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The simple live

Williams takes no-fuss approach to concert album

Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 27, 2005 at midnight

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For Lucinda Williams it has always been about playing her songs live.

Even during a six-year battle against her record company that delayed Williams' 1998 classic Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, she just kept hitting the road, playing those songs live even if they weren't in stores at the time.

She now has a remarkable new concert album, Live at the Fillmore, in stores and two concerts here this week. Her Colorado shows have always been special, including her first-ever Red Rocks shows where she opened for Neil Young and just stood there with an awestruck look on her face.

For the new live album, she used Young's Live Rust as a template - an album that chronicled much of his career with little fuss.

"I was trying to put something together that I'd want to listen to myself," she said. "I don't listen to live records for two reasons: There's just too much talking going on, or it just doesn't sound good because of the way it was recorded. Those were the two things I was trying to make sure weren't going to happen."

The live album not only allows Williams to give heartfelt interpretations of classics such as Blue, but also to showcase fine songs that may not have received their full due earlier.

It opens with the wistful choruses of Ventura, one of her prettiest songs. The second-to-last song is Bus to Baton Rouge, a heartbreaking return to a childhood home where tiny details - a lampshade, a seashell - suddenly spark bigger, darker memories that the protagonist just can't bear: "There are other things I remember as well / but to tell them would just be too hard."

Many of her best songs have a definite tone from the start, be it the journey through the past of Bus to Baton Rouge, the dark relationship of Essence, the joy in Passionate Kisses or the wistful loss in Sweet Old World.

She labors over the lyrics, be it describing the simple making of a meal that opens Ventura or the weary opening line of Blue: "Go find a jukebox and see what a quarter can do."

"A lot of the ones with so many details in it take a long time," she says. "The song Blue, the seed of that was planted years before I actually finished it. I work on it, then give up on it for a while, put it away for a while, pull it out years later."

It's a songwriting process that has served her well in doing such complex character studies, but she has lately tried a simpler direction. Latter-day cuts such as Joy and Lonely Girls let the music carry them rather than laboring over details.

"It proved to be very liberating," she says. "It allowed me to go with more of a feel and a groove and a simpler perspective.

"At first I remember thinking, 'This is a cool idea for a song, but it's not finished yet.' Normally I'd think, 'I've gotta write more, enhance it, expand on it.' For the first time I said, 'You know what? What's wrong with that?' Let it just go, be a musical venture, just a groove thing, kind of like an old blues song. If you take it apart, there's not that much lyrically to a lot of those songs, but they still work."

She adds: "Bob Dylan inspired me a lot in that area. Remember those songs he was writing in the '60s, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, It's Alright Ma? Look at the difference between that and those (simpler) songs on Time Out of Mind."

She's working on a new album, and fans will hear new songs at both shows here.

"I have enough songs for two albums. A lot of people are asking me if I'm going to put out a double CD. I'm thinking I'm probably not going to. I don't want to overdo it with too many songs. So I'm throwing them out there, getting feedback on some of the songs."

For the live album, Williams' plan was to record a lot of shows, and she ordered her crew not to tell her what nights were being taped so it wouldn't affect the performance. At the end of the tour, however, she discovered that only six shows had been taped - far fewer than she hoped.

"We didn't record a lot of shows. We didn't have a collection of every song on every record," she says.

Twenty-two songs are scattered across both discs, with five more (including Passionate Kisses and Can't Let Go) available through iTunes, though a few of her "hits" such as Car Wheels on a Gravel Road aren't here.

"It's not like we had a great version of (it) and left it off. Don't people know I would have put it on there? Give me the benefit of the doubt here," she says. "But to be honest, I was a little disappointed myself. I was surprised we didn't record more shows. Somehow stuff got miscommunicated.

"I don't even think in terms of me having songs that are more commercial or better-known. I still see myself as an obscure artist. . . . I don't think in terms . . . of 'My big song.' "

Besides, what's considered a "big" song varies from market to market; in Denver, she has gotten substantial airplay with Joy, Can't Let Go, Essence, Blue, Changed the Locks and more.

More important to Williams is the lofty songwriting group she has joined over the years by stubbornly following her vision. Her work is routinely mentioned with that of Dylan, Tom Petty, John Prine, Bruce Springsteen, Young - the elite of modern songwriters. She also gets to work with them, collaborating on duets and sharing stages with the likes of Dylan, Young, Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, Paul Westerberg, Emmylou Harris and more. She's awed but matter-of-fact.

"That's what's so amazing about all that. They were all people I looked up to when I was starting out . . . kinda cutting my teeth. Now I'm a peer of theirs. That's a pretty major thing to have happen, to be accepted on their level," she says.

Attempts at songwriting collaborations, strangely enough, just haven't worked out.

"The better songwriters are just their own person," she says. "It's funny . . . John (Prine) and I had a great laugh together. We met, had a drink, had dinner, went over to Oh Boy (studios). We ended up sitting up till the sun came up, and we never came up with a damn thing. But we had a good time."



Mark Brown is the popular music critic. or 303-892-2674

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