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I get an esophageal, and rectal each year. Usually the do tops down first, then bottoms up, but they switched the order this year. uuugggghhhhhh!
Frank,
Where do I go to listen to your band cover those eight awesome songs? I only have about 30 or so favorite LW songs so I know what you mean about hard choices.
Steve
OK Inside Job or Tom Overby,
Where can fans buy the new Buick 6 Album. I don’t see it on Lucindas store tab or on Amazon. Not sure where your interests start or end between Lucinda and her band, but hopefully you want to keep cash paying fans happy and buying.
Steve
Ripley,
I Can’t Seem to Make it Through “Sundays” is on my version of Lucinda Williams self titled album. The last track, number 18 is a live version. This album is not in print anymore but I’ve read in here that it will be re-released next year.
Steve
Parker,
Where did you find the Buick Six album? They didn’t have any at the Columbus show merchandise table. Also, what songs are on it? Hopefully Black Dog and Cinnamon Girl.
Steve
Arthurly,
Not a mistake. JCM draws a much larger audience than Lu, and JCM is a fan of hers. Tom’s objective was exposing a brouder audience to her increadible sound. This obviously worked because Layfayette is now a huge new LW fan. Hopefully I’m not speaking out of step her Layfayette, but I know you are buying alcums and tickets you wouldn’t have if she hadn’t toured with Mellencamp.
Also, to insult JCM to a huge JCM fan is just not the right thing to do. We all have our favorites. We are all music fans here.
Peace Be Upon Us,
Steve
Everyone Hates Elvis Costello,
Oh well, I guess I’m the odd man out who cracks up every time I hear Lucinda and Elvis sing Jail House Tears.
Take a look at the Live Shots on the Photos Tab. You will find a handfull of pictures of the two of them performing together. The lady obviously enjoys performing with Elvis Costello. I for one enjoy listening to them perform together.
Steve
Lucinda Williams: Little Honey
[Lost Highway]
By Holly George-Warren on October 13, 2008Paste Rating: 92 phenomenal
Lucinda Williams has a great laugh—it’s a joyful sound to hear on the aptly titled Little Honey, the 10th album in her three-decade career. A sweet sense of renewal imbues Williams’ latest work, which encompasses all the elements of her eclectic catalog—from her stark early sets Ramblin’ (1979) and Happy Woman Blues (1980) to her 1988 self-titled breakthrough to last year’s textural West, co-produced with Hal Willner (Lou Reed, Bill Frisell). But not since her masterpiece, 1998’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, has Williams dug so deep and come up with an album that brims with such varied, impeccable writing. Aided by loose-limbed playing from her band Buick 6, some notable party guests, and a voice full of everything from righteous gusto to hard-won wisdom, Little Honey is Lucinda Williams at her best.
A sharp contrast to the studied tapestry of sound and embittered lyrics of West, Little Honey finds Williams in celebratory mode, with raucous rock, bluesy testimonies and tongue-in-cheek twang. Her brooding introspection—found here on a handful of moody tone poems and mournful ballads—adds depth to the proceedings. A decade ago, the Louisiana-born Williams proffered that her best work was borne of emotional crises and the ensuing solitude—exactly the circumstances surrounding West, which examined a harrowing breakup and the devastating loss of her mother. But Little Honey proves that philosophy wrong: This time out, Williams has found “Real Love,” the barnburner that kicks off the album, and she sings “Tears Of Joy,” a stunning Chicago-meets-Texas blues. On both tracks, her chansons d’amour are abetted by the straight-ahead backing of her touring group: longtime (for Williams) guitarist Doug Pettibone, joined by axman Chet Lyster, bassist David Sutton, and drummer Butch Norton, who give the album its punch.
The direct, autobiographical narrative “Tears of Joy” could have been written by Memphis Minnie: “Uprooted and restless, I paid the cost / I’ve been a mess, misguided and lost / But I’ve been so blessed since our paths have crossed / That’s why I’m crying tears of joy.” Williams gets straight to the heart of the matter with some of her strongest vocals ever. Likewise, on the spare “Heaven Blues”—on which she pays tribute to the Delta, recalling Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was The Ground”—Williams has been to hell and back and is ready to make her own heaven. Norton’s inventive percussion (including a washing machine and a manhole cover) is the perfect rhythmic backing to Williams’ crossroads declaration.
Little Honey also acknowledges the other roots music that has so informed the Americana queen’s songcraft. Her peals of laughter follow the wry honky-tonk number “Well Well Well,” with its classic C&W ending: “If you hang around trash you can’t come out clean.” Helping out on harmonies are Ryman throwback Jim Lauderdale and the eightysomething Charlie Louvin, the surviving member of country’s great duet, the Louvin Brothers.
Williams playfully nods to the tradition of “he said/she said” duets—think the evil twins of Conway and Loretta—on the fabulously fun “Jailhouse Tears.” As the “three-time loser,” Elvis Costello hasn’t relished such a down-home vocal role since he took on the guise of a country killer in “Psycho.”
Little Honey does have its somber moments, and this is where Williams’ poetry shines: Both “Knowing” (a dozen of its lines starting with “I didn’t know”) and the exquisite “Rarity” employ a lamps-down-low horn section and Hammond B-3 to create a lush soundscape for Williams’ bruised delivery. “Little Rock Star,” its soaring chorus provided by Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, is the follow-up (a beautiful loser, L.A.-style) to “Drunken Angel,” Williams’ 1998 character study of doomed Texas songwriter Blaze Foley. And remorse is the theme of windswept ballad “If Wishes Were Horses” and the mothballed “Circles and X’s,” written in 1985.
One of the most moving moments on Little Honey is the stark “Plan To Marry,” which features Williams alone with her acoustic guitar: “When the destitute and isolated / Have all been forgotten / And the fruit trees we planted / Are withered and rotten.” Williams once described the difficulty of writing a truly meaningful protest song—she’s done it here.
Little Honey is bookended by glorious rockers: Following a false start of blasting guitar, “Real Love” finds Williams swept up in a sea of crunchy Fenders, reverb and Rob Burger’s Wurlitzer. And straight from the School of Rock (or is it hard knocks?), she closes with AC/DC’s “It’s A Long Way To The Top,” bringing gospel-style fervor to the hell-raisin’ nugget: While Williams belts it out, Memphis soul sister Susan Marshall and company join her in a frenzied testimony. In between, there’s “Honey Bee,” a lusty rocker during which Williams bares all.
Co-produced by West engineer Eric Liljestrand and Williams’ fiancé, Tom Overby, Little Honey is the happy ending to 1998’s “Joy.” During the finale of her late-’90s concerts in ever larger halls, Williams and her band were known for vamping on the song’s rhythmic hook, “You took my joy / I want it back.” A decade later, on Little Honey, she’s got it and she gives it. How sweet it is.
Stoge,
What a great set list, thanks for posting it. Plenty of songs off even her earliest albums. SAWHWWT is a personal favortie.
Steve
Tony,
I had to laugh outloud when I read your reply. Yes he certainly does sound too much like Elvis Costello.
Peace
At the end of the Counting Crowes Concert this summer, after the lights were turned up Adam Durits got on the mike and started speaking: “I don’t care who you vote for, or what your politics are, but you need to get involved with your communities….. and register to vote…..” and then went on to talk about the Greybird Foundation, which the Counting Crowes started, primarily focused on Domestic Violence, HIV/Aids, and the environment. He told the audience that there were T-shirts and merchandise available at the concession stand that would support their foundation. You should have seen the long lines at the counters after the show. That was cool!!
http://greybird.capwiz.com/election/home/
Get involved, help your fellow Americans who are not as well off as you, or may be but need your help anyway.
Steve
PS: I took a year and a half off work after my twins were born to take care of them at home, but then “dumped them” into a commercial daycare and resumed my career. They are in 6th grade now and play music, read extensively, are artistic, but most of all very well behaved and responsible. They are in a few advanced classes, and score in the top few percent in most standard tests. And we don’t really even push them, we mostly let them choose what they want to do. On our photo display in our foyer alongside pictures of friends and family are also pictures of some of the wonderful daycare providers our kids (and we) loved, for a time they were a part of our family. Its just people man, and there are plenty of good ones out there. I’m glad they were there when I needed them.
Thanks Lefty,
This Jeff Meirs writeup is a good read, I like his writing style. Like Tom I didn’t know the Pretenders had a new album. I listened to the previews, and they do sound great. I found it interesting that after I ordered the album from Amazon it said “Customers who bought this album also bought: Lucinda Williams “Little Honey”
Steve
Hey Tony,
I like most of your postings but have a different opinion here. From Webster: “stylize – to conform to a conventional style” Elvis? Costello? He’s got one of the most unique voices in the industry – instantly recognizable, to me at least. I end up smiling every time I hear this duet, I think their voices go great together. I can just see them doing this recording after midnight in a one chance recording session having a blast. Sorry you don’t appreciate it.
Check out their duet on his Delivery Man album “There’s a Story in Your Voice”. My wife doesn’t like Lucinda’s music much or especially her voice, kind of like she doesn’t like Neil Young’s voice. In this duet it seems each of them are trying to exagerate the uniqueness of their own voices, and end up sounding about the same as each other.
I saw Elvis on his Delivery Man tour. Talk about professionalism, the man marched out on stage at precisely 8:00 in a suit in July without a warm up act, greeted the audience and started a 3 hour concert. Part way through, out came the incomparible Emilou Harris who performed a few solos, and accompanied him for much of the evening. He used a different guitar for nearly every song. It was an awesome show.
I have to agree with Tom (tntracey) as well David. I’m certainly not a “can do no wrong fan” but I think the mix of older to newer songs is right were it should be. I admire professionalism from the entertainers I see. I I’ve only seen a half dozen LW shows and about about the worst I’ve seen is Lu getting frustrated by not being able to find a song in her book, and having to call the stage manger over to do it for her. I just figured her eyesight was about as crapy as mine, so didn’t worry to much about it. I wanted to hear the duet “Jail House Tears”, and “The Knowing” but instead she played “Can’t let Go” and IJWTSYSB. By my ameteur estimates the crowd was down about 30% from when I saw her at the same venue from the West tour. Before the show we met at Barley’s in the Arena District, near the Short North which are two adjacent thriving downtown residential/entertainment areas. There were only a few other patrons in the microbrewery bar/restaurant from 5 to 7:00 which should be prime time for eating and happy hour after work in this kind of community.
