AMERICANA MUSIC'S BEST SHINE IN THE NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT
"ACL PRESENTS: AMERICANA MUSIC FESTIVAL"
NATIONAL BROADCAST TO BEGIN AIRING NOVEMBER 19th on PBS

ROBERT PLANT, LUCINDA WILLIAMS, GREGG ALLMAN
THE AVETT BROTHERS, THE CIVIL WARS & MORE FEATURED IN ONE HOUR SPECIAL

Nashville, TN-November 8, 2011-Robert Plant, Emmylou Harris, Gregg Allman, Alison Krauss, The Avett Brothers and The Civil Wars are just a few of the artists appearing on “ACL Presents: Americana Music Festival,” sponsored by Nissan and airing starting November 19th on PBS stations nationwide (check local listings). Called "the best awards show in the world" by Paste Magazine, the hour long special was filmed live at the Ryman Auditorium on October 13, 2011 during the sold-out Americana Music Association's Honors and Awards and features special performances from the genres' established and rising stars.

Hosted by Jim Lauderdale, with an all-star house band led by Americana favorite Buddy Miller, the show runs the gamut of Americana music. It opens with a moving performance of "I'll Fly Away," in tribute to the 10th anniversary of the “O' Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack, with Harris, Krauss and others, and closes with an uplifting finale spotlighting the legendary Allman.  In between are performances by Lauderdale, Miller, Plant and The Band of Joy, Candi Staton, The Avett Brothers, Lucinda Williams, The Civil Wars, Elizabeth Cook, Justin Townes Earle, Jessica Lea Mayfield, and Amos Lee. Most are backed by Miller's ace sidemen, featuring Don Was, Greg Leisz, the McCrary Sisters, along with John Deaderick and brothers Cody and Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars.

"It was time to bring the Americana Honors to another level," said Jed Hilly, executive director of the Americana Music Association. “We could not have better partners than Nashville Public Television president and CEO Beth Curley for our Middle Tennessee premiere, and Austin City Limits executive producer Terry Lickona to take this to a national audience."

The program, described by Emmylou Harris as "the shining star of Nashville and music everywhere," was filmed by High Five Entertainment and co-produced by its president Martin Fischer and Lickona. For more on the show, photos, and clips click here.

Performance Rundown:

• Emmylou Harris Alison Krauss Buddy Miller, Jerry Douglas and Don Was /I'll Fly Away, “O'Brother” Tribute Performance
• The Avett Brothers / The Once And Future Carpenter
• Lucinda Williams / Blessed
• Amos Lee / Cup of Sorrow
• Elizabeth Cook / El Camino
• The Civil Wars / Barton Hollow
• Justin Townes Earle / Harlem River Blues
• Jessica Lea Mayfield / For Today
• Buddy Miller / Gasoline And Matches
• Candi Staton / Heart On A String
• Jim Lauderdale / Life By Numbers
• Robert Plant / Monkey
• Gregg Allman / Melissa

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Lucinda Williams' new critically acclaimed album, BLESSED is now available to purchase on CD, Deluxe CD*, CD/LP Combo* and Digital Download.

iTunes:
Standard
Deluxe

Amazon:
Standard CD
Deluxe CD
CD/LP Combo

AmazonMP3:
Standard
Deluxe

Best Buy:
Standard
Deluxe

FREE MUSIC:
Lucinda Williams new single, "Buttercup" is currently available for free as the iTunes Download of the Day. Click Here.


*Deluxe and CD/LP combo's include extra CD of The Kitchen Tapes:
demos of all 12 album tracks recorded at Lucinda's kitchen table.

Three-time Grammy award-winner, Lucinda Williams has received a Grammy Award nomination for her critically-acclaimed album Little Honey in the brand new BEST AMERICANA ALBUM category. Released in October 2008, Little Honey is Williams’ ninth studio album and easily her most eclectic to date.

Little Honey was produced by Eric Liljestrand, who engineered Williams’ West, and Tom Overby. Little Honey features guest appearances by Elvis Costello, Matthew Sweet, Suzanna Hoffs, Jim Lauderdale, Tim Easton and the legendary Charlie Louvin.

2009 has been a year of milestones for Williams. Not only is she celebrating her 30^th Anniversary as a recording artist, she kicked off the celebratory tour by getting married on stage at the legendary First Avenue club in Minneapolis on September 19^th. The nomination is a beautiful way to end what has been an incredible year for the celebrated artist.

The 52nd Annual GRAMMY Awards will be held on January 31, 2010, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

For the complete list of nominees, please click here.

ROLLING STONE
Albums Of The Year

#18 “Little Honey” Lucinda Williams has been channeling hard-won wisdom into laments for so long, it is a shock to behold the singer love-struck. Williams being Williams, the happy songs hedge their bets, but high spirits predominate, as do snarling Stones-ish guitars, brisk tempos and a slew of funny punch lines.

SPIN
Top 40 Albums Of 2008

#30 “Little Honey” After 30 years of weepers and heartbreakers, Williams proves she can also sing he-done-me-right songs. The aggrieved ex who growled, "You took my joy / I want it back" on 1998's Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is now singing "Tears of Joy" -- though still slinging stormy riffs, honky-tonk harmonies, and bourbon-soaked soul. Apparently, not even domestic bliss (the recently engaged singer reveals she found love "standing up behind an electric guitar") can water down her liquor.

TIME
Top 10 Albums of 2008

#9 “Little Honey” After years in misery's ditch, Williams finally put out a happy album, but it's a little more nuanced than its publicity. Songs like "Tears of Joy" and the grinding guitar-rocker "Real Love," show off a singer no longer ill at ease with easy pleasures (although, uncharacteristically, she's suddenly at ease with lyrical cliché) while the Elvis Costello duet "Jailhouse Tears" proves she can even be funny. For all the smiles, there's also plenty of material where the mood darkens. "Circles and X's" and the glorious "Wishes Were Horses" ("If wishes were horses/ I'd have a ranch") get Williams back to longing, territory where she's unrivaled as a writer and unbeatable as a singer. The balance, though, makes this Williams' sweetest album.

BLENDER
Top 144 Songs of 2008
#13 “Real Love”

AUSTIN CHRONCILE
Top 10 National CD’s of 2008 - #1

PASTE
Best Of 2008

#9 “Little Honey” It’s her most sonically and emotionally diverse record ever, and her best since Car Wheels On A Gravel Road.

NEWSDAY
Best Albums Of 2008

#2 Happiness suits Lucinda Williams. On “Little Honey,” she rolls out non-sappy love songs (“Tears of Joy”), alt-country prayers for serenity (“The Knowing” and “Heaven Blues”) and all-out rockers (“Honey Bee” and “Real Love”).

NEWARK STAR-LEDGER
Top Albums of 2008

#7 "Little Honey," Lucinda Williams (Lost Highway)
…one of the year's best.

MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
Favorite Albums of 2008

#8 "Little Honey." She's in a love-struck (not love-sucks) phase for a change. Which means: less poetic but harder rocking.

CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
Top 10 Albums of 2008

#7 "Little Honey" (Lost Highway) The belle of the Americana ball shines on "Real Love," a fun remake of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top" and "Jailhouse Tears," a twangy duet with Elvis Costello.

FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
Little Honey: Lusty, loose and wonderfully ragged, this explosive country-rock collection is the singer/songwriter’s most consistent, compelling disc in a decade.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Top 10 albums of 2008

#5 Williams proves that a happier, more fulfilled life can yield an album just as compelling as those of her more downcast, introspective periods.

CREATIVE LOAFING
Top 10 CD’s of 2008

#1 On Little Honey, alt-country queen Lucinda Williams returns to the more focused, rock-oriented sonics of her breakthrough 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

POPMATTERS
Best Albums of 2008

#34 Believe it or not, folks, this is Our Lucinda’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, her “Crazy in Love” and it’s mostly breathtaking, as strong as all save one (you know which) of those records she put out back when she was (ostensibly) miserable, an almost 20-year (!) stretch bookended by 1979’s Ramblin’ and last year’s West.

Best Singles of 2008
#43 “Rarity” Nearly nine minutes, this gorgeous, honest song seems part eulogy to the nurturing music industry artists were fortunate enough to enjoy in the ‘70s and part damning indictment about what that industry has devolved into.

BLURT
Best of 2008 - #15

NO DEPRESSION
Top 40 Albums of 2008 - #6

NPR
Listener’s Poll

#39 From the album’s opening track, the surging, angular, almost punk-feeling riff-rocker “Real Love”; through several blues compositions, country-honker “Well Well Well” and the swampy, slide/harp-fueled “Heavy Blues;” Little Honey never falters.

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Americana, Bluegrass & Country’s Best of 2008

#2 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

Lucinda Williams relies on her road band, Buick 6, from the false start of “Real Love” that kicks off Little Honey to the final gospel-blues assault on AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top” that tucks it away. Wit this tour-tested chemistry behind her, Williams delivers the voice of experience, offering advice to a self-destructive “Little Rock Star,” embracing the security and simplicity of live in a world gone to way in “Plan to Marry,” and holding tight to her integrity in a business desperate for the almighty buck in the brass-enhanced, spooked-organ arrangement of the 9-minute epic “Rarity.” Her voice is the perfect instrument – charred, broken, weather in all the right places, the sound of a country-blueswoman who has spent years on the road. Only her duet with Elvis Costello on “Jailhouse Tears” sounds forced, as EC’s bluster turns emotion into self-parody.

Music: FOUR (out of five) STARS

Sound: FOUR (out of five) STARS

Lucinda Williams’s West, in 2007, was a stunning effort, her strongest in nearly a decade. Yet it was an emotional downslide, and its cathartic declarations of unrequited love no doubt took their toll in the ensuing months onstage. At some point, she must have longed for a way to kick things into high gear. Little Honey (Lost Highway) fills just that void and, happily, finds Williams in a better place; she hasn’t sounded this content—or ebullient, even—since 1988’s “Passionate Kisses.” If the upbeat nature of the album’s single, “Real Love,” comes as a surprise, wait until you hear the ferocious “Honey Bee,” her hardest-rocking love song ever. There’s much to like here: the down-home “Heaven Blues,” a paean to self-destructive types in “Little Rock Star,” a fun country duet with Elvis Costello, and yes, a few melancholic gems (“If Wishes Were Horses,” “Plan to Marry”). Williams’s newfound optimism does take some getting used to, however; where this solid release leaves the “pain equals art” argument depends on whether or not you think an album of hers should include an AC/DC cover.

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How good was Lucinda Williams' performance Friday night at the Wiltern?

Crazy good. And sane good, sexy good, playful good, anguished good, angry good, cathartic good, brawny good, rockin' good, bluesy good -- head, heart and soul good.

Above all, the Louisiana-born singer-songwriter revels in the music of the soul, and judging from the remarkably rich litany of songs she's written over the last three decades, she's got one of the saddest-sweetest ones ever passed out.

The delightful thing about her new album, "Little Honey," is the way she's allowed the sun to come beaming through the dark spaces of the human experience.

No doubt that has something to do with her relationship with album co-producer and fiancé Tom Overby, whom she seemed to celebrate in several of the new songs in Friday's set, including "Real Love," "Tears of Joy" and "Honey Bee."

One of the hallmarks of Williams' talent is the multi-dimensionality of those songs. "Real Love" could indeed be viewed as an ode to a long-sought-after soul mate:

It can also be read as the confession of a woman who, having established a profound connection with another human spirit, has fully embraced herself and her musical calling.

She is assisted mightily in that calling on the album and at Friday's performance by her backing band, Buick 6, a quartet that recently put out an album of instrumentals and offered up its own invigorating 35-minute opening set. Guitarists Doug Pettibone and Chet Lyster provide Williams the kind of double-barreled attack Keith Richards and Ron Wood give the Stones, a rock-country-blues muscle she exploited in the resigned-to-fate two-step "Well Well Well" and the earthily sensual rocker "Honey Bee."

After last year's tour, when she played five studio albums in their entirety, Williams may have felt liberated to focus on the freewheeling newer stuff. But she did cherry-pick through her catalog -- performing songs including "Can't Let Go," "I Lost It" and "Joy" from her 1998 breakthrough "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" album, the title track from 2001's minimalist workout "Essence" and the bawdy "Come On" from last year's "West."

"Come On" is built on a stinging play on words directed at an ex, but Williams, her voice ever fuller, darker and grittier as the years go by, used it to chart a path out of anger and into emotional release. The band supplied the controlled burn of Crazy Horse at its most urgent, emphasizing focused power, not bombast.

She took Neil Young-like rock-infused blues to a soul-deep place that seemed to let loose her inner Etta James. It's long been debated whether a white man can truly sing the blues, but Williams left no doubt that this white woman feels the blues down to her marrow.

Having moved back to L.A. after years in Nashville, Williams tapped a couple of Southland music scene veterans, Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, for harmonies on "Little Honey" that they recreated at the Wiltern, adding to the cozy, hometown feel of the 100-minute show.

She ended with "It's a Long Way to the Top," the song that also closes "Little Honey" on a note of both celebration and warning to anyone who aspires to scale a peak. She dedicated it to President-elect Barack Obama with the authority of one who's been to the top and bottom of the mountain, and who's entirely cognizant of what she's gained every step of the way.

» latimesblogs.latimes.com

Beginning her two-night run at the tight downtown Seattle venue Showbox at the Market, Lucinda Williams was pert, poignant, and a powerhouse of rock 'n' roll.

And a picture of contentment all evening long.

Though dressed demurely in plain brown slacks, light blouse, and dark vest, Williams quickly showed she was revved and ready: "It's a refreshing treat to be playing a rock club!" The audience yelped their approval.

Williams started off the night strong, sober, and full of gentle sway as she belted out the dreamy but definitive tune "Rescue" from her "West" album. "He can't save you from the plain and simple truth; the waning winters of your youth," she sang at her raspy best.

The concert was dominated by scintillating rock, interspaced with her traditionally satisfying alt-country palette. With "Ventura," a country-folk ballad from "World Without Tears," Williams displayed her trademark soul searching.

She prefaced "Circles and X's" — from her latest album "Little Honey" — saying, "This song sat around for 20 years. ... It still survives."

The first singalong commenced when Williams sang the familiar "I Lost It," a tune of hopeful discovery, from the grammy-winning "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road."

Like many singer-songwriters, Williams' compositions begin with autobiography, and her Showbox set list was filled with ballads and alt-country turns like "Tears of Joy," "Right In Time" and "Real Love."

But the most persistent audience cry of the concert was "Let's rock 'n' roll!," and "Out of Touch," a seminal jewel of a rocker, found Williams quite primed to rock out. "Out of Touch" transformed the performance, inducing an avalanche of overhead clapping, whooping and vigorous head bobbing.

From here to the end of the nearly two-hour set, Williams let go with a vengeance, as she and her four-member backup band, Buick 6, produced some qualitatively feverish, sizzling and hall-shaking rock.

She satisfied the audience with an electric encore of "For What It's Worth," the Buffalo Springfield '60s anthem, which became yet another singalong, and a fitting end to the lovefest between Williams and her Showbox crowd.

» seattletimes.nwsource.com

On her new album, Little Honey, it seems Williams has arrived at a new place. Critics are calling it her first "happy" album, but the singer says it's not so simple.

"I think there's this sense that I'm having a good time," she says. "The band's having a good time."

....CLICK HERE to continue reading as well as listen to Lucinda on All Things Considered.

» www.npr.org

Lucinda Williams is the first official "country" artist that we’ve featured thus far in our "On The Download" column here at AccessHollywood.com, and what more credible artist could we suggest to you?

If you haven’t heard of Lucinda, you’re not alone – she’s no Carrie Underwood or Keith Urban, in terms of mass-market appeal.

But in terms of talent, for over 30 years this three-time Grammy Award-winner has been at the top of her game. She’s always reminded me as a Southern version of Rickie Lee Jones or Stevie Nicks.

I was first introduced to her music in 2003, through her album "World Without Tears" – her song "Righteously" from this disc remains one of my all-time favorite singles.

Now, the Louisiana-born Lucinda has just released her ninth studio album, "Little Honey," which for me, is every bit as strong as what many consider her magnum opus; 1998’s "Car Wheels On A Gravel Road."

This album is more rock n’ roll than any of her previous work that I’ve listened to, as evidenced in the opening track, "Real Love," which is much more Austin than Nashville.

Not to be missed is her duet with Elvis Costello on "Jailhouse Tears" – the twang in her voice when she drawls out the word "Teeeeaarrrsss" is classic Lucinda.

It’s emotional and narrative – this single sung word alone tells a whole story in and of itself.

But the most amazing thing about Lucinda is that it’s impossible to classify her music – you can’t call it just country, or rock ‘n’ roll, or R&B – it’s none… and yet, it’s all.

If you’re a music fan who’s scared of the word "Country" (like me!), Lucinda is a very comfortable introduction.

Except, of course, for those who have already long been in the know!

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It's hard to believe Williams took a six-year break between albums in the '90s. Since 1998 she has reliably been releasing strong, often heartbreaking discs with seemingly effortless ease.

Little Honey continues the string, with the proviso that Williams has now found happiness in her life. Despite the occasional downer like If Wishes Were Horses, we get no song as soul-numbing as the brilliant, savagely depressing Everything Has Changed from the album West. But maybe a little break is needed anyway.

The album is full of great lyrics and vocals, highlighted by the duet with Elvis Costello on Jailhouse Tears. Williams continues to distinguish herself as one of the most important writers in modern music. The cover of AC/DC's It's a Long Way to the Top just adds to the fun.


Grade: A-

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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.

» www.pastemagazine.com

The first thing Lucinda Williams announces on her ninth studio album is that she found the love she was looking for standing behind an electric guitar. Twelve songs later, she signs off with a bit of wisdom from the late Australian philosopher Bon Scott: “It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll.” The message? After chilling (and bumming) out on last year’s mortality-fixated West, which she said was inspired by the electronic blues of Thievery Corporation and Kruder & Dorfmeister, Williams goes back to the roots-rock well and takes a long, satisfying swig. The result is her finest record since Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, the decade-old masterpiece by which her career will always be judged.

Little Honey is a retrenchment, but it isn’t narrowly focused: “Real Love” and “Honey Bee” are rowdy bar-band rave-ups; “Knowing” and “Rarity” have gorgeous vintage-soul horn arrangements; “Well Well Well” jumps with electric bluegrass rhythms. Over the scrappy juke-joint groove of “Jailhouse Tears,” Williams trades soured lover’s accusations with Elvis Costello. What unites the songs is the restored hope in Williams’ singing, whether she’s describing her engagement to Little Honey coproducer Tom Overby in “Tears of Joy” or the purity of an unnamed musician’s talent in “Rarity.” Amid all this emotional renewal, even the closing AC/DC cover sounds pretty profound.


FOUR STARS

» www.spin.com

"That song and this one are real country music," quipped Lucinda Williams between two songs from her new album, "Little Honey," at the Riviera on Friday night. "Country music that's too country for Nashville."

The words, while delivered with humor, pretty much sum up Lucinda Williams' renegade relationship with the commercial country scene. Aptly mining country, blues, folk, pop and rock, Williams defies genre pigeon-holing, and though that has been appreciated by fans, peers and critics, it's perhaps also limited her reach within country circles.


Her last appearances in Chicago a year ago comprised two sold-out stints at the Vic and traversed more of her heartbreaking songs. The Riviera, while well attended, was not sold out.


Touring on "Little Honey," an album housing a more celebratory sound, Williams focused on her more rocking, if not always as poignant, fare. Williams pulled out many classics during the nearly two-hour set, which illustrated that while her latest work may sizzle musically, the lyrics—one of Williams' most prominent fortes—are more straightforward and less poetic. "Honey Bee's" rollicking musical wallop was lyrically repetitive and beneath Williams' capable storytelling. Her gift for phrasing was lost in the formulaic chorus of new songs such as "Real Love."


Her stellar backing/opening band, Buick 6, and Williams, who alternated between acoustic and electric guitar, gave the new material extra punch with extended instrumentals live. Vocally, Williams was at her finest. Whether it was the gritty and defiant "Joy" or the wistful "Out of Touch"—her emotive intonations added even more depth to her lyric's conveyed emotions. New songs, such as the swinging "Jailhouse Tears" and her huskily delivered bluesy "Tears of Joy" aligned well with her early work.


She encored with covers of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" from a forthcoming protest EP and AC/DC's "Long Way to the Top" from "Little Honey."



Though her recent lyrics aren't always on point, the 55-year-old Williams just keeps getting better.

» www.chicagotribune.com

I was inspired by [singer and songwriter] Laura Cantrell. I have these really old songs that nobody ever heard before. I was really inspired because when she put her last record out, Humming By The Flowered Vine, somehow she got a hold of this real old song of mine called “Letters” that had never been out on anything. Maybe it was on some demo I did - I guess it was floating around. Somehow she got a hold of that song, and lo and behold, there it was on her record. I was happy to see it, but I was also surprised. ‘Cause I always look at that song as being a really, really early song, something I wrote 25 or 30 years ago, believe it or not. Like when I was in my twenties, probably, and just getting started and stuff. So it’s one of those songs you don’t think about any more. Like, whatever, that’s that song for that time, and it will never see the light of day. And there it is on her record! And sometimes when I run into really old friends of mine, from when I used to play in Austin, Texas, they ask me about these early songs, from when I was of that age, in my twenties-some people I know still remember those songs. So I started thinking about revisiting my early stuff, that’s kind of what lead me to go back and rediscover some of the songs like “If Wishes Were Horses.” I thought maybe I should revisit those songs, and give those songs a chance, too. Like, a lot of the stuff that was on my early albums, even my Rough Trade album and Happy Woman Blues, people still like those songs, you know?

It’s hard as a songwriter sometimes, to go back and appreciate some of the early stuff. But that’s what I was attempting to do.

I kind of go back and remember, I just sort of bring them up-to-date now, and when I’m singing ‘em, I’m singing ‘em for now, but I also remember the moment when I wrote them. So it’s kind of like lookin’ at an album of old photographs, and you look at yourself and say wow that was me then [laughs]. It’s an exploration, looking back and moving forward at the same time. That’s kind of what this new album is about.

So you don’t practice automatic writing?
I go through and edit and re-edit until I get it write, as I’m writing a new song. I don’t throw anything away, so I keep a folder of everything I’ve ever written. Once I’ve written a song and I’ve used all the lines, I’ll take it out. The only time I’ll throw those notes out is when I’ve used up all the ideas. But if there’s one little line from 20 years ago that I wrote down, I still have it. So the beauty of that is, sometimes when I have the time, and I’m in the mood, I’ll get all those notes out. Or I might be working on a new song, and I’m kind of stuck, and I need a line, so I’ll go back and browse through all that stuff. Something might pop up that I’ll be able to use now, whereas I might not have been able to use it before. So it’s always good to keep everything.

I’m always writing ideas down and then I stick ‘em in my pocket and put ‘em in that folder so I don’t loose them. Like, somebody might say something, and I’ll go, oh that’s a good line, and that goes in the folder too. It’s kind of an on-going process for me.

When you recorded the duet with Elvis Costello, “Jailhouse Tears,” did he change any of the lyrics around?
No, I wrote all the lyrics. He just sang them the way I’d already written them. It was great; he’s a sweetheart. We’ve known each other for a few years now. I sang on one of his songs on a record he’d done a few years ago, Delivery Man. He’s always been a big fan and really supportive, and he’s a great artist. He just continues to grow as he gets older, he’s still out there doing it, he’s still making great records. I really admire artists like that-Elvis Costello, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, who’s a great inspiration too, and a friend also. It’s a real honor to have these guys kind of in my camp now, you know. Because they were who I was listening to when I was learning how to write.

So with Elvis, he happened to be in town for just a couple of days, and he made the time to come in and do that song with me. He had heard it before because I had been doing it live. And sometimes when we were doing the same festival, he’d jump up on stage and sing with me. He’s just one of those artist who loves to get out there and play music and be supportive of other artists.

You cover AC/DC’s “It’s A Long Way To The Top” on this album - did I read correctly that you weren’t a fan initially?
It’s not that I wasn’t a fan. I didn’t have any of their records, they weren’t really on my turntable on a regular basis. I was more into Bob Dylan, The Byrds, and Neil Young, and all the ‘60s rock bands, like Cream and The Doors. It’s funny, now that I’ve gotten older, I’m actually able to go back and appreciate more hard rock. Now I’ve gone back and listened to some of those bands. There’s so much music, you can’t take in every single thing.

I mean, I heard them on the radio, of course, and I always admired the guitar player and stuff, but it wasn’t the kind of music that I listened to on a regular basis, cause I was just into different styles of stuff. But it was really [Little Honey producer and William's fiance] Tom Overby who said “You know, we need a good rock and roll song for this record, let’s try to think of a cool cover we could do, like an older song.” I would have picked this one song by this band Mountain. I was thinking more of that style, more of a blues-based rock band. And then Tom found this AC/DC song, and I said, I don’t know, you know? I didn’t even know the song. He said let’s just try it and see. He took it into the band first, they worked it out. And then I came into the studio later, at the end of the day, and I went in and said, “OK let’s give it a shot,” but I was still kind of resistant. And then I went in, they had the lyrics printed out for me - it took a little time for me to figure out the phrasing and everything. I took a stab at it and we ran through it a couple of times I guess, and I thought, “wow, I can do this!” That’s how we approach things, real spontaneous like that. It just goes to show you never know, you know? I wasn’t even sure if we should put it on the record, I wasn’t sure if people were going to like it-because I hadn’t done that before, on any of my albums. I very rarely do any covers. And if I do one, it’s usually one nobody’s ever heard before, like a Little Son Jackson song, something like that. I did a Nick Drake song with Tom a long time ago. And then on Car Wheels I did a Randy Weeks song that nobody had heard because it’d never been recorded anywhere, “Can’t Let Go.” He was in this band the Lonesome Strangers.

When I first moved out to L.A. in late ‘84, I opened a few shows for them. Randy’s got his own thing going now, he’s living in Austin. He’s a great songwriter. I love his stuff. I like to seek out material from other writers like that to do.

Did you write “Rarity” with someone specific in mind?
I was actually really inspired by this artist named Mia Doi Todd. She’s just a really, really brilliant songwriter kind of more in the underground folk pop thing I guess. She goes out and tours and stuff. I guess there was a situation that inspired the song, but of course all my songs are bigger than one person. But there might be a person or an event that plants the seed for the song, but then the song becomes bigger than that. But what had happened was, a friend of turned me on to her, a record she put out on a little indie label, and this was when I was still living in Nashville, before I moved back to Los Angeles about six years ago. And I really was just struck by her lyrics. Her voice was soft and moody sounding, and her melodies were great, but her lyrics really impressed me. I’d never heard of her before. Then I was in a record store in L.A. and saw that she had a record out on a subsidiary of universal, I think it was on hip-o, maybe. But obviously she had some major label distribution, and I went, yay, finally. She’s got a chance to sell some records and get better known and things. Next thing I know I read that she’s been dropped by Universal, and now her next record is out on an unknown little indie label, so that’s what spurred the idea for the song. Because I had seen that so often, and I’d been through that myself, to some degree, and seen it happen with a lot of really good artists: where if they don’t sell enough records, they don’t really get a chance. It’s the same old story that you’ve heard a million times. So that’s basically what planted the idea for the song.

We finally got to meet, she lives in L.A., and she had came in, and I recorded a song that was going to go on West, but we had so many songs that we couldn’t put them all on the record. We sort of ran out of time, budget, money, time to record all the songs. But I had a demo of it, she came in and heard the demo, and she was really touched.

I don’t get as chance to see her play very often, but she’s just one of those unusually brilliant songwriters who probably if she had a chance to do something back in the, if she’d been around back in the day, when people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, writers like that were coming out, she would have probably stood a better chance in getting recognition. She definitely has a cult following, that’s for sure. That’s kind of the only way you can do it now anymore, if you’re just starting out. You have to build your own thing like that. I mean, I’m lucky, ‘cause I just barely got in by the skin of my teeth. But if I was just starting out now, I’d have a hard time. I’m lucky I got as far as I did! Just before the door slammed on me, before the industry kind of went to hell and a hand basket.

Time magazine called you America’s best songwriter. How did it affect your career, and how did it affect your psyche?
I’m sure it helped my career to some degree. All those accolades, all the positive press, it always helps. As far as how it affected my psyche, I remember feeling extremely honored, of course, but the thing you have to remember is… I don’t know if they still do it, but they would pick whatever songwriter it was for that year, or that decade. I don’t know exactly, but… Because my first reaction was, wait a minute! What about Bob Dylan, what about John Prine, what about Leonard Cohen? So what I was told was, they’re talking about now, for this specific time period. That made me feel a little more comfortable [laughs]. I felt a little humbled, to say the least. But that’s kind of my nature. I’m always kind of looking out for the other guy.

But I remember talking about it; they had Bob Dylan some other time. I mean all that stuff is a little, I don’t want to say hard to handle, but it’s certainly humbling, when you’ve been playing as long as I have, and things have taken a while to get to that point. And you never forget your beginnings. I don’t have a hard time keeping everything in perspective, you know? I probably have a hard time enjoying the fruits of my labor, and just being comfortable with it, just letting it happen, letting it be.

What’s the story behind the song “Come On,” from West?
That’s one where I was thinking, “Oh no, I don’t know about this.” And actually as it turned out, that was the one song that people went nuts over. Because I just looked at it like a silly little song, it wasn’t exactly like “Drunken Angel.” It wasn’t something that I worked that long on the lyrics or anything [laughs]. It’s sort of a playful look at those, kind of, hard rock songs, almost a parody on those kind of songs. Kind of like a parody of the hair bands of the ‘70s and ‘80s, where the guy’s out front going (makes a caterwauling sound), the whole thing. The irony of it is, of all the songs on West, my attorney, who I’ve been with forever… she’s been with me twenty-something years, and she has great taste, very refined taste, and she heard the album and said, oh that song “Come On” is incredible. And I said, thanks, but what about the song “West”? What about some of these other kind of more refined songs? She said, “Yeah, yeah, they’re great, but ‘Come On’-that’s gonna end up being your anthem, an anthem for women everywhere!” Then the next thing I know I got nominated for a Grammy for that song for best rock vocal and best rock song. That is funny! It just goes to show you, you slave away and write these introspective songs that you spend hours and hours on, and then… I guess it’s just that rock and roll thing, people respond to it.

They’re hard to write, though-those kind of songs-for me. I find it a lot easier to do the more kind of waltzes and slower songs. But I want to learn to write; I’ve always wanted to write songs like The Doors “Light My Fire,” stuff like that.

I’m kind of a late bloomer when it comes to certain bands, but I just discovered Audioslave, the songs on that album [Audioslave] are just amazing! Everybody’s like, that came out so long ago, and I’m like, I missed it!

You’ve said that Little Honey is the most eclectic album you’ve done. How so?
All my albums have had a little bit of this, a little bit of that. This one probably has a wider stretch of material on one album-it has more country stuff, like Car Wheels had, with “Well Well Well,” “Circles and X’s” and “If Wishes Were Horses.” But then it also has r&b stuff like “Tears of Joy,” and it’s got rock and roll stuff too. But I’ve always been an eclectic artist in general. Maybe this album reflects that the best.

It seems like people are responding to this album in a way that they haven’t since the Car Wheels one, and I think that’s because I have more country songs on there. I haven’t done that in awhile-stuff that’s kind of straight ahead country.

I mean, people loved West, the last record, too, but it was a different kind of record; introspective and a little sad and dark, because it was right after my mother died. This record has more up stuff on it. It’s more rock and roll. The Car Wheels record was the one that really defined me, and people have compared all my records to that one ever since then. And I think I’ve come in a big full circle since Car Wheels. First there was Essence, I don’t know who you’d describe that one, but it was kind of different, and it was the first one after Car Wheels, and it kind of freaked people out a little bit. And then there was World Without Tears, and then there was West. People loved those records, but everyone always goes back to the Car Wheels one. That’s always their favorite.

With Little Honey, it’s like I’ve come full circle; I kind of see it as the best of everything, as far as styles go. It’s got blues, country, and rock. I don’t know what goes on in people’s heads all the time, I just make the record I want to make at the time. It’s hard to explain, really.

» www.americansongwriter.com

Over the last three decades, Lucinda Williams' reputation slowly grew to the point that she's now routinely cited as one of the best songwriters of her generation. Yet during that time, the building blocks of her songs have remained essentially the same: love, loss and longing. While her music has run the gamut from rock to country to folk to blues, the emotional tenor of her lyrics has almost always centered on anger, heartbreak or sadness. It seemed that the one emotion Williams' expressive, whiskey-soaked voice couldn't tap into was joy.


So it might surprise fans to learn that Lucinda Williams is officially happy.

"When I made my last album, West, my mother had just passed away and I was coming out of an abusive relationship with a drug addict who had to go back into rehab," Williams explains. "Then I met my fiancée and everything just changed for the better. I'm kind of a late bloomer, but everything in my life right now is the best it's ever been."

While anyone who has followed her career can't help but be happy for her, fans may also worry that the Lucinda Williams they've come to know and love may be a thing of the past. Certainly, her latest album Little Honey is the loosest album Williams has ever made, but it's still as gritty and soulful as ever. While it lacks some of the unity of 1988's Lucinda Williams or 1998's Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, both of which were near-perfect, it's a breath of fresh air from the relentlessly downbeat West. There's a freewheeling duet with Elvis Costello ("Jailhouse Tears"), an ecstatically upbeat roadhouse rocker ("Honey Bee") and even an AC/DC cover ("It's a Long Way to the Top"). Perhaps the biggest surprise is how well it all works. After all, any music fan came name dozens of classic songs that are sad or angry. There hasn't been a great happy rock song since "She Loves You," something that Williams tacitly agrees with when she observes that upbeat tunes are "really hard to write without moving into the mushy sugar-coated place you don't want to go. You have to keep a tiny bit of sarcasm in there. The best songs that do that are classics from people like Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole. It harder to do in this genre because rock ‘n' roll is all about angst and leather and studs."

Still, Williams had no choice but to try. Where most singer-songwriters say fans shouldn't read too much about their own lives into their songs, Williams admits that she's only really good at writing about one subject - herself.

"Bob Dylan is great about writing about people he doesn't know personally," she says. "He can take a story out of the newspaper and write about it, like ‘Hurricane.' For me, it has to be something I can reach out and touch. There has to be a personal connection between me and the person in the song. Not necessarily a personal friend, but at least someone going through something I've experienced myself."

As college students are learning every day in this age of Twitter and Facebook, there are downsides to making your life an open book. For Williams, it means that she's required to dredge up pain from her past every time she steps on stage. To some extent she looks at it philosophically - that's simply the lot of a working musician. But she also sees some emotional benefit to it, explaining, "It's like going back and looking at pages from a diary. We can choose to forgive, but we're not going to forget. You still have those feelings in you. Letting them out can prove to be very therapeutic. You also sing those songs to help other people who might be going through the same stuff."

Williams' personal life isn't the only thing that has changed over the last few years. She has also become a much more prolific writer. Where she had once been known for taking four or more years between albums ("I used to marvel at how I'd meet other songwriters and they'd have 2,000 songs they'd written. I'd have just enough songs to make the one album I was working on."), her last four records have come at a steady clip. She attributes the change to developing more confidence in herself and her music, and that newfound confidence allowed her to go through her old notebooks searching for lost gems. Two of them wound up on Little Honey: "Circles and X's," and "If Wishes Were Horses," both of which were written in the mid-‘80s. The inspiration for her journey through the past struck when she heard Laura Cantrell's version of her song "Letters," which Williams wrote around 1975 and recorded on a demo but never officially released.

Explains Williams, "She got a copy from a mutual friend and did a beautiful, really sweet version of it that made me think ‘Wow, she brought this early song back to life, maybe I should go back and review some of my old stuff.' I've got all these tapes of old little songs, but I never thought they were good enough to do anything with. I wrote the hook for ‘Circles and X's' in 1984 or ‘85 but never finished it. I guess it wasn't ready to be born yet."

Williams adds that part of the reason she was able to give birth to it now is that she's no longer as hard on herself as she once was. It's a strange comment from someone who has long been known in the music industry as a demanding perfectionist.

"I've always had this voice in the back of my head that says ‘I know this is good' but then it never fails that when I'm making a record, I start to question this and that," she says. "That's what the song ‘Fruits of My Labor' [from 2003's World Without Tears] is about. When am I gonna enjoy the fruits of my labor and stop worrying?

"But that's just me. It's not something that's ever going to go away, but I'm working on it. We all have our stuff we have to battle and if that's what it takes for me to write these songs, then so be it. Whatever it takes."

» www.blurt-online.com

From the false start on the opening rocker "Real Love" to the fade-out of AC/DC cover "It's a Long Way to the Top," anyone familiar with Lucinda Williams may notice something unusual while listening to her new disc.

After years without it, Lucinda Williams seems delighted to be in a stable relationship with a stable guy.

You'll catch yourself smiling a lot -- laughing, even. On balance, it contains some of the most joyful music of her career -- this from a woman with a song "Joy" that rages about the loss of it.

"It basically does reflect my life," she said. "Personally, professionally and creatively, I'm in the best place I've ever been, at least in my adult life."

Williams, 55, smiled like a flustered teenager onstage recently while mentioning her fiance/manager Tom Overby's 50th birthday. She sang the new "Honey Bee" for him, describing the extended sexual metaphor as her favorite song to perform now. "Honey Bee" and "Real Love" are straight-ahead rockers destined to be mainstays in her live set for years.

She goes a long way toward shattering a couple of myths about herself -- that she's a perfectionist who needs years to write, and can't write without personal turmoil as source material.

The new album, "Little Honey," comes less than two years after its predecessor.

"Everyone's been asking me what makes me so prolific," she said, "and the only answer I know is having done it enough times and learning the craft. As I'm getting better, I'm getting more confident. It's just like anything you do. Everyone's different. Bob Dylan was 19 when he started writing his masterpieces and it just blows my mind."

She's always considered herself a late bloomer.

Going deeper behind the energetic rock songs, her disc has material that reflects contentment and maturity without seeming starry-eyed. "Tears of Joy," "Plan to Marry," "Circles and X's" and "Knowing" are songs from a woman who doesn't take love for granted.

On "Little Rock Star," Williams is the mother figure offering advice to a young musician facing familiar traps. One song that's a leftover from time spent with a drug-addict boyfriend, "Jailhouse Tears," is hilarious: a country duet with Elvis Costello acting strung-out and promising he's changed while Williams profanely tells him he's full of it.

Her father Miller Williams, a poet and her daughter's literary mentor, once said that there is a pitch-black well, and all of us stand at its edge. Some fall in, and some don't.

"I loved that image," she said. "It made so much sense to me. And I've seen it happen time and time again ... That's what my writing deals with a lot -- what makes someone stand at the edge and jump in and what makes some of us not."

That's plain in older songs like "Drunken Angel" and "2 Kool 2 Be 4-gotten." Williams seemed like someone who worked best when her life was a mess.

"That's the oldest myth around and I bought into it," she said. "We all did when we were starting out. I don't think I really thought of it on a conscious level. That's just part of being young and going through the muck and mire that you have to go through. I wasn't consciously making myself miserable so I could write songs. Maybe on some subliminal level I was, I don't know. Who knows? I guess I would have to undergo psychiatric evaluation to find out."

She and Overby, a longtime music industry executive, have been together more than three years. They met nearly 15 years apart, the first time at a meet-and-greet reception for Williams in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he lived in the early 1990s.

She was, Overby recalled, the shyest artist he'd ever met. "You got the sense that it was the first time she'd ever done that," he said.

"It probably was," Williams recalled.

Fast-forward to 2005 in Los Angeles, California, where both had settled. They had a mutual friend who wanted to set them up, but before that could happen they met by chance at a hair salon and spent hours talking.

"I was immediately smitten with him," she said. "He was so shy. I thought he didn't like me because he was so shy. That was the last night I drank tequila."

Maybe a little too much. He took her home, put her to bed and left a note with his phone number. She called the next day. On their first date, Williams took Overby to a studio to play all the new songs she'd written.

After years without it, Williams seems relieved and delighted to be in a stable relationship with a stable guy.

"I had to get over my bad-boy thing," she said. "Now I realize that all men have some bad boy. You just have to find it."

Overby mildly protests: "I was not exactly wearing a pocket protector."

For someone who was a big fan of Williams' music before knowing her, it must be pretty amazing for Overby to hear her sing "I found the love I've been looking for" and realize she had written it about him.

Except ...

She didn't.

"Real Love" was actually written about an unrequited crush that Williams had in between the drug-addict boyfriend and Overby. She was ready to toss it away before making "Little Honey," concerned that she would not be able to get into it emotionally.

Overby convinced Williams otherwise, a sign of business acumen and a reminder of a truism about her craft.

"Therein lies the key to good songwriting," she said. "It's irrelevant who the song was written about. If a song can't be universal, then you haven't written a good song."

» www.cnn.com

With a healthy relationship and a creative spurt she calls the most prolific in her career, alt-country's queen of pain and heartbreak sounds sweet—and shockingly upbeat—on her ninth studio album, Little Honey. Here, she gets in touch with her feminine side.

Q: You do a cover of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top" on the new album. Are you a closet headbanger?

A: I was into a lot of the blues-based rock bands like Cream, the early Stones. The punk thing flew right by me, but the metal bands like AC/DC were holding on to that blues stuff. I also got into Tool, Audioslave, Machinehead.

Q: You take brat rockers like Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse to task on "Little Rock Star." Was there a particular inspiration?

A: It's not really about Pete Doherty, but I just kept seeing his face popping up all fucked up when I was writing. Amy Winehouse is terribly disheartening, bless her little disheveled soul. Really, the song had a lot to do with Ryan Adams—he's a friend of mine—before he sobered up.

Q: Do you feel like the weary rock matriarch dispensing advice?

A: I'm 55 years old, and Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde are the only women in my age group who are doing this thing. It's shocking. But I'm in the best place in my whole life on every level. Except I don't look as good as I used to.

» men.style.com

The People
Sometimes it’s hard to live in a city and feel comfortable with people all of the time but the people of The Valley are some of the nicest folks I’ve ever met. They remind me of the people I grew up with. They have families and regular jobs and the majority of the people who live in The Valley do so because they were born here and grew up here. I was born and raised in the South and, growing up, often heard stereotyped descriptions of Southerners, as a whole, such as, “People from the South are racist, redneck, backwards, ignorant, Bible-thumping dumbasses” or “You mean, they smoke pot in Arkansas?” I would often find myself explaining to “ignorant yankees” that each Southern state carries with it its own brand and flair, not all Southern accents are the same and not every Southerner has had the same “raisings.”

Like the South, Los Angeles is often stereotyped but, in reality, it’s an extremely diverse, richly cultural city boasting different “towns.” I came out to Los Angeles in the fall of 1984. During the next six years I lived in various neighborhoods including Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Atwater and Burbank. Being the rambling woman that I was back then, I tried out Nashville for a while but, happily, moved back to Los Angeles in 2001. After I returned, I moved around from Burbank to North Hollywood and then to Silver Lake. But when it came to deciding where I wanted to live, if I could live anywhere in Los Angeles, I chose the neighborhood of Studio City, in The Valley.

The Reaction
People will say, “Oh, you live in The Valley?” and roll their eyes. The Valley—devoid of culture, bland, suburban and un-hip. I have found that the best places to live are often places that have not been endorsed by the “counterculture.” The fact is, a lot of people who now live in L.A. were raised in the equivalent of what is commonly referred to as “The Valley,” people who are trying way too hard to forget where they came from. They will never admit to an upbringing in Austin, Minneapolis or Ames, Iowa. They’ll talk about searching out a vegetarian BBQ joint in Silver Lake but won’t talk about the BBQs they used to enjoy in their childhood backyards. They’ll dress in vintage aprons tied around polka-dotted vintage dresses but won’t remember the stains on their mothers’ kitchen aprons. They’ll dye their hair all shades of blue but then speak with disdain of their blue-haired aunt back in Idaho.

Fixtures
Ventura Boulevard: Shopping in The valley is the bomb. I have friends who live in West Hollywood but do all of their shopping in The Valley because it’s so much easier. There is nothing quite like driving down Ventura Boulevard, especially in a yellow El Camino, on a bright sunny day when you’re not in a hurry.

Waitresses who like their jobs: These gals aren’t paying their way through art school and do not talk about their boyfriend’s band while you’re trying to read the menu and then insist on handing you a demo tape while you’re writing the check.

Valley girls: Yes, they really do exist and they’re proud of it. If you look closely you can see them driving down Ventura Boulevard, brown-skinned, top down, radio blasting. Check out Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’’’ and Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer.”

Amazing cars: You have never seen lowriders like the ones you see in The Valley. And the deeper you venture into The Valley, the cooler cars you will see. Cool cars are an important part of the L.A. culture and The Valley represents cool cars, big time.

The heat in the summer: Love it. I’m from the South. Some people complain because the temperature in The Valley is always about ten degrees warmer than it is on the west side. Big damn deal. Turn on the AC,jump in the pool, whatever! Trust me, it’s worth the compromise.

Driveways: I will never again live where I have to compete for parking on the street.

Cheaper rent: Do you want to have to park on the street and pay more rent?

NOHO: Acronym for North Hollywood. Come on, you’ve gotta love it. Get in while the rents are still cheap.

Restaurants
The Valley is completely underrated, as far as restaurants go. A few of my favorites…

Don Cuco’s: My favorite Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood. It’s been there for probably 50 years. The same waiters have worked there for about as long. Where else can I go for a late-night dinner at 10:45 p.m., talk politics, have a conversation about Vicki Carr and sing along to “Besame, Besame, Mucho”? And on your birthday, they bring you flan, serenade you, plop a big sombrero on your head, snap a Polaroid and give it to you to take home. I have celebrated three birthdays there, so far, and have the Polaroids to prove it.

The Eclectic Café: Great wine list, Dexter Gordon in the background and local art on the walls. I have become fast friends with the manager and some of the fun, feisty girls who work there.

The Firefly: Late-night menu, buzzing, neighborhood bar, no sign on the door, and on the weekends you’ll see dressed-up, mini-skirted girls and dressed-up Euro guys on dates, checking out the girls (you have to see through all of that and have a sense of humor, which is generally a good rule of thumb to follow if you’re going to live in Los Angeles).

The Sportsman’s Lodge: Fifty-year-old Sherman Oaks institution. This is where you will find tour busses parked in the expansive parking lot and maybe run into Dwight Yoakam’s tour manager at the poolside bar.

“Eeeww, you live in The Valley?” Yep!

Lucinda Williams released her ninth studio album, Little Honey, on Lost Highway Records. Check out the new track, “Wishes Were Horses,” on this issue’s CD [Relix, Nov '08] .

» www.relix.com

In order for Lucinda Williams to write a song, the conditions have to be perfect. "Nobody can be around," she says. "I like to be totally alone. I get out my guitar, and I spread all of my notes across the kitchen table." In early 2005, being alone wasn't a problem. Her love life was in a shambles after a long-term relationship she describes as "really destructive and really difficult" came to an end. "Then I had this brief, uneventful rock & roll fling — just oil for the motor," she says. Her mother had passed away, leading her to cancel dates from a world tour behind her seventh album, World Without Tears.

Hunkering down in total solitude, Williams entered the most prolific period of her life — a blast of creativity during which she accumulated more than 20 songs. Cuts like the tender eulogy "Mama You Sweet" and "Unsuffer Me" (sample lyric: "My joy is dead") ended up on West, the somber, soul-baring collection that Williams released in 2007. But she also wrote plenty of songs that weren't as grim. Some of the more upbeat, rocking tracks — "Real Love," "Circles and X's" and the hilarious "Jailhouse Tears," on which she duets with Elvis Costello — form the core of her righteous and raw new disc, Little Honey.

On a chilly night in August, Williams is sitting at the kitchen table of her new home in the hilly L.A. neighborhood of Studio City. Her blue fingernails match her Doors T-shirt, and she's sipping a glass of red wine. Seated beside her is the reason her mood lately has matched the upbeat vibe of the new record: her fiance, Tom Overby. Unlike basically every man she's been in a relationship with, Overby isn't a musician. "That last unhappy relationship was the straw that broke the camel's back," she says, looking into Overby's eyes. "I said, 'That's it! I'm done with the fuckin' games and the rock & roll bullshit. I'm done with the bad boys!' "

Of all places, the couple met in a Hollywood hair salon, where Williams was treating a girlfriend to some new hair extensions. "We were the last ones there," she says. "Tom dropped in to get his hair cut, and he introduced himself to me. I was attracted to him right away — that sweet smile, those twinkly eyes, that gold tooth." After a night on the town, hitting the Hollywood spot Velvet Margarita and the singer-songwriter haven the Hotel Café, Williams was smitten. Overby, who has worked as an A&R director and an executive at Best Buy, drove Williams home. "The tequila went to my head," Williams says. "I plopped into bed and woke up hoping that there was a note from him. And there was."

Initially, Williams had doubts about Overby. His low-key demeanor troubled her, causing Williams to fear that a relationship without rock & roll turmoil might negatively affect her art. "To be honest, it was a big test for me after I got involved with Tom and we moved in together," she says. "I said to myself, 'Am I still going to be able to write songs? Am I still going to get inspiration? Will that part of me continue to grow and be alive?' Because if that part of me dies, then I die."

Williams conquered her doubts. "I actually started writing positive love songs," she says, citing Little Honey tracks like "Tears of Joy" and "Plan to Marry" — both inspired by Overby. On "Honey Bee," Williams growls, "I'm so glad you stung me/Now I've got your honey/All over my tummy." On the slow-burning blues number "Tears of Joy," she sings, "You give my life meaning, that's why I wear your ring/And why I'm crying tears of joy." It's a happiness that she's been searching for since her 1998 breakthrough, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, when she famously declared, "You took my joy and I want it back."

"I've finally found the right relationship where I can blossom as a writer and grow with somebody and be happy," she says. "I had to wait until I was in my 50s, but, you know, I'm a late bloomer anyway." Overby, who is 50, is a calming influence on Williams, who no longer drinks hard alcohol. "I still like to go out and drink, but now it's just red wine." And though her life as a drifter has been well documented in her lyrics, her new home — which she calls her first "star house" — is a major step toward stability. Her future husband, who shares Williams' deep knowledge of traditional music, also took the reins of her career, shortly before the 2007 death of Williams' longtime manager, Frank Callari. "He's full of great ideas," says Williams.

Last year, Overby arranged a series of concerts in New York and L.A. in which Williams performed her classic albums — 1988's Lucinda Williams, 1992's Sweet Old World, 1998's Car Wheels, 2001's Essence and 2003's World Without Tears — in their entirety. He also encouraged Williams to record an EP of protest songs, titled Lu in '08 (to be released digitally on October 28th), which includes a topical new song, "Bone of Contention," in addition to live versions of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" and Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth." "I'm a yellow-dog Democrat," Williams says, "which is a Southern expression that means you always vote Democrat. I love this country, and I'm concerned that people aren't going to be looking at the issues. Like, 'I'm gonna vote for the cute babe who hunts.' "

In late August, Williams flies up to Seattle with her band for the annual Bumbershoot festival. Performing on an outdoor stage in the shadow of the Space Needle, she reminds thousands of fans to "get out there and vote." On a warm late-summer afternoon, Williams hides her eyes under the brim of a black fedora. Despite her crippling fear of crowds, which she's never been able to shed (her nervousness causes her to drop lines, so she performs with lyrics propped on a music stand), she seems confident and happy. Backed by her heavy-hitting band, Buick 6, Williams kicks into "Real Love," Little Honey's opening track. "I found the love I've been looking for/It's a real love, it's a real love," she sings, shooting smiles into the wings, where Overby stands. Eventually, he breaks his managerial pose — arms folded, all business — to crack a smile and expose his gold tooth.

The irony is that Williams didn't even write "Real Love" about Overby — but she sings it to him now. "I got that song out of that fling before I met Tom," she says at her kitchen table. "I mean, a lot of the guys I've been with, if they're rock & roll musicians, there ends up being a little competition — they feel threatened. But rather than feeling threatened by my strength, Tom is inspired by it, because he's a real man. He gives me confidence, and confidence is everything."

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“…LITTLE HONEY is Lucinda Williams at her best.”  Rating: 92 Phenomenal - Paste Magazine

“…it's her most rocked-out set to date, and also her happiest.” - Philadelphia Inquirer

“Lucinda Williams checks in with her most electrifying new release since ‘Car Wheels on A Gravel Road’…” - Arizona Republic

“You'll catch yourself smiling a lot — laughing, even. On balance, it contains some of the most joyful music of her career…” - Associated Press

On October 28, two weeks after the release of Little Honey, Williams will release a politically-charged, digital only, four-song Live EP titled Lu in 08. The EP will feature three covers and one Williams original. The tracks will be Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” Bob Dylan’s “Masters Of War,” Thievery Corporation/Flaming Lips collaboration “Marching The Hate Machines” and the unreleased “Bone Of Contention.” The three covers were recorded live in Greensboro, NC in September 2007 and “Bone Of Contention” in Milwaukee, WI of July 2008.

After nearly three decades of writing songs about life's dead ends and the men who've done her wrong, Lucinda Williams has finally released a record that critics have deemed her "happy album."

Wouldn't you know it, though, she's not actually happy about it being called that.

"Yes, I'm in a great relationship and in a great place in my life," Williams said, "but I still have plenty of things to be miserable or upset or disturbed about. It's not like I don't have bad days anymore."

Talking by phone from the road last week, Williams laughed as she pointed out that there's also plenty of misery on "Little Honey," the new disc, which she'll perform in its entirety Thursday at First Avenue (for a live webcast on LucindaWilliams.com) before returning for a regular show Nov. 5.

"Look at the song 'Jailhouse Tears,'" she said, referring to a duet with Elvis Costello. "It's written about a drug addict, alcoholic guy. That's not exactly a happy song. I've had people ask me, 'Are you still going to be able to write interesting songs?' And I'm like, 'Come on!' When was the last time one person fulfilled another person's every need?"

Williams' fiancé, Tom Overby -- who's from the Twin Cities -- is indeed filling many a role in her life and career. A former Best Buy music executive, Overby is co-producer of the new album and also her manager now. They met at a hair salon in Hollywood about four years ago.

Overby had gone to work for record distributor Fontana in Los Angeles, where Louisiana-bred Williams, 55, has lived for about a decade. He went to work for her following the death of her longtime manager, Frank Callari, last October.

Said Overby, "I told her I'd do it on two conditions: No. 1, if it all affects the two of us, she'd find somebody else. And No. 2, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it all the way and manage other artists, too. She said, 'Absolutely. Let's go.'"

As they handed off the phone to each other, both Overby and Williams laughed over the fact that most listeners and critics have surmised that he's the "soul connection" she refers to in the new album's first single, "Real Love," currently in heavy rotation at the Current (89.3 FM). Some of the song's gushing lyrics include "I've found the love that I've been looking for" and "Come on baby, we really got something."

"I hate to burst everybody's bubble, but 'Real Love' was actually written before I met Tom," the singer said. "Sometimes you can just meet someone somewhere one night and go home and write a song like that, if you have enough fantasy in your head."

Referring to another new song with a blissful tinge, "Knowing," Williams said, "I think it's interesting that I wrote them right before I met Tom. It's almost what I wish was happening. It was kind of a burst of fantasy. It was something I was feeling at the time, but looking back on it, it was more like a longing."

• • •

She's right, though, that plenty of the songs on "Little Honey" feature the old, downbeat Williams that we've grown to love -- and who's earned three Grammy Awards and widespread critical praise over a quarter-century.

In addition to "Jailhouse Tears," there's "Plan to Marry," a poetic epic about love being a weapon against everything else, and "Circles and X's," about a romance growing distant.

"Circles and X's" is one of two tunes on the record that date back 15 to 20 years. The other, "If Wishes Were Horses," is another lament with the refrain, "If wishes were horses, I'd have a ranch." Williams remembered the track being around during her first marriage, a brief one in the mid-'80s with former Long Ryders drummer Greg Sowders.

"I don't know why, but for some reason when I was demo-ing songs and in that writing surge, I went back to those songs," she recalled. "When I really get into that [writing] mode, I get out this giant folder I have with bits and pieces of songs I've had for 20, 25 years. I just dump it out and start going through years and years of song ideas. Who knows? I might finish an old song I never finished, which is what happened."

Many of the other songs on "Little Honey" were written at the same time as the tracks on Williams' last album, 2007's "West." One of the best but probably the most sullen of Williams' nine records, "West" reflected on the death of her mother and the end of another relationship.

"I really wanted to get those songs [on 'West'] out and put them all behind me, because I didn't know if I'd be able to get behind these songs emotionally in another year's time," she recalled.

After "West," Williams put together a new touring band, dubbed the Buick 6, which includes her former guitar player Doug Pettibone plus guys who've played with the Eels and Tracy Chapman. The band added more of a rousing spirit to the new disc. Williams added a couple of freshly written tunes to the mix when it came time to record last winter, all leading to the disc's more uptempo vibe.

Among the newest songs is "Little Rock Star," in which Williams talks to an unnamed singer who's dead-set on self-destruction. "Will you ever know happiness, Little Rock Star?" she sings, "or is your death wish stronger than you?"

Williams said the song isn't about anyone specific but came from "a string of those kinds of artists" written about in the tabloids, especially British singers Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty.

"You could go all the way back to Kurt Cobain, or way back to Jim Morrison, but I was thinking more in terms of the contemporary ones," she said. "Amy Winehouse, I think she's so talented, and everything you read about her is just so dreadful and sad. And I knew Ryan Adams in his heyday, too. I'd been in there with all that big partying. I can see how you can go one way or the other. It is kind of coming from a long place saying, 'I do understand how you can slip into that downward spiral.'"

In the end, Williams did confirm that things are on the upswing in her own life. In addition to romantic contentment, she also admitted that -- after years of bumping heads and making waves in the music industry, especially around the time of her landmark 1997 album "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" -- she now feels satisfied in her career, too.

"I made sure a long time ago that everybody knew I was a stubborn artist and hard-headed," she said. "I knew that, deep down inside, I had the talent to back it up. You have to know that. So I made sure they understood I was going to do what I want to do, or I'll just walk.

"It probably made things happen a lot slower. I probably would have been famous a lot sooner. But I think it paid off in the long run."

FULL Q&A

Here's a condensed transcript of last week's interview with Lucinda Williams. It happened on a day off from touring, while she was hanging out with her fiance and manager, Tom Overby, a Twin Cities native and former Best Buy exec.


Q You're playing two shows here at First Ave, but they're two weeks apart. Any explanation for that?

A I'm not sure, really. I guess it's because we've got a break in between those two shows. The first one's near the end of the first leg, and then we have like 10 days off. So Tom and I are going to hang out there in Minneapolis, where his family and friends are. The other guys in our crew will fly home.


Q Have you been coming here more because of Tom?

A I've always loved playing there, but we haven't really gotten to hang out there much because we've been so busy. I met with his parents when we played the zoo this last time, this summer. We had a day off then and we had lunch with them.


Q How did you and Tom meet?

A We met when I was on tour for the "Sweet Old World" album, which would've been '91 or '92. He was working for Best Buy in Minneapolis. He remembers it, but I don't. It was some kind of a meet-and-greet. It was one of those, "Hey, how ya doing?"

Flash forward 15-some years later. I moved back to L.A. Tom had moved to L.A. to go to work for Fontana [a record distribution company]. You're gonna laugh at this: We re-met at a hair salon in Hollywood. I was there with a friend, and they were getting ready to close. The guy working at the salon is this real cool rock 'n' roll kind of guy who I had met at the Whiskey seeing Hank III, and he said he'd like to cut my hair. Tom had been having this guy cut his hair, too. Tom thinks the guy maybe set us up. I was there with my friend Shyla, who had known Tom when she worked at Giant. There was nobody else in there, and Tom walks in. He introduces himself.

We also had a mutual friend in Minneapolis, Bonnie Brown, formerly Bonnie Butler. She was a friend of mine from the early '90s when we first starting playing at First Ave. She was married to Danny Murphy of Soul Asylum at the time.


Q Any firm wedding plans yet?

A No. We've been so busy with everything. I was recording demos for "West" when we first got together, and it's been a whirlwind of activity since then.


Q You have been busy lately. This record is only coming a year after the last one, whereas it took you six years to put out "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road." What's different about your process now vs. back then?

A You know, I was looking back on my schedule just recently. There was a year between when my mother passed away, which was March of 2004, and it was almost exactly a year later when Tom and I met. During that year is when I wrote all these songs. It kind of make sense when you look at it that way: My mother had passed away, and I was coming out of this other relationship with a guy who was having drug and alcohol problems, and he went to rehab. That was all happening around same time. The beginning of 2004 was pretty rough.

Every song that's on "West" and a majority of songs on "Little Honey" were written in that period. Only a few came up a little later. So "Little Honey" is almost like "West, Vol. 2."

I really wanted to get those songs out [on "West"] and put them all behind me, because I didn't know if I'd be able to get behind those songs emotionally in another year's time.


Q How did Tom go from being your beau to being your manager?

A Tom brought a lot to the table because he had been working in the music arena for so long. I was still working with my old manager Frank Callari when we met, but Frank passed away about a year ago. Tom was ready for a career change, so when Frank passed away, he was able to step in.


Q Any worries of mixing business with pleasure?

A No. We're just one of those couples who can do it. I know it's unusual. A lot of people were concerned about that, like my attorney, Rosemary Carroll, who's been with me since before the Rough Trade album [1988's "Lucinda Williams"], and tour manager Frank Riley.

Tom had to pass the muster, as they say. They both loved him after they started meeting with him, though. He was able to show them he knew what he was doing. He brings a lot to the table creatively.


Q Everyone assumes the genuinely gushing new songs like "Real Love" and "Tears of Joy" were inspired by your current relationship. Is that true?

A I hate to burst everybody's bubble on that. "Real Love" was actually written before I met Tom. That and "Knowing." Everybody thinks it's about him, but it was sort of a little temporary thing that occurred. Sometimes you can meet someone somewhere one night and go home and write a song like that, if you have enough fantasy in your head.

I think it's interesting that I wrote them write before I met Tom. It's almost what I wish was happening, so it's more like that. It was kind of a burst of fantasy. It was something I was feeling at the time, but looking back on it, it was more like a longing. It was kind of a schoolgirl crush.


Q Everyone's calling this your "happy album," as if you've never written a happy song before. How do you feel about that?

A Yeah, I don't really buy that. Yes, I'm in a great relationship and in a great place in my life, but I still have plenty of things to be miserable or upset or disturbed about. It's not like I don't have bad days anymore, or don't have things that bum me out.

I've always had ups and downs. The difference now is I have a more committed thing and people can tell we're like a real couple, it's a real thing.

I've had people ask me, "Are you still going to be able to write interesting songs," and I'm like, "Come on!" When was the last time one person fulfilled another person's every need. Go back and listen to my song "Rescue," it's true. That's a lifetime song for me. Love can't rescue you from everything.

Look at the [new] song "Jailhouse Tears," it's written about a drug-addict, alcoholic guy. That's not exactly a happy song. And "Circles and X's" and "If Wishes Were Horses," those were written like 20 years ago.


Q I wanted to ask about that. How do these songs come back after all this time and make it onto a record?

A I don't know why, but for some reason when I was demo-ing songs and in that writing surge, I went back to those songs. I keep everything until I finish it. When I really get into that [writing] mode, I get out this giant folder I have with bits and pieces of songs I've for 20, 25 years. I just dump it out and start going through years and years of song ideas. Who knows? I might finish an old song I never finished, which is what happened.

"If Wishes Were Horses" was pretty much done, but I always thought it was kind of too simple. But I got re-inspired.


Q One of the reasons "Little Rock Star" is so effective is because it's not judgmental. Was that a conscious thing?

A To me, it goes back to the song "Drunken Angel," which was also written about a musician who led a pretty self-destructive life, Blaze Foley [from Austin, Texas], who was eventually shot in an argument. I didn't know him real well. Around that same time, Townes Van Zandt died, who was Blaze's hero. Some people would say Blaze tried to keep up with Townes, which no one could ever do.

When I wrote that song, I didn't want it to be judgmental. Same thing with "Lake Charles," about another person who was self-destructive like that, another wild and woolly character.

I had been reading in the paper a lot about Amy Winehouse. There had been a string of those kind of artists. Now, that's all you read about in press. It's not just one thing -- Pete Doherty, he was just one of several I read about like that. But you could go all the way back to Kurt Cobain, or way back to Jim Morrison. But I was thinking more in terms of the contemporary ones.

Amy Winehouse, I think she's so talented, and everything you read about her is just so dreadful and sad. And I knew Ryan Adams in his heyday, too. And I'd been in there with all that big partying. I can see how you can go one way or the other. It is kind of coming from a long place saying, I do understand how you can slip into that downward spiral.


Q "Little Rock Star" and another song, "Rarity," are also about fame and surviving the music biz. Are you content on those fronts?

A I'm happy, yeah. There's not one great place to be. Once you get to a certain point, it's like that old spiritual adage. When I was younger, I just thought I'd be happy if I didn't have to work a day job. Then it becomes something else: If I get a record deal. Then you get a record deal, and it's something else. It's like anything else in life.

Tom and I just bought a house. Thank God this recession hasn't affected us yet. But I didn't grow up with much. My dad [poet Miller Williams] was a college professor. He has a new book that just came out. I love the title: "Time and the Tilting Earth."

I didn't want to make a video when everybody else was making videos. I didn't want to sell out. I was horrified at that. Certain things now, though, I'll say, "What the hell?"

Over the years, I've gotten more confident. I'm not so worried about fans thinking I've sold out if I make a video or, God forbid, if I get on the cover of Rolling Stone.

» www.startribune.com

Finding love, finding fame

Although Williams is generally known as an album-oriented artist, her singles receive significant airplay on satellite radio and progressive rock stations. Her current single, "Real Love," has reached No. 22 on Billboard's Triple-A (adult album alternative) chart.

Williams' ninth studio album, "Little Honey," has two key themes. One is about the importance of finding true love. The other is about rock 'n' roll stardom. "Little Rock Star" is an empathetic look at self-destructive artists, while "Rarity" examines insidious pitfalls of the music industry. The album closes with a cover of AC/DC's ode to touring, "It's a Long Way to the Top."

"I wasn't consciously thinking of the connection," Williams said while on the road in Albany, N.Y. "Those songs just sort of stumbled together like that. Tom [Overby, co-producer of 'Little Honey'] came up with the idea of trying a cover of 'Long Way to the Top,' and he actually pointed out that similarity, that thread running through."

On Oct. 28, Williams will release "Lu in '08," a digital-only EP consisting of four protest songs, including a cover of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War."

The songs' subject matter, the EP's title and the timing of the release are all intended to influence fans' behavior when they go to the polls on Nov. 4. "I do want to affect people's thinking, but most of the time I feel like I'm preaching to the choir," Williams said. "When I go out and play live, I don't know how many people in the audience are Republicans. I would imagine very few."

LUCINDA WILLIAMS
WITH BUICK 6
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday
Where: Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine
Tickets: $35
Phone: (312) 559-1212

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