Lucinda Williams Discusses the Music That Inspired Her New Double Album

BY WILL HERMES | September 4, 2014

Lucinda Williams’ new LP, Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, is a generous, old-fashioned double album. It covers a lot of stylistic territory – blues, folk, country soul, jam-rock – with a lot of musicians, including journeyman jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, Louisiana swamp groove master Tony Joe White and longtime Elvis Costello cohort Pete Thomas. After years of label drama, it marks the roots-music pioneer’s first release on her own Highway 20, and, surprisingly, it’s her first musical collaboration with her father, lauded Arkansas poet Miller Williams, who read at Bill Clinton’s first inauguration.

The title of the album comes from “Compassion,” a signature poem that Williams’ daughter adapted in the song of the same name. “That’s something that I’ve wanted to do for years: to take one of his poems and make a song out of it,” says Williams, 61, from her homebase in Los Angeles. “But it’s very challenging, you know? Because they’re two separate animals, poems and songs. I told my dad about it, and he goes, ‘You’re going to make me famous!’ He’s always teasing me about that. He goes, ‘You used to be known as my daughter. Now I’m known as Lucinda Williams’ father.'”

So, 20 songs: How’d you end up recording so much stuff?
I was on a writing binge, and we just kind of got on a roll. We actually ended up recording enough for three albums. So we decided, “What the hell, let’s break the rules and do a double album.” Now we have more creative control, because we have our own label. And when you’ve got a body of work that fits together, it’s nice to be able to put it all out there. We have a third group of songs finished that will come out on a separate album later.

That’s great. How do you account for the writing binge?
Just changes in life. Getting older and wiser as a songwriter, getting more proficient, I guess. The first big change in my life was when my mother died in 2004. And it kind of started then.

There are a lot of extended guitar passages on these recordings – some really gorgeous stuff.
I don’t like to fade at the end of things. The main thing was just to try to get the feel. There were a lot of discussions about, “Is this too long?” The consensus was kind of like, “Don’t worry about it.”

I like the cover of JJ Cale’s “Magnolia,” which really goes out there.
Yeah, that was with Bill Frisell. The whole other album that’s in the can is pretty much all Bill Frisell with my rhythm section guys, Butch Norton and David Sutton, who tour with me.

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