Rochester tonight

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070719/ENT0501/707190318/1077/ENT05

July 19, 2007
Grammy winner Lucinda Williams to sing at High Falls

Jeff Spevak
Staff music critic

Lucinda Williams and her fiancé had been out to dinner at their favorite Mexican restaurant, and now they were relaxing at a nearby bar over the final glass of wine of the night. She had her hair pulled back and was wearing eyeglasses, but a couple of young guys recognized her anyway, and the next thing you know they’re sitting at her table.

“This one guy is talking about ‘Changed the Locks,’ and what a great song it is, and how he’s a punk guy who’s into hard rock and metal and punk and stuff, and I was the only female singer-songwriter he could identify with,” says Williams. She talks a lot for someone who speaks so slowly, in that drawn-out Louisiana way, offering lots of detail. Way more than you’ll get here.

“So I told him, ‘Well, you know, Hank Williams is just as much a punk artist as anybody.’ And they’re going on and on and on about how ‘Passionate Kisses’ is such a great song. I was real impressed that the younger crowd is that much aware of my stuff.”

And one glass of wine went on to the next, and the next, and the next morning it’s 10 and Williams realizes she’s not quite ready for a several-times rescheduled phone interview, postponing the call for three hours. Two hours later, she calls and reschedules the interview for — well, now if it’s OK — because she feels guilty about putting it off so much.

So, ever-more complex grows the portrait of Lucinda Williams, who headlines Thursday’s Party in the Park at the High Falls Festival Site, with country legend Charlie Louvin. Incredible songwriter, yes: Those punks at the table knew that. But her reputation as a perfectionist who chewed her way through producers during the recording of her 1998 Grammy-winning album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, and the string of deaths and disastrous personal relationships that fuel her songwriting may not be the only story. Sure, even Williams uses the word neurotic to describe herself. But on the phone, she sounds sweet, considerate and Southern sexy with that way she says “baby.” And “dark,” as though it has a ‘w’ in there.

There is “Pineola,” about a family friend who committed suicide, poet Frank Stanford. And “Drunken Angel,” about songwriter Blaze Foley, whose legend seems to only grow larger years after his death. But these are songs from which she distanced herself from the subject with time. Some of Car Wheels, she points out, was 10 years in the writing. “Those things always prove to be good catalysts for material,” she concedes. “A lot of that comes from memory, comes from thinking about the event. I don’t actually write from the middle of it.

“With Blaze, now it’s not just about him; it takes on a bigger picture. There are more faces in it than just his. Townes Van Zandt. Kurt Cobain. That becomes more what I’m writing about. It’s more than the story of this guy who was shot and killed one day in a senseless argument in Austin, Texas.”

Always flawed characters, always with the riveting details, like the duct tape holding together Foley’s shoes. But creativity is not solely inspired by the sight of your friends sleeping on pool tables in the bar.

“A writer living in the suburbs, in Salt Lake City, Utah, can find something to write about, if you have the creative imagination,” Williams says. “You might live in a Stepford Wives community somewhere, but there’s sadness and beauty and darkness and light everywhere. It’s in the eye of the beholder. Throughout the ages, people have created great art, written great masterpieces and have lived in all different types of environments and had money and no money.”

Williams was a critics’ darling, and a cult’s darling, for years. Car Wheels turned her over to a larger audience. Her previous lovers had a hard time letting go as a more musically liberated Williams emerged with each ensuing album. Groove-based songs, like “Joy.” And “Righteously.”

“That really threw them over the bridge, pushed the critics over the edge,” Williams says. “People magazine called it ‘hip-billy.’

“With West,” she says of her latest — and critically hailed — album, “it took people a couple of albums to accept the fact that all my records aren’t gonna sound like Car Wheels. I do different stuff. Neil Young does this. Bob Dylan did it. But they got criticized, too.”

She’s serious about her craft. But if you heard that laugh coming from the bar stool next to you, you’d want to turn around and talk to that woman. Self deprecating, brutally revelatory. For years, she lived in a tour bus or at the Safari Inn in Burbank, Calif., her life kept in storage. “No commitment,” she says. Now that she’s engaged (no date yet, or even a ring), with the promise of happiness at hand, she finds herself browsing through antique stores, and trepidatiously looking at homes. A 54-year-old woman searching for a nest. “The thought of buying a house kinda terrified me,” she confesses.

“Once you’re in, you’re in. What if you decide you don’t like it? I guess that’s where I focus my neuroses now.”

If you go
What: Lucinda Williams, with Charlie Louvin.
When: 5:30 p.m. Thursday.
Where: High Falls Festival Site.
Admission: Free.
Web: www.lucindawilliams.com.