ROCK'S RADIO-UNFRIENDLY SUCCESS
WILLIAMS FLOUTS CONVENTION
By JIM BECKERMAN
* 01/29/99
The Record, Northern New Jersey
(Copyright 1999)
MUSIC PREVIEW
LUCINDA WILLIAMS: 8 tonight. Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place,
Manhattan. (212) 777-6800. Also performing: 8 p.m. Saturday. John
Harms Center, 30 N. Van Brunt St., Englewood. (201) 567-3600. Both
shows sold out.
Lucinda Williams just isn't able to sabotage herself.
Lord knows she's tried. She's argued with producers. She's
gotten herself dropped from labels. She's refused to make her songs
"radio-friendly." She's released albums six years apart.
A lot of good it did her.
Her latest album, "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," won rave
reviews and appeared widely on 1998 year-end "10 Best" lists. Now
she's up for her second and third Grammy (best female rock
performance and best contemporary folk album).
"It's all in spite of myself," says the genre-stretching artist
* _ "alternative country" is the most used label _ who performs
sold-out shows this weekend at Irving Plaza and the John Harms
Center.
Though she's released only six records in her 20-year career,
Williams always had a large cult following, particularly among other
performers. (It was Mary-Chapin Carpenter's cover version of
"Passionate Kisses" that won Williams her first Grammy, for
songwriting, in 1992.)
Now the response to "Car Wheels," her first album since 1992's
"Sweet Old World," has upped the ante for this fiercely independent
singer-songwriter. Success at last, a final O. Henry twist to a
career that's been spent flouting the rules in the name of principle.
"That's what rocks my world, all those critics' lists," she says
from her home in Nashville, sounding more bemused than boastful.
"I love music critics, I do," she says. "Some of my best
friends are music critics. I think part of it is the writing part,
because I'm so used to being with writers."
Pain, longing, loss _ those are Williams' subjects, delivered
with the melancholy twang of a singer weaned on Robert Johnson and
Hank Williams, and written with the vivid economy of a poet.
Her father, in fact, is a poet _ Miller Williams _ and she
spent her youth in the company of writers like Charles Bukowski, John
Ciardi, and James Dickey.
From her father, she learned about words. From his migratory
existence, traveling from city to city as teaching jobs materialized,
she learned about the blues.
She also learned something else: how to question authority.
"It's in my blood," she says. "I was brought up that way. My
dad was that way, and his father was that way. My grandfather was a
conscientious objector in World War I, which was unheard of. That
was very brave back then."
At high school, in New Orleans, she was a rebel. Well, it was
the Sixties.
"I was suspended indefinitely, kicked out twice," she says.
"That would have been 1968, or '69. It was the height of the
anti-war movement. The first time I was kicked out, it was for
distributing SDS {Students for a Democratic Society} literature on
campus. I got sent to the office for that, and when I was in the
office I refused to say the pledge of allegiance."
She was suspended a second time after taking part in a civil
rights protest.
"In order to be reinstated in school, you had to go in, one at
a time, and agree never to be in another demonstration again for the
rest of the year," she says. "I never finished high school."
That same feisty independence followed her through her recording
career, beginning in 1979 on the Folkways label, and continuing
through stints on Rough Trade, RCA, and Chameleon records.
"It's a hard process. It's hard making a record," says
Williams, who, on two occasions, has scrapped completed albums and
started over. "When you've been in there a lot and gotten used to
the process more, you learn what's important and what's not. What's
worth worrying about."
When it's worth worrying about, she's immovable.
For instance, there was the RCA executive who wanted to remix
her songs _ push the bass and drums up and pull the vocals back _ to
make them more "radio friendly."
"He's jumping up and down in his Gucci shoes, and he says `Come
over and listen,' and I went and listened and I hated it," she
recalls. "He said, `Doesn't this sound great? It sounds like a real
record!' And I said, `No, I don't like it, I hate it.' They couldn't
do anything to change my mind. Nothing got on the radio."
The moral of the story: so what?
"It's not a big thing," Williams says. "Everybody's got their
priorities screwed up. What's important here? Being on the radio is
not the be-all and end-all of my whole life."
