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ramon… this one was off my radar.
tom, can you tell us anything about “how it feels” and “don’t kid yourself” – they’re the other two from that show about which we know nothing about.
D & D is actually called Duckin’ & Dodgin’ and is from an old LP she had called Louisiana Penitentiary Songs.
she was planning on releasing it? is this somewhat related to or inspired by that show (don’t know if it was more than one) lucinda performed with her father at a penitentiary in arkansas in the late 70s? maybe concrete and barbed wire (“somewhere in louisiana, my sugar’s doing time”) is from this period, especially now that we know that it was written before 1986…
oh, what an honor to be complimented by nanci griffith. she has an amazing album “other voices, other rooms” that, besides the very strong selection of songs and artists, makes particularly clear how beautifully/respectfully she approaches to material by others (the album features 17 cover songs). not that it was needed, but now it’s 100% safe to assume that “full moon” is more than ever a hidden jewel.
i think this indicates that lucinda may have just covered the song on that show (kut-fm, austin, 86), just as she did on this early 90s baltimore gig that the article i previously posted indicates.
i mean, we would have to listen to it and compare with the lyrics to be 100% sure, but to my mind it’s quite clear that the song was written by tom t. hall and covered by lucinda, buddy miller, deryl dodd et al.
perhaps that’s the reason why this song is not on tom’s list.
tom, i did a little research on those two songs you don’t have on your list. didn’t find anything about “duck and dive” (there’s a possibility that it’s not the real title after all, since it’s listed on that site with a interrogation point), but regarding “that’s how i got to memphis”, take a look at this:
http://www.mail-archive.com/postcard2@u.washington.edu/msg03010.html
Longtime Chicagoan Mark Linn got an introduction to Hall in the
early 90s, when he caught a performance of his “That’s How I Got to
Memphis” by Lucinda Williams in Baltimore.Kelly Willis nails “That’s How I
Got to Memphis”–the last track commissioned since, Linn admits, he’d
held the tune for Lucinda Williams, who had promised to contribute and
whose father, poet Miller Williams, is friends with Hall. (Williams was
busy recording her notoriously perfect record, Car Wheels on a Gravel
Road.)the song is listed on the album “ballad of 40 dollars”, released in 1969: http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/tom_t__hall/ballad_of_forty_dollars/
I really believe Mr. Tom Overby has found in you, punchdrunklove,the best possible liason / agent for co-ordinating a Lu South American tour.
Your writing is most enjoyable.
Please continue your research in Luology.
lwjit’s a friendly forum indeed. 🙂
Try this from Napster # 156 for 2 Kool WXPN
http://music.napster.com/lucinda-willia … rget_songsunbelievable! track #179 – right in time has a big red EXPLICIT attached to it. since every other occurrence of the song doesn’t have such thing i can only assume that’s because it’s the track is from a L WORD soundtrack. this automatically made the song dirty. 🙂
and that made me remind a little side note i got from listening to one of her shows (boston/orpheus, ’99). i uploaded it for you, it’s well worth listening: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=RDUZG4B6
nonetheless, great link, nice to listen to two more songs i’ve never heard before: “buick blues” and “honey chile” – and 30 seconds of an alternate version of “words”.
I count four songs (How It Feels, Don’t Kid Yourself, Duck and Dive (?), and That’s How I Got To Memphis) that I’ve never even heard of. And I would give an awful lot to hear a 1986 recording of If Wishes Were Horses, which is my favorite song on Little Honey. I’m equally curious about Full Moon. I wonder if any of those are alternate titles to songs that were later recorded; they don’t necessarily sound like it, but you never know.
exactly, those four (five counting full moon): never heard anything about them. besides the amazingness of listening to ‘wishes’ (also my favorite from little honey, along with circles and x’s – what does that mean?) with different lyrics (she told in a interview, don’t recall which, that she changed a few things in it and circles, lyrics-wise) but even better: concrete and barbed wire from 1986. this is one song from car wheels that always felt not restricted to a particular time or date to me, i wouldn’t be surprise to hear versions of it back from the 70s (although i realize it was probably written in the 80s). that’s to say that i think this song is so old in spirit, a recollection of three different lovers (i prefer to think that lucinda talks about three different women having problems with their men). we start with a “metaphorical” wall, then we go to a “real” wall with dogs being at some gate and being mean, lord, really mean, and then we have our “pretty real” jail-type wall (also metaphorical obviously). and i love that spellbinding, magical climax, that brings things to a satisfying close, at some point the song sucks you in to its weird universe of awful dogs that you forget you were listening in the first place to a song about an awful heartbreak.
and i think greenville is a bit like that, it’s just spellbinding and magical as ‘concrete’ when the last verses kick in (save you/rave about you), but there’s no question that greenville’s dissatisfaction cuts deeper (how unhappy is its unhappy ending?). awfully clever songcraft to me is this: making ‘concrete’ and metal firecracker sound insanely catchy and infinitely sad. we can say to ourselves “it’s only made of concrete and barbed wire” in order to help us get through the slightest problem we have. real catchy.
i think ‘concrete’ was also the first lucinda song that i knew how to sing back to back, including the very challenging word “opelousas”. what a fun name, second only to the place where that sweet guy that loved to tell everybody he was from lake charles was born (still have no idea how to write it without googling it).
i thought that “how it feels” was “pancake” misnamed (pancake has lots of “how it feels” at the ending). but that can’t be because there’s already a track pancake in the same setlist.
and how about “letters”? the one laura centrell recorded. i liked the lyrics (maybe it’s from the “six blocks away”-period, another song featuring ny/manhattan), but really think it’s odd lucinda mentioning the subway – it’s the first time, i think. she’s all about cars, roads, driveways, bridges, tracks underneath trains… and can’t really bring myself to guess what type of melody/rhythm lucinda would have imprinted to it (never heard centrell’s version to get an idea).
The ballad of soap creek saloon
BY MARGARET MOSERi like a lot one article by margaret moser about lucinda, “moon-shaped panties and the saint of white trash” (it’s available online, pretty easy to find; i think people already posted it here). she wrote a lot about television in the late-90s.
Anyway, do you think this might have been the gravel road to the Soap Creek Saloon that Lucinda had in mind when she later wrote CWOAGR?
the friend of mine that associated car wheels to a nice song quite fitting for everyone to take their clothes off would nod to that.
I found a couple of Torrent downloads of this concert on the web, but I won’t use them punchdrunklove, as they ask for your e-mail and in some cases a subscription fee.
yes, it’s a private tracker. you have to be registered to that site to open the files (they’re password protected most likely). registrations are off, so we better get ourselves a ranch*.
i enjoy writing here. it’s a great exercise. glad everybody understands most of it, and feel free to point out mistakes and stuff. otherwise they’ll keep showing up and i won’t improve over time.
* this is me cracking my first-ever funny remark in english! 🙂
marcella, mississippi! thanks.
great news on the 2 kool 23-counting project, i’ll bring a few more versions of it in flac format.
yeah, great song. “you’re out of reach… so far out of reach…”
oh, this is one of her songs. at the beginning of the west hollywood/’92 version she says she wrote it “a while back but hasn’t been recorded”.
i hope lucinda dusts if off and puts it on a record, just like ‘horses’ and ‘circles’ on little honey. (in the australia/’93 version she says this song would be on her next record… which makes it car wheels.)
“song for a jewelry maker” is pretty great too. about being weak in the knees and a person with devil blue eyes. “when you look at me that way, baby, makes me wanna get down on the floor”.
and her words:
Lately I’ve been feeling a little wistful about my early, simple stuff. Recently I found the words and chords to some songs I wrote when I first came to Austin, songs like “Full Moon” and “Song for a Jewelry Maker.” I started playing them and got real emotional and started crying. There was this innocence, this part of me that I missed, that I had left behind. I thought, “I want to record an album of early, early songs that have never been released and call it ‘Early Songs'”–do it raw, like a demo, a really simple, folky kind of record, coming full circle and starting all over again.
http://www.singlearticles.com/city-girl-a3877.html
besides this being a terrific idea, does anyone know about this song “full moon”?
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by the way, does anyone here have these two shows?
http://kensplace.prodiscussion.net/non-dylan-vines-f3/two-early-lucinda-gigs-t135.htm
OH MY. did i just spot “if wishes were horses” In one of the setlists???!!!
!
the last post kind of proved to me that i’m not able to put together a paragraph for an argumentative text, at least a non-confused one. i read again what i wrote and it’s all very strange, especially when i mention about first-person narrator (just so you know how desperate things can get, i got this expression directly from its version in portuguese – and i was lucky, i just googled it and it seems to be appropriate).
so i’ll write a bit more about 2 kool, this time without those flights of fancy.
i love this song since 2007, the year i first listened to lucinda (the car wheels album). for some dumb reason, the only songs that i kept listening afterwards – not frequently – were “right in time” and “2 kool”, ocasionally “car wheels” (yeah, tracks #1, #3 and #2; i think this is bound to happen sometimes, we prioritize the first couple of songs). cut to april 24, 2009 (since i have a last.fm account is easy for me to get information like that), the day when i listened to car wheels again, and wow, just wow – it blew my mind. cut to getting stuff on the internet (i know i shouldn’t mention this here, but since i did i might as well add that since april ’09 i bought on ebay both austin city limits dvds and seven of her albuns… and a poster too.)/ mix-tapes (not many, though. one of them had “essence”, “steal your love”, “hot blood”, “righteously” and “i just wanted to see you so bad” sequenced; yeah, it was about ONE thing, and no, didn’t quite work.)/ recommending lucinda to every person i know/ mentioning her on twitter on a daily basis (= recommending)/getting an answer from her on twitter (something to do with a friend of mine, “ocasional dj”, saying that if he included car wheels on one of his setlists, people would strip their clothes off while listening to it – lucinda was puzzled with “striptease” and “car wheels” going hand in hand; i swear, this was a great day)/ writing a short film screenplay in which one of the characters (a 30-year-old librarian) is named lucinda (lucinda is a pretty common first name in brazil, btw)/ searching bootlegs like crazy/ planning on seeing her live in europe in 2012/13… now i’m in that fase of beaming like crazy every time i listen to a rare bootleg or, say, to an alternative version of real love.
people sometimes come here and tell stories about the importance of lucinda in their lives and how they became familiar with her work, and this is mine: on april 24, ’09 i simply decided to give another go to car wheels. yes, i’m a huge fan for about 14 months, and yes, i realize i’m out of line in asking for a south america tour at this stage, but this lucinda frenzy is certainly not a fleeting affair. sometimes when i come here i’m almost embarassed in writing stuff along with people that are familiar with lucinda since the 80s, 90s, 00s. it’s a great honor to be here, among comitted fans, i sense that my 14 months will become 14 years in no time. sometimes when i’m listening to, let’s say, an austin concert from 1994 (in which she performed lots of songs from car wheels) and i wonder “how come you just got to listen to her in 2009?”. the answer is quite obvious: in 94 i was a 7-year-old. so i guess i’m coming to terms with the fact that, well, before late than never.
now with 2 kool. in 2007, i had no idea what junebug vs. hurricane meant or what the reason behind those funky numbers on the title. and two years later the only thing i know for sure is that people once wrote some inscriptions on a red wall, lucinda saw them through the eyes of a photographer and the rest is history. i think i want to be familiar with every single aspect of this song because i was already nuts about it years ago, and those 14 months of heavy-listening only made the mystery richer: i’m still unable to grasp this song. it’s not like i need to understand it, and more like i’d love to hear more stuff about it since there’s so much potencial for storytelling in it. i guess i like to hear what people in general have to say about it. that’s why i think that this project from robert (22 versions of the song) is so terrific. if anyone told me on april 23, ’09 that a french guy would be shipping a year later from paris to rio a cd with TWENTY-TWO versions of a single song, i wouldn’t believe it. and then, by listening to every single track of the compilation, you realize that lucinda gave credits to the author of the book that inspired the song every time – and you can’t help but admire how these thinks work, how masterpieces are created almost randomly and how they can bring together two admirers from different backgrounds. of course this can be said of every song, but i always wondered about lucinda’s relation with this one in particular, especially in which sense the second part is linked with the first, how the inscription on that red wall and all signs and details from those mississippi bars brought us those star-crossed lovers at that lake charles bridge.
which is to say: i wonder but i don’t think i really want to know; there’s nothing to know really. the answer is obvious: lucinda’s personal images + lucinda’s astounding craft. it seems such a miracle that this song happened. i guess that when something strikes you as awesome you have a tendency to consider it a happy accident, a one-time wonder, and 2 kool is still the song i listen to the most. it’s almost creepy to imagine what happened to me between 2007 and now, it seems like a watershed on most respects (not only regarding lucinda, obviously), but the idea that 2 kool is still able to entice me just as much as in 2007 is more than a reason to treasure lucinda for life.
well, i wrote too much. i’m saving everything i’ve been writing on this forum. i think it should be… let’s say heartwarming to read it all in the near future.
Since the photos in the book are from juke joints in Mississippi and Lake Charles is over in SW Louisiana, I would speculate this imagery is from Lu’s personal experiences…
oh, i overlooked that fact (i should open an atlas at a map of u.s., i keep underestimating the extent – and the exact location – of lucinda’s “cartography”).
but the question remains unanswered: where this image comes from? it basically divides the song in two halves, the first like a straight, descriptive narrative, the latter a disjointed vignette, a bit out of place (mississippi / lake charles). the girl and her boyfriend on a lake charles bridge… who are them? i’m satisfied with the fact that i’ll never know for sure (or that “lu’s personal experiences” is a sensible answer in every way possible) – and i’m not this annoying and obsessively interested in those kinds of stuff, but 2 kool has such a richly detailed first half and we got ourselves this photograph hinting (just hinting) to all of its most mysterious sections – junebug vs. hurricane, why the numbers on the title et al. – that, likewise, i think i feel compelled to look for some picture for the other half. part of the last section’s appeal, to my mind, is those dialogues, lucinda is not merely a narrator to a (supposedely) external event, she incorporated what happened to her “catalogue” and is able to reproduce every word they say. her narration in the first part is, to my mind, even more “dramatized” than in the second (despite the fact that the latter is in first-person), since she seems to use the books to construct images and then, well, who knows – and this gives a creepy quality to the song. there’s so much more at stake than just a did-he-jump/did-she-jump-along thing. deep down, i think it might be something she saw someday (an eye-witness account?), hence my curiosity for a (non-existent!) photo/record of it. oh well, i’ll stop.
yeah, i know it’s a fruitless quest, but i don’t mind.
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btw, robert and tom, i got our 23rd version (buffalo, ny / april 18, 07).
http://wp.clicrbs.com.br/grings/tag/margo-timmins/
margo timmins, from cowboy junkies, released her first solo album last year – a bunch of covers. lucinda’s “side of the road” is the last track – a very lovely, stripped-down version. i missed the violins.
she also covered my favorite song from richard/linda, “walkin’ on a wire”.
YES, YES! i saw last night the finale from season 1. a friend told me about lucinda being mentioned in advance, but he didn’t inform me that steve earle is in the scene, which is something i praise greatly: is there anything more riveting and fun than these two on “you’re still standing there”? NO!
treme is wonderful, wonderful – every bit as good as the wire.
