Catching Up With… Lucinda Williams
Early in a career that’s now spanned three decades, Lucinda Williams mastered the art of writing powerful stories. But her last two records, West and Little Honey, have displayed a particular rawness to go along with her believability—the pain experienced from her mother’s passing and a the end of a broken relationship.
At 58, Williams seems to be doing better—evidenced by the title of her 11th record, Blessed. Following a pair of heartrending records, Williams married longtime record-label executive Tom Overby, continued her longstanding tradition of collaborating with other artists and entered another prolific songwriting phase. Paste caught up with Williams just as she was about to embark on a long touring stretch, discussing her desire to collaborate with Cee Lo Green, working with producer Don Was on Blessed and how Vic Chesnutt inspired one of her new songs.
Paste: In your last interview with Paste, you mentioned that the songs for West and Little Honey were written at the same time. Your current press release explains that your upcoming record Blessed emerged at the end of a “really big writing streak that gave me enough to make two albums.” I’m guessing that means that Blessed will be followed by a similar album?
Williams: When I went in to make West, I just came up with enough for two albums. I wanted to put one double album out, but we had to split them up…This was a different situation. I do have other songs, but some of them are not quite finished yet or they didn’t come out right when we were tracking or something.
When I finished West, I was frustrated because I had enough songs that were finished that I wanted to put out at the same time and I wasn’t able to. This time, we got the songs done for [Blessed]—the next songs will be on the next album. You what I mean? It’s not like I want to put them all out right now.
Paste: Does that mean that there will be a shorter timeframe between Blessed and the next record, or will it be a few more years before that one comes out?
Williams: Maybe, yeah. You never know. I have this one song that we cut in the studio. I decided I wanted to do something else with it. Sometimes it’s a matter of… I wanted to try and get Cee Lo [Green] to come in and sing on it or something like that. It’s kind of a ‘get right with God’ kind of thing. It’s called “Can’t Wish For Nothing”—I wanted to do a gospel kind of thing, or kind of hip-hoppy thing. I don’t know what you want to call it.
But we couldn’t get a hold of him—there was some other stuff like that didn’t quite work out, that weren’t quite ready that we’ll put on the next album with a little different flavor to them. All my songs are different like that. It just depends on what I have the time that I go in to make the album and what works. I don’t ever think about that stuff ahead of time. I don’t ever have a conception or anything like that—a lot of people ask me what’s the theme of the album [laughs].
Paste: You’re beating me to my next question [laughs]. Well then, if you didn’t have a preconceived theme or concept specific for Blessed, what was going through your head around the time you were writing this whole batch of songs?
Williams: Well, some of them were older songs, there’s a song that I… wrote and put on the shelf because I didn’t think it was good.
Paste: Which song was that?
Williams: It’s actually a demo tape I did in 1983—it’s called “Jazz Side of Life”—I wrote for a friend of mine…I thought it was a good song that needed some work…that’s one of the ones that will probably be on the new album. Sometimes they’re really old songs from a long time ago because I keep everything. Like “If Wishes Were Horses” was one of those really, really old songs.
Paste: Where any of those old songs on Blessed?
Williams: No, these were not ones completed like that. You know, I keep every single line and thought and idea in a folder. Some of those—they’re just bits and pieces from over the years. Like “Soldier’s Song,” I had some lines written down from who knows when. That’s a new song. I’m using a few lines to just get me started.
When I’m sitting down applying myself writing, when I’m in that mode, I get all that stuff out. Just set it all on the table and kind of just see what happens. Just go. Other times, I’ll just get a brand new fresh idea out of the blue. Those are the times when I’m doing other things like laying in bed getting ready to get up or getting ready to go to sleep and have some ideas and write it down. But when I actually sit down and finish a song is more when I’m in that mode before we go into record. It just depends.
Paste: What kind of role has your husband Tom Overby played in all of this over the past few years since you got married?
Williams: He’s my personal manager, overall manager. We have a separate business manager… It’s a good team…Tom also has worked in marketing and production and A&R at record labels for years and years and years—He was at Fontana in Universal Music Group when we met. He was looking for a career change, and [former manager] Frank Callari and I were starting to part ways and then Frank died suddenly. It all sort of happened right around the same time.
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