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Lucinda Williams recently turned sixty-one, and on the whole she feels pretty good about it. “I was so young, so sweet and tender,” she says when shown a photograph of herself at thirty-five. “I wish I still looked like that. But as an artist I’m better. My voice is better than it’s ever been; my range is better than it’s ever been.” This is quite a statement, considering that for the past twenty years Williams has been regarded as one of America’s finest living songwriters. Of her eleven studio and live albums there are a handful—Sweet Old World (1992), Car Wheels on a Gravel Road  (1998), Little Honey  (2008)—that offer little if any room for improvement. We don’t normally think of the seventh decade as being kind to popular musicians, but Williams is convinced she is in the middle of a sustained period of creativity and achievement. Lucinda Williams  (1988), her third record, long out of print and sought after by collectors, was reissued in January, and she recently founded her own label. Later this year she plans to release a double album of new material.

All of this activity, you might say, evens the scales, makes up for time lost earlier in her career. As she reveals in this memoir, which was recorded late one night in her home overlooking the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, Williams never considered a profession other than songwriter. Yet she did not begin to be widely recognized for her talents until middle age. Her songs were too eclectic for scouts in the music industry to place in a single category, and labels such as Sony and Rounder passed on the opportunity to sign her. “Nobody knew what to do with me,” Williams says.

There is something parable-like about the story, though, for over time Williams’ weakness, her point of vulnerability in the marketplace, was gradually shown to be her major strength. The greatness of her songs, as with those of Charley Patton and Bob Dylan, lies precisely in the way they defy customary notions of genre or style. After listening to a playlist of her songs, words like “country,” “rock,” and “folk-rock” seem fairly abstract, even arbitrary. From the twelve-bar blues of “Righteously” to the formal perfection of “Fancy Funeral”—a tune any hired songsmith in Nashville would kill to have written—to the classic existential plaint expressed by “Passionate Kisses,” a song whose catchy incantation and effortless concision are reminiscent of a Broadway showstopper, Williams has shown the ability to unite in her songs America’s many musical forms and to remind us of their ultimate similarity 

tracklist
01 Compassion.flac
02 Protection.flac
03 Burning Bridges.flac
04 East Side Of Town.flac
05 West Memphis.flac
06 Cold Day In Hell.flac
07 Foolishness.flac
08 Wrong Number.flac
09 Stand Right By Each Other.flac
10 It's Gonna Rain.flac
11 Something Wicked This Way Comes.flac
12 Big Mess.flac
13 When I Look at the World.flac
14 Walk On.flac
15 Temporary Nature (Of Any Precious Thing).flac
16 Everything But The Truth.flac
17 This Old Heartache.flac
18 Stowaway In Your Heart.flac
19 One More Day.flac
20 Magnolia.flac

enjoy