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HFo More Tears
t£ucinda WiffliamA dt diet* 9?ia4£ ‘Poetic
But Sweet Old World took four years to com
plete, as Williams scrapped two versions of the
album before recording a third version she felt
was worthy of release.
* Car Wheeb On A Grovel Road also went
through a protracted birth. Williams recorded
with Gurf Morlix (up to that point her long-time
guitarist and producer), Ray Kennedy and Roy
Bittan (keyboardist in Bruce Springsteen's E
Street Band) before completing the final version
of the album. Six years after
Old World, the Car Wheeb album
finally arrived in stores.
Williams doesn't deny the creative struggles of
those two albums, but says disagreements with
her labels were bigger factors in the long wait for
those two records.
"Between Rough Trade (which went under after
the Lucinda Williams album was released] and Car
Wheeb, I was on three different record labels, or
four actually," she says. "I was on Rough Trade,
then I was on RCA, then I was on Chameleon, and
then I was on American and then I was on
Mercury. So that's one of the reasons."
Mercury released Car Wheeb On A Gravel Road,
and then Williams shifted over to Lost Highway
Records—a Nashville label owned by the same
parent company as Mercury—where she has found
a home. "It's a smaller label and I get the atten
tion I need and all that," Williams says of Lost
Highway. "I've gotten to the point now where I'm
pretty situated as far as the kind of artist I am.
They know what I'm going to do and not do, and
they don't expect me to do anything that I'm not
going to want to do. They know me."
So perhaps it's no coincidence that
both Essence and now World Without
Tears have been released in prompt suc
cession. And both albums have con
tinued to cement William ' stature as a
premiere artist. What's more, Williams is
continuing to stretch as a songwriter and
performer. In World Without Tears, she has
made her most raw, organic and intimate
sounding recording yet—no small state
ment for an artist whose work has always
been remarkably personal.
Part of that quality seems to come from
the manner in which the album was
recorded. For the World Without Tears ses
sions, Williams paired with producer Mark
Howard, who has gained a strong reputation
for his work with Bob Dylan and U2. Opting
to not use a conventional studio, they set up
shop in a 1920s-era mansion in Los Angeles
to do the recording.
What's more, Howard convinced Williams
to take the unusual step of recording the
tracks live in the same room with her band:
guitarist Doug Pettibone, drummer Jim Christie
and bassist Taras Prodaniuk. It was a bold
move in a day and age when many albums are
recorded one instrumental track at a time, with
samples and loops liberally supplementing parts
played on real instruments and final versions
assembled from multiple takes on digital
recording equipment.
But the approach works wonderfully on World
Without Tears, as Howard achieved a warmth and
intimacy in the performances and sonics that only
accentuate the emotionally-charged lyrics. That
feeling is especially apparent on ballads like
\ a # art ’ sts ^ ce .bi99 er expectations with
ItW each album than Lucinda Williams.
The past decade-plus has brought a string of
records that have consistently landed Williams on
year-end top 10 lists, beginning with her 1988
self-titled album and continuing through Sweet
Old World (1992), Car Wheeb On A Gravel Road
(1998) and Essence (2001).
In 2001, Time magazine named her America's
best songwriter, a notion that would be seconded
by many other publications and critics. Her
affecting blend of country, blues and rock, cou
pled with lyrics that are earthy, honest and
often jarringly emotional make Williams' albums
a deep and powerful listening experience.
The fact that Williams has also begun to
enjoy considerable commercial success—the
Grammy-winning Car Wheeb On A Gravel Road
went gold and brought her to the cusp of
mainstream stardom—has only raised the
stakes for each new album.
But to hear Williams tell it, she long ago
figured out how to keep the pressure of
great expectations from affecting her cre
ative process.
"I already sort of got through the hump
of that," says Williams, who recently
released World Without Tears. "I actually
had a harder time after I did that Rough
Trade record [her 1988 self-titled release],
before the next one after that [Sweet Old
World]. That's when I really felt the pres
sure because I wasn't used to... just
having to write and put another record
out. All of a sudden, everybody really
discovered me with that Rough Trade
record. That was when all the attention
came in and I wasn't used to it. That's
when I really felt that pressure. But now I'm kind
of... I've gotten comfortable with it."
As Williams hinted, she had some difficult
times after the Luanda Williams album arrived and
established her as a major emerging talent on the
music scene. Although that album made few waves
with the record-buying public upon its release, it
earned stellar reviews and included a pair of songs
that later gained major attention when they were
covered by other artists—"Passionate Kisses" (a
big hit for Mary Chapin Carpenter) and "The
Night's Too Long" (covered by Patty Loveless).
"Overtime" (a tune marked by its shimmering
guitar) and "Those Three Days" and the folky hip
hop of "Sweet Side."
World Without Tears is also the most risk-taking
album Williams has made, as the band buzzes
along smartly on "Righteously," a tune accented
by Pettibone's electric slide guitar lines; rocks
crisply on "Real Live Bleeding Fingers And Broken
Guitar Strings;" and the pounds out some searing
blues on "Atonement."
"It rocks more," Williams says. 'That's what
everybody's saying and it pretty much speaks for
itself. It has more uptempo songs on it than any
of my other records."
Lyrically, World Without Tears has plenty of
strengths, too, whether it's the raw passion in
"Righteously," the heartbreak and disappointment
of "Those Three Days" or the sympathy and sad
ness of "Sweet Side," which chronicles how child
hood abuse continues to hamper a lover's
attempts at intimacy. In fact, for all the praise
Williams' earlier lyrics have drawn, she says she's
most proud of her efforts on World Without Tears.
A main source of this feeling is Williams' father,
the noted poet Miller Williams, who has served as
a sounding board for all of her recordings. When
Williams asked her father for feedback, he says he
wouldn't change any of the work and told her the
lyrics to her new songs were the closest she had
come to poetry.
"He's my toughest critic besides myself, so it
was just that acknowledgment," Williams says of
her father's approving assessment. "He's always
been sort of my mentor, you know... It's like a
teacher/student type of a thing, so this time, he
said, 'No, I don't have any changes that I would
make on anything.' I said, 'Wow, does that mean
I've graduated? That was pretty amazing...
because especially with this many songs and such
a lyrical batch of stuff, I was surprised actually."
Alan Sculley
WHO: Lucinda Williams, Hie Bottle Rockets
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
WHEN: Friday, March 5
HOW MUCH: $22-$25
J
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