#426: Lucinda Williams, ‘Lucinda Williams’
ROUGH TRADE, 1988
It’s been a while since I have written. I’ve been on the road interviewing people and asking for very annoying data and archives for another long-form narrative investigation I am doing for The Guardian. I am proud of myself because I managed to squeeze this video recording for Charlotte’s NPR while staying in a motel with questionable wifi.
I spent February and March alone crusading up and down I-25, for 12+ hours at a time, staying in cheap motels and inviting all my friends to follow my location on their Find My Friends iPhone app.
It was a dreamy way to spend my time. I’ve come to accept at the ripe age of 31 that my chosen home is the space between the yellow dashed lines and the rumble strips on the highway shoulder.
I used to be embarrassed about this strip of America. I always thought I should’ve been an East Coaster where the roads are narrow, littered with deer and tail-gating politicians. I regretted not aspiring for the Ivy League, especially as a journalist. During my short stint in our country’s fair capital, fellow journalists loved to remind me that everything on the west side of the Mississippi could be summed up by flavorless Sunday casserole peppered with equally flavorless “amens” to prayers that lasted just a bit too long.
They are wrong though. Deeply. This is the part of America where you can drive for days with the promise of some destination that is more interesting than the last rest stop. When you get to my part of America, the part where the midwest becomes the West, you can get lost in Herculean mountains so sharp the clouds get sliced trying to cross over. If we are lucky, the nostalgia of the prairie silently whispers the futility of our egos. On the same day, we can drive through both and end in the desert, a place of spiritual and physical significance that only makes sense to those who live there.
When I first listened to Lucinda, I couldn’t grasp her. She is a country artist, she is an Americana artist, she is an alt-rock artist and yet she is also none of these - not completely. All I can make of her music is that she is the highway connecting our states. She is the South to the North. She is the drive we must take to get our jobs done. She is the space where we can cry, sing, talk to ourselves, or do nothing at all.
Lucinda Williams has released 15 albums since 1978 and won multiple awards including the BMI Troubador Award in 2022, named America’s Best Songwriter in 2002 by Time Magazine, and many other accolades. She is a songwriter’s writer and many of our modern songwriters credit her for inspiring them to pick up the pen. After suffering a stroke in 2020 that left her unable to play the guitar and even walk without a cane, she somehow rehabilitated quickly enough to join Jason Isbell on tour later that year.
Lucinda Williams writes songs about real people and real feelings. Her lyrics are impeccable and her voice is the gravel we travel on varying between fresh pavement and cold-weather potholes. Her songs remind me what it feels like to be American without a personal brand or social media presence.
When I listen to this album, I am just a girl on the highway trying to get to my job in time.
One last thing: Passionate Kisses is a perfect song. It is the modern iteration of My Fair Lady’s, “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” and is now my 2024 theme song.
Top songs: I Just Wanted To See You So Bad, Like A Rose, Passionate Kisses, Side of the Road, I Asked For Water (He Gave Me Gasoline)
Realizing now I mixed up Victoria Williams with Lucinda Williams when I was talking to you about this last week.