Lu in the afternoon between gigs at Webster Hall & Red Bank

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  • #30622
    LWjetta
    Participant

    From an up coming New Yorker article.
    Just a hoot of an article.

    Here it is.

    Musical Life
    Lu in the Afternoon
    by Nick Paumgarten April 4, 2011

    Lucinda Williams
    There are few things more perilous on tour than a free afternoon. Lucinda Williams, the singer and songwriter, had one during a swing through the city not long ago to play a couple of gigs. “Last time I was in New York, we went to Trash and Vaudeville, and I spent—how much, honey?” Honey was her manager and husband of two years, Tom Overby, a mild and lanky Minnesotan. They were out on the sidewalk in Cooper Square in the dying light of an idle Sunday. They hadn’t been awake long. (Williams sleeps past noon while on tour.) “This was before we realized we were broke,” Williams went on. “I spent, like, eight thousand dollars.” So shopping was out. Instead, it was decided, they would get a drink. A few blocks away, they found an airy Italian restaurant, sat down at the bar, and ordered a bottle of Brunello. The bartender, sensing something, poured Williams the first taste. “Mmm, yeah, that’s good,” she said.
    Williams and Overby live in Los Angeles, in Studio City. Eleven years ago, she was quoted in this magazine saying—twice—“I fucking hate fucking New York.” But she doesn’t really. She spent almost a year here, in 1978. She worked as a waitress and busked in the East Village and sometimes rode the subway out to Queens to play at a bar called the Flushing Local. One night, she was at Gerde’s Folk City, in the Village. “I was asked to get up and play two or three songs. The owner, Mike Porco, this little Italian guy, the sweetest guy, came over to me and said, ‘Lucinda, I want-a you to meet a friend of mine. This is-a Bobby.’ ” It was Bob Dylan. “He was with a beautiful tall black woman, and they’d driven down from Woodstock, I guess in their own car. For me, it was like there was no one else in the room. I’ve never experienced anything like it. He’d been my hero since I was twelve. He had heard me sing a couple of songs. ‘Keep in touch,’ he said. ‘We’re going out on the road soon.’ ” As he was leaving, she positioned herself by the door. “He leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.”
    Twenty years later, Williams went out on a short tour with Dylan and Van Morrison, as a supporting act. “I had this fantasy that we’d all hang out,” she said. “Nothing could’ve been farther from the truth. Nobody talked to each other. Van’s band was unhappy, never sure if they’d get fired one day or the next. Same went for Bob and his band.”
    Williams, who is fifty-eight, was wearing a leather vest and bluejeans tucked into knee-high boots. She had a great busby of frosted hair and a pair of filigreed glasses that, in the dim light of the bar, made it hard to get a good look at her eyes. She had performed well at Webster Hall the previous two nights. Onstage, Williams can occasionally get “kind of paranoid,” as she put it. She makes things a little easier on herself by having her lyrics nearby on a music stand.
    “It’s mostly for the new songs, which I don’t know well yet,” she said, referring to those from her new album, “Blessed.” “But there were a couple of times years ago where I was forgetting the words to songs I’d sung thousands of times, like ‘Drunken Angel.’ ‘Oh, God, I screwed up.’ I’ve kind of gotten lazy over the years. It’s kind of a crutch. But now I don’t have to worry about remembering. I can think about singing.”
    That night, she and Overby were planning to meet their tour bus at 2 A.M., ride down to Red Bank, New Jersey, the site of her next gig, and spend the night on board, while parked outside the concert hall. Williams first met Overby, who is fifty-two, at a Best Buy in Minneapolis, in 1992; she was reintroduced to him a few years ago at a hair salon. “I was attracted to him immediately,” she said. “He was tall, thin, nice smile, with a little bit of bling.” He leaned forward to show off a silver tooth, which he said he got at the age of six, after he tripped over the shoelace of a snow boot. “When I told my stepmother about him, she asked, ‘When was he divorced?’ Well, he lived with a woman for ten years, and then that fell apart. ‘No kids, never been married? He’s either gay or bisexual.’ ” Children, anyway, were pretty much out of the question for Williams. “Well, I didn’t want one in my twenties, in my thirties, or my forties,” she said. “Now I get kind of misty about kids.”
    The bartender brought Williams a complimentary platter of fried calamari. “I knew I liked this guy as soon as I sat down,” she said. She scooped half the squid onto a saucer and pushed it toward Overby, and they began to discuss their dinner plans. ♦
    ILLUSTRATION: TOM BACHTELL

    Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/04/04/110404ta_talk_paumgarten#ixzz1HulI6MKh[attachment=0:jdglxew6]Lu in the afternoon.jpg[/attachment:jdglxew6]

    #46548
    tntracy
    Participant

    Great little article – thanks for posting…

    Tom

    #46547
    tonyg
    Keymaster

    Great article!

    #46549
    parkerca
    Participant

    Thanks for posting! Great article.

    #46550
    LWjetta
    Participant

    One thing leads to another when you read an article like this.
    The article above talks about Lu meeting Bob.
    So here is some stuff I found on Gerde’s Folk City.
    Have a listen to the Club’s history.

    http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/2010/oct/20/vanished-venues-gerdes-folk-city/

    And here’s Lucinda.[attachment=0:qi7lkjqg]Lucinda Gerdes Folk City.jpg[/attachment:qi7lkjqg]
    And, if you scroll thru the photo gallery, y’all will see Lu with the whole group on stage at Folk City.

    So who is in the band ?

    lwj

    #46551
    tntracy
    Participant

    @LWjetta wrote:


    So who is in the band ?

    lwj

    Mark Dann and Frank Christian.

    (Not that I knew that – Hell, w/ my eyes, I couldn’t have told you that was Lu in that tiny photo. Your link revealed the answer… 😉 )

    Tom

    #46552
    LWjetta
    Participant

    @tntracy wrote:

    @LWjetta wrote:


    So who is in the band ?

    lwj

    Mark Dann and Frank Christian.

    (Not that I knew that – Hell, w/ my eyes, I couldn’t have told you that was Lu in that tiny photo. Your link revealed the answer… 😉 )

    Tom

    Heck Tom, I remember you also had trouble seeing the small photo I posted a long time ago of Lu and the wax figure of Loretta Lynn.
    Guess I’ll have to resurrect my jpeg resizer. 😆

    #46553
    tntracy
    Participant

    Hey, I even zoomed way in on that pic & I couldn’t tell it was Lu. I don’t think your “resizer” will help… 😆

    And regarding that other picture, don’t forget I was the one that correctly identified it as a wax figure… 😉 8)

    Tom

    #46554
    LWjetta
    Participant

    @tntracy wrote:

    Hey, I even zoomed way in on that pic & I couldn’t tell it was Lu. I don’t think your “resizer” will help… 😆

    And regarding that other picture, don’t forget I was the one that correctly identified it as a wax figure… 😉 8)

    Tom

    Aha, no more cheerleader I see in your avatar.(copy cat )
    In the article, I guess you saw photo # 4 for a larger pic of Lu.

    Anyway, to continue on a roll Gerde’s Folk City had a 50th reunion.
    Look at this blog entitled “Junebugs Vs. Hurricanes”
    http://folkcityatfifty.blogspot.com/
    lwj

    #46555
    tntracy
    Participant

    @LWjetta wrote:

    Aha, no more cheerleader I see in your avitar.(copy cat )

    And just exactly whom else w/ this avatar did I copy? 😉 😆

    Tom

    #46556
    LWjetta
    Participant

    @tntracy wrote:

    @LWjetta wrote:

    Aha, no more cheerleader I see in your avitar.(copy cat )

    And just exactly whom else w/ this avatar did I copy? 😉 😆

    Tom

    I’m stumped.
    lwj

    #46557
    punchdrunklove
    Participant

    anyone have an idea about the extent of the article? will it be as big as the profile a decade ago?

    so, april 4th? i’ll definitely buy the magazine.

    ps: anyone interested in the new yorker profile? i got it and if that’s ok with you all i can upload it.

    #46558
    LWjetta
    Participant

    @punchdrunklove wrote:

    anyone have an idea about the extent of the article? will it be as big as the profile a decade ago?

    so, april 4th? i’ll definitely buy the magazine.

    ps: anyone interested in the new yorker profile? i got it and if that’s ok with you all i can upload it.

    Don’t know if there is more to the article punchdrunklove.
    When I copied the article to MS Word “Read more” came up.
    I’ll certainly look at the book store next week.

    Great reading about Lu-never a dull moment with her and Tom O.

    lwj

    #46559
    punchdrunklove
    Participant

    i think there’s more to it. they wouldn’t let us have only the squid appetizers!

    #46560
    punchdrunklove
    Participant

    well, came to think of it and i guess that’s it. “the musical life” is a small section of “the talk of the town” and the articles filed under it are usually just a page length.

    bummer. no dinner plans for us.

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