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http://www.courant.com/entertainment/music/hc-weblucinda.artoct14,0,5577876.story
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/64356/lucinda-williams-little-honey/
@tonyg2756 wrote:
October 30. A full report will be provided.
I am going to see Hayes Carll and opening act The Dedringers on October 16 at The Mint in L.A. I may remark on that as well.
Ran across this story on Hayes Carll:
http://www.gardenandgun.com/stories/search.html?words=Hayes+Carll
LUCINDA WILLIAMS
“Little Honey”
(Lost Highway)There are flashes of uncharacteristic joy on “Little Honey,” Lucinda Williams’s ninth studio album; they’re notable because for the better part of her 30-year career she’s managed to avoid this feeling. Ms. Williams’s voice is a broken, collapsed sigh and, in the last decade especially, she has used it to masterly effect, extracting a battered beauty from songs about disappointment, frustration and sometimes even sneering anger.
In 1998 the sublime “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” made her something more than a name-drop for roots-music aficionados. “Little Honey” is the least coherent of her albums since then, less potent and focused than “Car Wheels” or last year’s desperately melancholy “West.”
When she’s hurting, she can still sear. “Circles and X’s,” written in 1985 and the best song here, is starkly eloquent. “There’s nothing more for us to regret,” Ms. Williams sings to the lover walking out the door. “The fire needs more logs.” And on the mellow, galloping duet “Jailhouse Tears,” she practically spits out her words, sharp darts aimed at her nogoodnik boyfriend, played by an enthusiastic Elvis Costello.
Too often here, though, Ms.Williams gets bogged down turning her magnifying glass back on music making. The overlong “Rarity” bemoans industry politics, slowly; “Little Rock Star,” reportedly inspired by the lives of Pete Doherty, Amy Winehouse and others, is needling (a counterintuitive cover of AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top” takes shape, though, once Ms. Williams decides it’s all right to have fun).
As for Ms. Williams’s emergent happiness, it has infected her lyrics but not, it turns out, how she delivers them. “Real Love,” the album opener, is as plain (and, to be frank, artless) a statement of devotion as she’s recorded, but with her rasp, it almost sounds like a taunt, as if she hopes her last guy is listening in, stewing. The match is better on “Honey Bee,” a salacious rocker with a wry sense of humor.
On “Knowing” Ms. Williams sings of love catching her by surprise, but there’s ambiguity in the lines, most of which begin, “I didn’t know.” As sentiments expressed in the present, they’re quietly insightful assertions of love. But Ms. Williams sings them heavily, as if she is already looking backwards: it sounds a lot like an elegy. And heard that way, it makes perfect sense.
JON CARAMANICA, NY TIMES
Bob Dylan – Tell Tale Signs (The Bootleg Series Vol. 8…Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006).
Have had this for about a week and haven’t gotten past track 8 on disc 1 because of multiple replays.
Just when I’m ready to give Bob a rest, he puts out a bunch of “rejects” that re-enchants me. “Red River Shore” is a masterpiece, imho.Rochester’s had its chance, IJ – – time to come to the Salt City! The Landmark Theater in downtown Syracuse is a great ol’ venue. Let’s make it happen in ’09! 🙂
I had my pad & pen at the ready, stoger. Come hell or high water, I was going to post a setlist for you from tonight’s show! 🙂
That’s a shame. Was just about out the door to head west – – don’t know what made me check the site here one last time. Thanks for posting the (sad) news, IJ. And, rugles, sorry about your hotel bill. Rochester has a few decent clubs w/ music. Not sure about Sunday nights, though. Try the Dinosaur BBQ for dinner if you like ribs ‘n’ such.
IJ: Rochester tickets will be honored for the rescheduled date next year?
🙁I’ll venture to say that Inside Job will view and pass along your message to Lucinda. After that, who knows? Keep the faith, and welcome to our Friendly Forum.
Stoger posted this earlier this year…
According to setlists I compiled during the Pettibone “acoustic” tour, “Rarity” was played at least twice live, on March 12, 2006 in Ohio as someone mentioned (bootleg? bootleg?), and also on March 3 at the “Voodoo Lounge” inside Harrah’s of Kansas City. In my notes I called it a “soft” song with a Leonard Cohen allusion; it’s about the music business and I believe about a specific female singer in California who was struggling to make it. Maybe Inside Job can supplement this lore. It would appear from my notes that Lucinda hesitated before doing it live–then closed out the evening with “Disgusted” and “Down the Big Road Blues” following it. Voodoo indeed! In Ohio “Rarity” was the final song of the encore, the evening.
Maybe someone will be able to elaborate on this for you.
By the way, swisschris, give my regards to St. Gallen, birthplace of Mrs. Lefty!
MODERN MUSES/Inside Inspiration in the Arts
SONGS IN THE KEY OF JOY
Lucinda Williams is Beloved for Her Melancholy Music. Will Happiness Change Her Art?
Lucinda Williams is known for her broken-hearted country rock songs. She’s recorded songs about suicide, one-night stands and changing the locks after a breakup. Her album, “Little Honey,” due out Tuesday, finds the 55-year-old singer-songwriter in a happier mood. She was engaged in 2006, and after years of personal turmoil involving the death of her mother and bad relationships, she says she’s in “a good place.” But is happiness good for her art?
The opening track sets the new album’s more joyful tone. “Real Love,” an upbeat rock number, features the lyrics “I found the love I’ve been looking for.” On another song, the optimistic “Plan to Marry,” she sings, “Keep on believing in love.” Ms. Williams says she didn’t set out to write a “happy record” and that the album just shows her current outlook on life. “I’ve been through a lot of hell and I’ve come full circle and lived to tell about it,” she says. “The album represents that. It’s sort of a celebration in a way.”
She says she wrote many of the songs on the album when she was “between houses” and living in a motel in Burbank, Calif. She would wake up, make coffee and sit at a table to write. Lyrics usually come to her first, and, guitar in hand, she would find music to match. Sometimes an idea would pop into her head when she was at dinner with friends and she’d scribble something on a napkin. She keeps a folder with partially formed song ideas.
Ms. Williams says she’s inspired by seeing strangers and imagining their stories. She says her father, a literature professor, taught her at an early age about the importance of empathy and she’s used it in her writing.
Not all the songs on “Little Honey” are blissful. “Jailhouse Tears,” a duet with Elvis Costello, is about a couple separated by prison bars. But Ms. Williams says happy songs present more of a challenge than mournful ones. “It’s harder to write a song about joy because of the tendency to possibly get too flowery, too mushy, too sugar-coated,” she says.
Do artists need pain to create great art? Tom Overby, Ms. Williams’s fiance and manager, says, “Any artist worth their salt would say ‘I’m an artist because I’m an artist, I’m not an artist because I’m suffering.'” In any case, Ms. Williams says she’s never happy “100% of the time” and is always able to draw on her past. “There’s this well, with all these memories stuffed in there from my childhood,” she says. “And I can just reach in there and pull something out whenever I want to write and there it is.”
Several of the happiest songs on “Little Honey,” including “Real Love,” were actually written before Ms. Williams met Mr. Overby, who co-produced the new record. She played “Real Love” for Mr. Overby one of the first times they met. “Fantasy helps a lot when you’re writing,” says Ms. Williams.
– – Christopher John Farley, The Wall Street Journal
