Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine past time for an all-LUCINDA WILLIAMS thread

She's mentioned in 10 other threads here but has none of her own... until now!


So, Lu's latest cd WEST debuted at # 14 on the album chart.
Some good stuff there if you skip the last 5 minutes of the 9-minute "Wrap My Head Around That".

The cd was a surprise Valentine's gift for me from my bf... I had no idea it was coming out. He did really good there!

In other Lu news, I recently burned an 18-track cd of my favorites from SWEET OLD WORLD, CAR WHEELS..., ESSENCE, WORLD WITHOUT TEARS and WEST. Couldn't fit everything I wanted on there. This calls for a second burning!

And, in the REAL Lu news, she's coming to Memphis April 23. I have tickets!! I'm VERY excited!! This will be my third time to see her live.

If you got yourself an iPod, you could probably load everything she's done on it...

So where are you seeing her play, Lashie? A laerger venue'd be nice for Lu's wallet, but I'm hoping it's an intimate club show. Just 'cause it's for you.

A 900-seat auditorium at UofM, so it will be fairly intimate.

Last time I saw her at the New Daisy, which was GREAT because it isn't big at all and we were right on top of her almost, but it was standing-room only on the ground level.

It'll be nice, especially for my parents, to be able to see the show seated, although I personally will miss the beer!

Despite years of hearing about her from a certain most-beloved member of all time/space/internet, I finally heard her voice a year or so ago on a duet she did with Flogging Molly (my favorite band). Her voice is unlike any I've ever heard before...I kind of like it!

Now I must make a reminder to get my 18 year old brother to *somehow* get some of her music off the internet for me and load it onto my Ipod!

(18 year olds = masters at digital piracy)

If he can, tell him to focus on the funner stuff first-- such as "Can't Let Go", "Drunken Angel", "Real Live Bleeding Fingers & Broken Guitar Strings" or "Right In Time".


You're far too new at this to handle Lu's depressing stuff yet! Songs such as "Overtime", "Reason to Cry", "Jackson" and "Sweet Old World" might melt your face!

I must first engage in laughter with my music before I cry in the dark listening to it! Thanks for the suggestions Lash!

I'll have him get a few the next time I'm at my parent's and will inform you of new developments!

As always Lash is right. Lu deserves her own thread. (What Legionnaire would she be, by the way?)

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is one of my top 5 albums, ever. I grew up in Texas, and while there was a LOT I didn't like about the place (I left at 18 and never went back to stay), I fondly remember the quirky, funky, rootsy, fishin', drinkin', lovin', losin' quality of real East Texas natives. Car Wheels takes all of that essence and turns it into music. No matter how many times I listen, I'm always transported back to a late Texas summer day, stopped at some roadhouse restaurant on the way from nowhere to nothing. It's a remarkable set of music, as brilliantly put together as any album I've ever listened to.

Haven't heard the new album yet but I'm biding my time. Have you heard the Live at the Filmore 2 disc set? You know how some artists are better recorded and some are better live? This album kicks so much ass. The live versions of her songs just sound, I dunno...better.

Almost there! You getting excited yet, Lashie???


Amen to that, UL.

*choke!* Jerry never posted to this thread!

I demand that he share any Lu anecdotes he may have floating around his brain.

And one wonders if Cobie ever Ipodded those Lu tunes, and what he might think of them...

One MLLASH/Lu anecdote: First time I saw her in concert, she was opening for Tom Petty... after her show (which RULED), I left! *tee hee!*

All good things in life flow from National Public Radio. My partner, David, and I decided during the first gulf war to boycott television for a while because we were turned off by the cable news coverage. Our main source of information, for a time, became NPR. NPR remained a stable in our house after the boycott ended. We still wake up to NPR each morning. One morning in 1992, NPR did a little interview with Lucinda and played a bit of her music when "Sweet Old World" came out. David ran out and bought the CD that day, and we've both been hooked ever since.

It's hard to believe that it took until 1998 for "Car Wheels on A Gravel Road" to come out. Lucinda again did an interview for NPR. This time it was me who ran out to buy the CD. I couldn't take it off the CD player and the lyrics to each song became lodged in my brain. We were living in Columbia, Missouri at the time. It's a small college town, and Lucinda played at a local club called the Blue Note about a month later. She was just beginning to break big and the show sold out quickly. People drove in from all over the midwest to see her. Some were following her from town to town. Several people brought bouquets of roses. I was shocked by the size of the crowd and their enthusiasm. I was standing in the front row just a few feet from Lucinda. She smiled at me several times. I was able to sing along to each song, and was amazed that most of the people in the crowd also knew all the words so soon after the album's release. Lucinda seemed touched by the response. She laughed a lot and kept shouting, "Man, this town rocks!" between songs. That was the night she did the seven song encore that I mentioned in the other thread.

David's cousin moved to Mississippi about that time. We had some close freinds move to Athens, Georgia, and we started taking fairly regular trips to New Orleans and Austin. That all added up to a lot of time driving through the south. Driving through the south with Lucinda on the CD player became something of a religious experience for me. It's hard to explain, but Lucinda fans will know what I mean.

"Essence" became much more meaningfull to David than to me. "World Without Tears" was very personal for me. I always seem to be feeling scorpians under my skin when I'm heating a can of soup since that one came out.

We got to see Lucinda once more in Columbia before we moved to New Mexico, and saw her once in Santa Fe. Both shows were great. When David got a job offer in Tucson, we were very torn on whether or not we wanted to move again. He asked me to start looking for signs. I picked up "West" at Borders on the day it came out and listened to it on the drive home from work. I took it home and told him that we had our sign. He listened to it and called the next day to accept the job offer in Tucson.

Wow--- THANK you, Jerry... I'll def. share my Lu history later... loved reading yours.

So, my first encounter with Lu's music...

It all began in the late 90s before even the formation of the LMB, and I was in a dark part of my life, a place where I realized all the plans I had had were meaningless, everything had fallen through and everything was coming apart.

So I spent a lot of time at a local hangout/bar, drowning my sorrows with others in the same boat (though most of them were a lot older than I was).


Anyhoo, on such an afternoon as this, a beautiful song bagan on the jukebox... one that was so simple yet so dripping with sorrow, drenched in sadness... I felt it grip my heart. I also felt I recognized the voice... "That's Emmylou Harris". Now Emmylou's album "Quarter Moon In a Ten-Cent Town" is a masterpeice than any Lu fan would love and should own, but at this point all I had was an old worn out 8-track of it, I hadn't listened to it in years.

So, almost as if a higher power was guiding me, I got up from my seat and staggered over to the jukebox to verify my self-proclomation that Emmylou Harris was the singer of this song. That song was entitled "GREENVILLE", referring to podunk little Greenville, Mississippi.

I was stunned to realize the singer wasn't Emmylou, but some chick named Lucinda Williams.

"Who is thish, and why does she shound so much like Emmylou?" I asked myself drunkenly.

Well, I was intrigued. I decided to sample 3 more songs-- all at random-- from this cd on the jukebox, a test to see how much like Emmylou she might sound on other tracks.

Those other tracks I selected at random were "RIGHT IN TIME", "DRUNKEN ANGEL" and "JACKSON".

That was it. I was hooked, heart and soul.

I went out and bought the cd the next day. I can't remember who it was who played "Greenville" on the jukebox that afternoon but I sure owe them a world of thanks.

(I was also pleased to note Emmylou DID sing with Lu on "Greenville"... in a way, I owe my love of Lu to that old Emmylou 8-track ("Quarter Moon...") that I have since bought an expanded CD version of)

A bar is actually the perfect place to discover Lucinda. Emmylou is a once in a generation talent. A true national treasure. Her genoristy toward Lucinda, Rosanne Cash, and Nanci Griffith makes me love her even more. I'm a fan of all these ladies, and Emmylou has helped promote them, and recorded some of their songs on her albums to get them some royalty money.

Do you listen to Nanci or Rosanne, Lash?

Rosanne Cash was one of my earliest loves... I still have her first 3 albums (vinyl!) in near-mint condition... I can remember hearing "No Memories Hanging 'Round" on the radio... saw her in concert in the 80s... "Blue Moon With Heartache", what a song... "Second to No One" can still make me cry... I loved the rest of that late-80s album with "Hold On" and "I Don't Know Why You Don't Want Me" on it...

I will admit to not being as familiar with her more recent stuff... for which I need to be smacked, and hard. Wanna give me a mini-review of her last couple-three CDs? I miss Rosanne.

Nancy Griffith... I'm almost certain I should know something about her... wanna give me some potentially memory-boosting highlights? I unfortunately pretty much fell completely away from the country music genre from about 1987-88 or so to about 1996-97 and know I missed some good stuff.

<smack>

<smack-smack>
<kiss>


<awkward pause>


<smack-smack>

heh!

The Lucinda Williams self-titled album (1988) gives Car Wheels a run for its money. Every song on the album has been covered by someone you've heard of--Tom Petty, Mary Chapin Carpenter, etc.--and she's in a little less-ravaged voice for those of you who are Lucinda newbies.

As far as Nanci Griffith goes, she was the first female singer/songwriter/folksinger I really got into on my own. Still have an enormous, inexplicable soft spot for her work.

Both Lucinda and Nanci as well as many of my other favorite artists (Prince, David Bowie, Soundgarden, Radiohead) have in common the fact that many don't really love them the first time they heard them--there's a edge to their particular genius that doesn't appeal to everyone.

Lash, you are forgiven for not being familiar with Rosanne Cash's recent music. She pretty much decided to walk away from commercial success and pursue a personal musical vision around 1990. She had survived the bad 80's hair and fashions, had a few hit records, her marriage was falling apart, and given some of her lyrics, I suspect she was giving up drugs.

Her 1990 album, "Interiors" was a critical success and a commercial disappointment. Rolling Stone named it one of the top five albums of the year, and included it in their list of top 100 of the 90's. It was introspective, philosophical, a bit political, and at times pretty dark. The guitar work and melodies were gentle, pretty, and soothing. The lyrics were jarring. It was obvious that her marriage was falling apart from the songs, as she denied it in the press. Her husband, Rodney Crowell, sang with her on a song called, "On the Surface". The harmony with their voices was beautiful. The honesty of her words about the changes she was going through and how she could no longer love him was astounding. There is a song called "Real Woman" that made a feminist statment that was much too bold for country radio. It wasn't political, though, it was very personal about a woman finding the strength to be on her own. A few of the lyrics: "I don't want to be a man. I just want to be who I am. You're not going to make or break me so don't start trying. Real is how I deal with what I deal with. Real is how I feel when I know how I'm feeling. I want to be a real woman."

Her next album was 1993's "The Wheel". Pretty vocals. Pretty music. Some tough lyrics again. It went from gentle to practical to angry. Religious themes and ressurection abound. She started to refer to God with the pronoun "she" on this album, something she's done several times since. That pretty much ended her chances of ever being played on country radio again, and she didn't seem to mind at all. Sales were weak again and she was dropped by her record label.

In 1996 she recorded "10 Song Demo" for a new label. Very low budget. It sounded like a demo album for a new artist. Stripped down. Just the woman her voice, and either a piano or guitar. Some of the best songs she's ever written are on this one.

In 2003 she tried for a comeback with "Rules of Travel". My least favorite of her albums. However, it does include the final recording of her father on a song she wrote for him. Very touching.

Her stepmother, her mother, and her father all died within a few months of each other. She was close to all of them. In 2007 she released "Black Cadillac" which is an album full of songs dealing with grief, loss, and healing. She joked that she always liked theme albums but never thought that she would record one about death. Some of it deals with her being comforted that her parents died with a strong religious faith, and how that comforted them. She, however, doesn't share that kind of faith so she explored her struggles in finding comfort in other ways while not compromising her own beliefs. The music on this one is very innovative. She reached new heights of critical acclaim for the album, and was starting to tour in promotion of it when she ran into health problems of her own. In November, she had brain surgery to correct a rare congenital condition. I had tickets to see her at the Univeristy of Arizona in April, but the show was canceled. The surgery was apparently successful, and she has been able to do a couple of shows since then. She is still writing - both songs and her books.

Rosanne, like Emmylou, is an artist who did some of her best work after the spotlight faded. Commercial radio just doesn't have room for aging artists who have something to say. I think Emmylou was inspired some by Rosanne when she decided to record "Wrecking Ball". Her best album, in my opinion, and one she recorded knowing that she wouldn't get air play and that she would have to end her relationship with her label to record. She did it any way. Unlike, Rosanne, she continued to mix some of her older music into live appearances so she could still draw a crowd. Emmylou has a strong enough fan base that she can maintain fairly decent sales without airplay. Nanci and Lucinda never really broke into country radio. All four are proof that the best country music isn't on country radio. That being said, one of my favorite Nanci Griffith songs is called "On the radio". She sings, "Where would I be in times like these without the songs Loretta wrote. When you can't find a friend, you've still got the radio, the radio, the radio ooo ooo...."

You would have had plenty of opportunites to come across Nanci Griffith, Lash. She never had any huge commercial success, but she has been around for years and has released over 20 albums. Nanci is from Texas and is pretty closely associated with the Austin scene. She's a prolific songwriter and has recorded a number of styles of music, but is probably most often categorized as folk. Her voice is the exact opposite of Lucinda's -- very sweet and almost childlike.

If you watch Austin City Limits, you have probably seen her on there. She's been a guest dozens of times. She wrote a song called "Love at the Five and Dime" that Kathy Mattea had a fairly big hit with. The closest that Nanci ever came to a hit of her own was with Judy Gold's "From a Distance". It was later recorded by Bette Midler who had much more success with it. One of Nanci's most recognizable song's is called "It's A Hard Life", a song about racism that Emmylou and lots of other artists have covered. A few of the lines:

In a cafeteria line in Chicago a fat man in front of me
is calling black people trash to his children
but he's the only trash here I see
In the night his children see him put on a white hood
and think that white hood's all they need.

It's a hard life, a hard life, a very hard life
It's a hard life wherever you go
and if we poison our children with hatred
a hard like is all that they'll know.

I was a child in the 60's
when dreams could be held on T.V.
with Disney, and Kronkite, and Martin Luthor,
and I believed, I believed, I believed

That song is from an album called "Storms" which has more of a pop feel than most of her work. It's one of my favorites.

1993's "Other Voices, Other Rooms" is all older cover songs, and is wonderful. She won a gammy for it.

A couple years later she recorded another great album called "The Flyer". She got back up by Emmylou, the Indigo Girls, and that guy from Counting Crows on some of the songs.

Nanci has had a bit more sales success in Ireland than she has in the U.S. She has recorded with and toured with the Chieftans a few times. Does any of that help you place her?

My first girlfriend was a big Nanci fan, and I've loved her ever since. So many good songs!

Lu news!

1998's breakthrough album CAR WHEELS ON A GRAVEL ROAD comes in at # 44 on Entertainment Weekly's list of Top 100 "New Classics" albums (stuff released during the past 25 years only).

See EW issue 999/1000 (June 27/July 4) for the complete list!

More Lu news!

NEW ALBUM DROPS Oct 14! Kick ass!

Also, she's gotten married, apparently! And she's HAPPY!

Now of course, I love all her stuff, but the "ESSENCE" cd is my favorite so far... it's like opening a window to peer into a soul drowning in sorrow. A cd where the most upbeat song is about believing you are so damned that you offer to do such things as self-mutilation to save your soul ("Get Right With God"). THIS woman is now HAPPY. I'm very excited for her!

Check out her website for full details, but this one is described as an upbeat rocker... she even covers an AC/DC song. I can't WAIT!

Thanks for the heads up. Looks like a duet with Elvis too. Can't wait.

Lu's LITTLE HONEY CD purchased!


Now I only got to hear the first 3 songs on the way home last night, but based on those, this is going to be Lu's most commercially succesful album since CAR WHEELS. "Real Love" was simply infectious... after hearing it only once, I was singing it all evening. The Lu-curious should download this one! A real feel-good tune.

Whereas ESSENCE and WEST might have been considered too downbeat and WORLD WITHOUT TEARS too experimental, this one looks to please the masses yet maintain Lu's uniqueness.

Now I'm off to run errands and listen to the rest!