prime song, but not
Speaker 1: you know, Connie, you know that great fly, witty humor
Speaker 1: he had right, you know, but they didn't really fit
Speaker 1: for lis in the Williams song. And he knew that.
Speaker 1: I knew it, He knew it, and we just you know,
Speaker 1: the rest of the night, and we just laughed and
Speaker 1: you know, played songs and you know, talked until the
Speaker 1: sun came up, and you know, it's one of the
Speaker 1: best evenings I've ever spent, you know, with another songwriter
Speaker 1: and so and of course I sang on a couple
Speaker 1: of albums with him, a couple of songs on some
Speaker 1: albums and you know, so tell me about because how
Speaker 1: will Nor produced one of your albums and I'm how
Speaker 1: Willer produced the West album. Yeah, and that was a shock,
Speaker 1: um because we didn't even know he got the supermar anything.
Speaker 1: You know, he wasn't in the hospital or anything. It
Speaker 1: was just how will Nor died? You know. So with
Speaker 1: John we knew, of course, you know, he was in
Speaker 1: the hospital, and you know, there was always that possibility,
Speaker 1: which shouldn't make it easier, of course, But with how
Speaker 1: we had no for warning at all. Yeah, So we
Speaker 1: should we should talk. We're gonna talk about a lot
Speaker 1: of things, but we should talk about the new record.
Speaker 1: It's got a heavy, almost garage band sound. Now you've
Speaker 1: done that a lot, like and Suffering Me and change
Speaker 1: these I have done that and I've wanted to do
Speaker 1: more of that, you know for this one. Did you
Speaker 1: do you write the songs and then get in the
Speaker 1: studio and think, I know it makes sense or do
Speaker 1: the songs come prepackaged with like that fuzzy guitar? Oh?
Speaker 1: I just you know, I go through a writing phase.
Speaker 1: Well I'm always you know, coming up with lines and
Speaker 1: notes and this. You know, I keep it running, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like a briefcase full of songs that are
Speaker 1: half finished, or titles for songs, ideas for songs and wet.
Speaker 1: That's an ongoing thing. But I'm not a little discipline
Speaker 1: where I'll sit down every single day and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna work on writing. You know, I don't do that.
Speaker 1: I should do that, I guess, but whatever that's I've
Speaker 1: accepted that about myself. You know, it seems to be
Speaker 1: working for you, so don't change it now. Anyway it
Speaker 1: comes out, I get them out, so whatever it takes.
Speaker 1: So I get in that writing mode and then I'm
Speaker 1: just writing, writing writing, you know, for like two weeks three.
Speaker 1: This just all came together kind of magically. I mean
Speaker 1: we went in with with Ray Kennedy. Ray had invited
Speaker 1: us just to come in and do a couple of
Speaker 1: tracks just to see what happens kind of thing. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like this big official, Okay, we're gonna do
Speaker 1: the whole album with that Ray and with Ray and
Speaker 1: his studio, So even that was really was kind of spontaneous.
Speaker 1: You know. We went in and we were in between tours,
Speaker 1: so we didn't have that much time. We had a
Speaker 1: couple of few days in between Rhyns, and we went
Speaker 1: in and started putting a couple of things down, and
Speaker 1: right off the bat we knew, you know, there's we
Speaker 1: got something here, you know, and somehow rageous. I mean,
Speaker 1: he just tuned right in to you know, the sound
Speaker 1: and everything. I guess there's a combination of Ray's expertise
Speaker 1: that acoustics in the studio. You never really know, you know.
Speaker 1: At one point I asked Thomas, said, you know, just hypothetically,
Speaker 1: what would happen if we took Ray and went to
Speaker 1: a different studio, you know, would we get this same sound?
Speaker 1: And at one point Tom said, I don't think we would.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just all those things, you know, happening
Speaker 1: at the same time to make it work. And do
Speaker 1: you think it's a sound that just suits these songs? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. And we cut some other ones too,
Speaker 1: but it became evident at a certain point, there's a
Speaker 1: certain sound here and these sort of songs are working
Speaker 1: really well that you know, it's starting to come into
Speaker 1: place like that. A lot of people have talked about
Speaker 1: the sound of the record, but to me, what was
Speaker 1: really a shift few was a lot of the language
Speaker 1: in the record, because and I think most people when
Speaker 1: they think of you, think of you know you very
Speaker 1: evocative language and not just visual images. You know, you've
Speaker 1: car wheels on a gravel road and maybe one of
Speaker 1: my favorite lines of years, which is heavy Blankets cover
Speaker 1: Lonely Girls Girls. Yeah, this album, the language is much
Speaker 1: more it's it's more direct, but it's more apocalyptic. For
Speaker 1: the lack of a better I don't know, yeah, was
Speaker 1: it was it deliberate? Were you trying to put away
Speaker 1: some of your older ideas or not really? Because you know,
Speaker 1: I have some of their songs that are more you know,
Speaker 1: they're kind of like what you're talking about, but you know,
Speaker 1: I just didn't put them on this album. It just
Speaker 1: felt like the right time to do. I just right
Speaker 1: off the bat. I loved the sound that we were
Speaker 1: getting in the studeo and it felt very free, It
Speaker 1: felt liberating, it cathartic to the band felt this way too.
Speaker 1: Everybody's in the same you know, we're all feeling this
Speaker 1: amst and this frustration and anger, and but it's a
Speaker 1: healthy anger. It's you know, that kind of anger like
Speaker 1: I want to change things and we got to do something.
Speaker 1: It's kind there's a sense of desperation, I think right now,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it's pretty things that reached a
Speaker 1: pretty uh crucial point, right you know, in this country,
Speaker 1: and so I guess I just felt like this is
Speaker 1: a hand to kind of, you know, take myself out
Speaker 1: of it a little bit and just kind of but
Speaker 1: I'm still in there though, you know. Yeah, But but
Speaker 1: it's just they're more kind of universal, not necessarily political songs,
Speaker 1: just more songs for humanity. I guess maybe the thing
Speaker 1: is that all started happening at the same time that
Speaker 1: Tom and I got engaged and got married and everything,
Speaker 1: and so that that was obviously a big, huge change
Speaker 1: in my life. And as a songwriter, I was aware
Speaker 1: of the fact that, you know, it was kind of
Speaker 1: a test also to tell you the truth, you know,
Speaker 1: to see if I could do this, because you know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't keep writing unrequired love songs forever. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I had to branch out into other things, which I've
Speaker 1: been wanting to do. Anyway, is that work? I mean
Speaker 1: it's a pretty dark record, yeah, but but I feel
Speaker 1: like it's a hopeful still. But you know, I've always
Speaker 1: had people say my music was dark, even as far
Speaker 1: back as Sweet Old World, you know, because I had
Speaker 1: two songs on there about suicide. Yeah, you know, Sweet
Speaker 1: Old World and Pontyola and right. You know, people would say,
Speaker 1: oh god, you know your songs are so dark. But
Speaker 1: I've always dug in there. You know, I've always like
Speaker 1: gone beneeds a surface and dug out the dirt and
Speaker 1: pulled it up for everybody to see. You know. It's like,
Speaker 1: this is come on people, you know, I wake off.
Speaker 1: I mean that's always been me, and I guess this
Speaker 1: is it just kind of maybe pushed it a little
Speaker 1: bit more that way, you know, and people are going, well,
Speaker 1: it really couldn't have come out at a better time.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody's just responding. It's like a salve that
Speaker 1: that's the response I'm getting more as people are saying
Speaker 1: thank you, I needed this, kind of saying tell me
Speaker 1: a bit about you don't run. Sorry, you don't run me. Um,
Speaker 1: I got the name wrong. Oh you don't rule me,
Speaker 1: you don't rule me. I'm sorry. Listen, we're all on
Speaker 1: the same It's like, yeah, you find it hard to focus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of people are talking about that.
Speaker 1: It's hard to focus. That's why I'm glad I have
Speaker 1: all this press and everything right now, because it gives
Speaker 1: me something to focus on, you know, like I have
Speaker 1: to get up by a certain time. I have to
Speaker 1: do this, you know, because otherwise I'm just I'm like
Speaker 1: sitting on the caps and crosser puss right, you know too. Actually,
Speaker 1: I was getting a big step in my mind with
Speaker 1: U you Don't Own Me that Leslie Gore song, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I love that song song, you
Speaker 1: know what? And they're similar actually, um, but anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got that from there's a Memphis Minting song by
Speaker 1: the same title. And yeah, I discovered her music a
Speaker 1: long time ago, back in the seventies. Yeah you did.
Speaker 1: You did Me and my Chauffeur on your record, that
Speaker 1: Me and My Chauffeur blues on the first Folkways album.
Speaker 1: So you know, she was a real important um musical
Speaker 1: figure for me because you know, to my knowledge, she
Speaker 1: was at least not the only one, but one of
Speaker 1: a handful. You could probably count them on one hand
Speaker 1: of women who played guitar and wrote their own songs.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, so this is one that she recorded
Speaker 1: that her version is more the personal thing, you know,
Speaker 1: to the to her man saying you can't rule me,
Speaker 1: you can't take my money to you know, she always wrote,
Speaker 1: all of her songs are about all these bad moons,
Speaker 1: you know, you did her wrong and everything. So you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of made it more topical, I guess, or
Speaker 1: you know, this is you can't rule me beautiful love
Speaker 1: that dotted line, uh line, Yeah, the the dotted line
Speaker 1: Aben song. I love that. I admit a little bit
Speaker 1: of me I want I went back a little bit
Speaker 1: of me wanted that to be in the Memphis Mini version.
Speaker 1: I went back and looked it wasn't. Yeah, it's real similar.
Speaker 1: It's it's funny how that song and the Leslie Gore
Speaker 1: song they're they're personal songs that sort of become political
Speaker 1: songs in a way. Or yeah, what Aretha Franklin did
Speaker 1: with respect. Yes that's a I love that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that analogy that comparison. That's great. When you write
Speaker 1: a political song like that or a song that's politically changed,
Speaker 1: how's that different than when you're writing a personal song.
Speaker 1: Are they come easier? Are they harder? I still approach
Speaker 1: it a lot in the same way. I mean, um,
Speaker 1: because I still have to feel like I'm in it
Speaker 1: and it's coming from me. You know. It's something that
Speaker 1: I'm frustrated about too, So it's not like I'm separating
Speaker 1: myself from the song, but um, I think it is.
Speaker 1: To me, it's been harder in the past to write
Speaker 1: political songs or topical songs in the way that because
Speaker 1: I always wanted to be able to write one like
Speaker 1: Masters of War, you know, the Bob Dylan protest songs
Speaker 1: that I grew up listening to. Hard Rain's Going to Fall,
Speaker 1: you know, times they are changing, and you know those
Speaker 1: kinds of songs. Those are you know, taking a stab
Speaker 1: at it over the years. But to me, like, I
Speaker 1: don't really call them protest songs. That's why don't we
Speaker 1: call them that, because it's more about the suffering of
Speaker 1: people and humanity and and the rights of people, and
Speaker 1: like I have five the same feelings or that song,
Speaker 1: you know, more and to be loved. You weren't born
Speaker 1: to suffer. You weren't born When I sing, when I
Speaker 1: wrote that song, when I see it, I think about
Speaker 1: child abuse, you know, I think about the rights of
Speaker 1: that children don't have and these little kids that are
Speaker 1: you know, abused and beaten up and thrown into a closet,
Speaker 1: and you know a lot of dark stuff that's that's
Speaker 1: in that song. But it might not just be writing
Speaker 1: your face, right, you know, you do have a very
Speaker 1: harrowing song on this album about an abusive relationship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was me. Yeah, I used to judge and say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, um, that's never gonna be you know, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't let that happen, you know, And there I was.
Speaker 1: You know, I met this guy. He was sober. When
Speaker 1: I met him. He was living in a The most
Speaker 1: stupid thing I've ever done. He was living in a
Speaker 1: sober living house. Right, that's the aubrety of it. And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, why could possibly go wrong? The guy's sober.
Speaker 1: Isn't a siber living house, you know, I didn't know,
Speaker 1: you know, stupid me. Hello, is somebody's in a sober
Speaker 1: living house. They're there for a reason, They're not supposed
Speaker 1: to leave, you know, and move in with you. You know,
Speaker 1: so he moves out of the sober living house in
Speaker 1: with me, and surprise, surprise, you know, starts first. It
Speaker 1: just starts off with a little drinking X thing. You know,
Speaker 1: he's you know, down in the basement of the house
Speaker 1: shooting speedballs, you know. So, um, you know, it just escalated.
Speaker 1: The only one I could look at it now, it
Speaker 1: was a it was a you know, it was a lesson.
Speaker 1: It was just a proofing point that it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: you know what race you are, you know, what class
Speaker 1: you're from, or what you know, any of that. You know,
Speaker 1: you can find yourself in those situations. You know. Do
Speaker 1: you ever think sort of bay analogy because you're talking
Speaker 1: about the political situation? Um, you said, like, how did
Speaker 1: you let yourself get into a bad personal situation? Do
Speaker 1: you ever wonder how you see the country getting in
Speaker 1: a bad political situation? Yeah, I guess it's a it's
Speaker 1: interesting when you said that, I started suddenly seeing this
Speaker 1: kind of metaphor something running between the domestic abuse you
Speaker 1: know situation, and then the situation with you know, Trump
Speaker 1: and his cronies and everything, you know, because I mean
Speaker 1: it does feel like abuse. It feels like a national abuse, right,
Speaker 1: you know, we're all being abused. Actually, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't feel we don't feel cared for, we don't feel comforted.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with Lucinda Williams. After a quick break,
Speaker 1: we're back with more of Bruce's conversation with Lucinda Williams.
Speaker 1: Do you worry that because your stuff hasn't been explicitly
Speaker 1: political before, that it's going to turn off some of
Speaker 1: your audience. I'm probably gonna lose some fans, you know,
Speaker 1: But so be it. I mean I thought about it, honestly.
Speaker 1: I thought the song that was going to desturb people
Speaker 1: that most would be waking up, you know, because it's
Speaker 1: so just right in her face. But the song that's
Speaker 1: been the one but that's not really a political song,
Speaker 1: but the song that's probably obviously most people you would
Speaker 1: probably think would be the one that it is happening with. So,
Speaker 1: which is man without a soul? And you did you?
Speaker 1: I read a story that you posted that that's it.
Speaker 1: There was an article it came out in New Yor
Speaker 1: Times that ironically and I said something like, um, where
Speaker 1: is the where is the soul of Donald Trump or
Speaker 1: something like that, and we were all welling, Wow, this
Speaker 1: is really interesting. I wonder if he ever wrote the
Speaker 1: article had heard the song, or is it just a coincidence.
Speaker 1: So anyway, we posted a link to the article with
Speaker 1: a link to the song. Man, I thought a soul
Speaker 1: on my Facebook page and I started looking at it
Speaker 1: one night and started seeing all the comments that were
Speaker 1: coming in, and I was shocked to see some of them.
Speaker 1: One of them said, well, I thought Lucinda was a
Speaker 1: compassionate person. You know, she wrote that song compassion. This
Speaker 1: isn't compassionate. She has no right to write a song
Speaker 1: like this. This isn't right. That really bothered me, Like
Speaker 1: I am a compassionate person. Well, wasn't that one of
Speaker 1: the songs that was taken from one of the poems
Speaker 1: of your father Noah. That's what they were talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, they said, He's he were here ever once,
Speaker 1: and she wrote this song compassion. He says, I don't
Speaker 1: see anything compassionate at all about this, Like I was
Speaker 1: just I had gone over the line, right. See. Now
Speaker 1: I'm worried about this song. Man. It's out a soul.
Speaker 1: There's an enough compassion, and I'm gonna be worried. Now
Speaker 1: you should stop worrying. That songs completely transformed when you
Speaker 1: do it that way. Yeah, it's it's it doesn't it's
Speaker 1: like it just tightens around your heart that time. I know.
Speaker 1: I want to let's see. I like the acoustic version
Speaker 1: I did on this, the demo version I like better
Speaker 1: than I like my vocal better on I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll put out a put out an acoustic version.
Speaker 1: Yeah version, you know, it is a different thing, it's
Speaker 1: a different feel. Yeah, this song was. Tom brought this
Speaker 1: song to me, He brought the idea to me, and
Speaker 1: I actually resisted it first, you know, because I started
Speaker 1: felt that way like you know, remember that song that
Speaker 1: Neil Young, that line in a Neil Young song where
Speaker 1: he says, even Richard Nixon has got sould. And we
Speaker 1: talked about you know, I said, well, you know, everybody's
Speaker 1: got a soul. Even Donald Trump has a soul, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know. And then Tom said, well, just look at
Speaker 1: it as an expression, don't. It's not meant to be
Speaker 1: taken literally. And and also Tom said when he was
Speaker 1: first writing the song, when he was looking at it,
Speaker 1: he was imagining the guy in my abusive relationship, he
Speaker 1: said he was to him, it's as much about something
Speaker 1: like that as it is the present United States. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily you know, he keeps He was telling he
Speaker 1: would tell me, don't tell people it's about Trump. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be, you know. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not telling people it's about Trump. They're telling me,
Speaker 1: you know, people here and they go that song about Trump.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, So now I'm kind of stuck with that.
Speaker 1: And you know, will let me ask you, do you
Speaker 1: have the guy in the abusive relationship? Do you feel
Speaker 1: compassion for him in some way or not? Yes, I
Speaker 1: feel compassionate for you know, that's just how I am.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel sorry for Donald Trump, you know
Speaker 1: I do. He said, he's mentally ill. He needs help,
Speaker 1: he needs, but he doesn't need to be trying to
Speaker 1: run the country. If you just you just hurry out
Speaker 1: an album called I Feel Sorry for Donald Trump. I
Speaker 1: think all your fans will come. We'll just come back.
Speaker 1: You can walk the streets of Tennessee and you'll be safe.
Speaker 1: People are losing friends over this, I mean, never mind fans.
Speaker 1: You know, people are unfriending people right and left on Facebook.
Speaker 1: You know. I mean, I have a cousin. I have
Speaker 1: a first cousin who I've adore, I love and simply adore,
Speaker 1: who became a Trump person, Trump supporter. And I was
Speaker 1: shocked because our grandfather was a socialist, Democrat, methodist minister,
Speaker 1: civil rights supporter and equal rights and all of that.
Speaker 1: That's the family I come from my dad's side, and
Speaker 1: here is my cousin. What happens to people? I do
Speaker 1: want to talk a bit more about your family. Not
Speaker 1: everybody grows up in the in a household with a
Speaker 1: famous poet. Did he influence your early writing directly? I'm sure.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he did. I'm sure as work did. I mean,
Speaker 1: when I started writing songs, I would show him, you know,
Speaker 1: I was. My father and I were real close. We
Speaker 1: bonded for when I was very young, you know, because
Speaker 1: if my mother was suffering from pretty severe mental illness,
Speaker 1: and so my dad would kind of take the you know,
Speaker 1: sort of take up the slack, so to speak. You know.
Speaker 1: So he and I were really close. And so as
Speaker 1: soon as I learned to read and write, I was
Speaker 1: writing little points and stories and things, you know. You know,
Speaker 1: then that turned into I started taking guitar lescens when
Speaker 1: I was twelve years old, the nineteen sixty five, and
Speaker 1: then I started, you know, writing songs and all. And
Speaker 1: you know, the more I got into that I started,
Speaker 1: I would show in some things and he would he
Speaker 1: would critique it really like a real you know, professor.
Speaker 1: You know, he would be real honest with me and
Speaker 1: but gentle, but honest, you know, and give me constructive
Speaker 1: criticism and suggestions. And so I certainly learned definitely from it.
Speaker 1: Was almost like an apprenticeship in a way, you know,
Speaker 1: um or built in creative writing course at home, you know,
Speaker 1: because I never studied it in school. So that was
Speaker 1: kind of that was that was where I learned probably
Speaker 1: the craft of it of it. I did hear a
Speaker 1: story that your father once took you to meet Flannery O'Connor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were living in Macon, Georgia, and that's where I
Speaker 1: went to. UM first, I started school there, So I
Speaker 1: was I was pretty young. I was about six years old,
Speaker 1: I guess maybe. And um she lived in Miligile, Georgia
Speaker 1: in her old family farm farmhouse. And um so my
Speaker 1: dad and she he considered her his his teacher, you know,
Speaker 1: she was his mentor. They had been communicating and talking
Speaker 1: on the phone and writing letters mostly, and so now
Speaker 1: that we were in Mapon, she invited my dad to
Speaker 1: go to drive over to Millageville and visit it one afternoon.
Speaker 1: So he took me with him Flan where he had
Speaker 1: a very regimented writing schedule, you know. And so when
Speaker 1: we got there, she wasn't quite done with her writing period,
Speaker 1: you know. We got there about half an hour before
Speaker 1: she was finished. So my dad said he remembers seeing
Speaker 1: her the Venetian blinds to close, you know, and she
Speaker 1: was working in the room and she pulled the blinds down,
Speaker 1: and her housekeeper came out. We were on the front porch,
Speaker 1: and her housekeeper came out and said, mister Williams, but
Speaker 1: missus flan where he's not quite done yet. You'll have
Speaker 1: to wait out here on the porch. Very southern, very
Speaker 1: old South, you know. And um, so we waited on
Speaker 1: the porch, and then after a little bit the housekeeper
Speaker 1: came opened the front screen door and said, okay, mister Williams,
Speaker 1: you can come in, and and I stayed outside and
Speaker 1: played with her chase or peacocks apparently. So that's my
Speaker 1: memory of it. But and then I when I became
Speaker 1: a teenager, I read everything of herst I just devoured it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she had a great line. Um, uh, you know, somebody
Speaker 1: asked her Southern Gothic, you know why, why is the South?
Speaker 1: I have so many freaks, and she said, we don't
Speaker 1: have more freaks than anybody else, We're just better at
Speaker 1: recognizing them. Yes, that was such a great line. Why
Speaker 1: can't I think it's something I'd like that to say? Oh,
Speaker 1: you thought of plenty things, plenty of I mean when
Speaker 1: I when I read her stuff though, it all just
Speaker 1: made so much sense to me. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: so God, I know what that person. I've seen that
Speaker 1: person obviously now you know, my mother's son of the family.
Speaker 1: For God's sake, you know. We'll be back with more
Speaker 1: from Lucinda Williams. After a quick break, we're back with
Speaker 1: Lucinda Williams performing Shadows and Doubts from her new album
Speaker 1: Good Souls, Better Angels. Wow. That was fantastic. Thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm real proud of that one. Where did that come from? Well, um,
Speaker 1: you know it's open for interpretation. You know, I wrote
Speaker 1: it about someone I know personally who was having problems
Speaker 1: with this the whole me Too movement thing, and had
Speaker 1: been accusing some things, and um, you know, so the
Speaker 1: first time I've known anyone who was going through that,
Speaker 1: and you know, nothing had been proving you but of course,
Speaker 1: you know, all the accusations start rolling in and storming in,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know, everybody abandoned him. He lost
Speaker 1: his management, and he was supposed to have an album
Speaker 1: or two albums were supposed to be coming out. Those
Speaker 1: got shelved, and I mean just you know, his whole
Speaker 1: world's collapsed for and you know, he's an artist I've
Speaker 1: always admired, you know, as far as his artistry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know I was able to It's a song
Speaker 1: about compassion again, you know, and it could be about
Speaker 1: I think it could be about anybody who's a victim,
Speaker 1: if you will of you know, the press or and
Speaker 1: all of that. You know, people are talking about you,
Speaker 1: and you know the misunderstandings that come from with all that.
Speaker 1: You know, tell me about when the Way gets dark. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, that's one of my simpler songs that at
Speaker 1: first I thought even I wondered if if it was
Speaker 1: even good enough. I guess because it didn't really have those,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess that kind of depth or something,
Speaker 1: you know, lyrically, but there's something about it, the simplicity,
Speaker 1: I think one out, you know, And I started experimenting
Speaker 1: with that kind of writing when I did when I
Speaker 1: was doing Essence, the songs or Essence, because the thing
Speaker 1: is like Car Wheels really set the bar, you know,
Speaker 1: from our song writing goes. And so as soon as
Speaker 1: I had to start working on songs for the next
Speaker 1: album after Car Wheels, it was really challenging because I thought, well,
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do. I'm gonna have to always
Speaker 1: be writing songs, and you know, these narrative involved songs
Speaker 1: that some of which take a long time to write,
Speaker 1: you know. So with Essence, I gave my self permission
Speaker 1: to kind of just write some of these like are
Speaker 1: You Down, you know, which is as far by the
Speaker 1: music a short day, by the way, is that right? Okay?
Speaker 1: And it's just like this little simple song. But now
Speaker 1: when we play it, it's a great lot because the
Speaker 1: band takes off and does this whole you know, kind
Speaker 1: of musical interlude thing and people are dancing and stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know, I kind of have to every now
Speaker 1: and then I have to remind myself it's okay. Every
Speaker 1: single song doesn't have to be this literary infused narrative masterpiece,
Speaker 1: you know, like so, you know, but sometimes I worry
Speaker 1: about that. Have you been tempted? And I'm sure you're
Speaker 1: asked this all the time to do sort of a
Speaker 1: bigger literary form like a novel or a short story
Speaker 1: or being a songwriter. One time I got asked to
Speaker 1: I think actually Rosie and Cash was this was years
Speaker 1: and years ago in the nineties, who was asking as
Speaker 1: songwriters to take one of their songs and make a
Speaker 1: shark story out of it. And I thought the first
Speaker 1: one that came to mind at that time. I was
Speaker 1: going to try it with Connie Old that song because
Speaker 1: it had such a great story behind it, you know.
Speaker 1: But I sat down to try to do it and
Speaker 1: found it to be I felt, you know, found it
Speaker 1: to be very challenging. And I don't know, maybe it's
Speaker 1: because I grew up around poets and novelists and I
Speaker 1: sort of felt, like, you know, my dad kind of
Speaker 1: drummed and kind of drilled into me that, you know
Speaker 1: the difference between portray and songwriting for instance, you know,
Speaker 1: like I remember one time I gave him something that
Speaker 1: I thought might become a poem and because I wasn't sure,
Speaker 1: you know, and so I gave it to him and
Speaker 1: he said, you wrote me back and said, honey, I
Speaker 1: think this wants to be a song, you know. And
Speaker 1: there's kind of that sense of like I'm deploy the songwriter. Well,
Speaker 1: I think you should go back. You should go back
Speaker 1: and do that. Throws in cash. I have the I
Speaker 1: have this fantasy of, you know, when I'm older, having
Speaker 1: a big old house and one of those big, nice
Speaker 1: control desk and control chairs, and I'm sitting there, you know,
Speaker 1: working on my novel Shining comes in mind, and bringing
Speaker 1: little sandwiches and then looks at the you know, looks
Speaker 1: at the typewriter and I'm typing the same thing over
Speaker 1: and over again. Now, I think you should do it,
Speaker 1: and you should call the book cover version. You have
Speaker 1: to cover your own songs in short stories. Okay, I've
Speaker 1: taken up so much your time. It's been really wonderful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has. I thought I've made any fun round. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to Williams, for taking the time to chat
Speaker 1: with and perform for Bruce. You can hear a new
Speaker 1: album and all our favorite loosen to Williams songs. But
Speaker 1: heading to Broken Record podcast dot com and be sure
Speaker 1: to check out our YouTube channel. We're putting up all
Speaker 1: our old episodes and our new ones, sometimes with bonus content.
Speaker 1: You can subscribe at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast.
Speaker 1: Broken Record is produced with help from Jason Gambrell, Neil LaBelle,
Speaker 1: Leo Rose, and Martin Gonzalez for Pushkin Industries. Our theme
Speaker 1: musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.