Lucinda Williams: Side of the Road

I'm a Libra. And something about Libras: We don't like to be alone. I especially don't like to be alone, not since.

But Sue's not here tonight, on a Friday; she's with her mom tonight since it's her birthday and she was operated on yesterday, so Sue drove down to the Cape tonight to be with her, and she's leaving for a couple of days for Mexico next week, so I've got some alone time to deal with.

I thought about calling a buddy to come on over, cook something to eat, have a few drinks, talk like we used to. But then I thought I'd take the time for myself. I was chatting with Allison the other day, and I told her I don't like to be alone anymore, don't like to do things alone anymore, have done enough in my life alone and I've gotten to the point where I want to share the time. You know?

And she got all up on that, she's young and just learning about herself and the world, and she said I should be my own best company, I should do something nice for myself, get dressed up and take myself out to dinner. Yeah, that's something a goat like me is going to do.

I told her I've been by myself so many times even I bore myself.

Anyway, years and years ago, I don't even think I was married yet, the woman who eventually became the mother of my girls had a job where one long weekend a month she'd work from Friday night to Monday morning. I wasn't going to just sit around and pine for her, so I used my T pass to learn Boston, all over. Rode the T from one end to the other. When I was seventeen I traveled all through Europe alone for three months. I've always liked the freedom of traveling alone, not worrying about another person, their likes and dislikes, schedules, and quirks.

And back then, I'd go to parties and movies alone. And I'd read cookbooks and go to place like Haymarket and get ingredients for dinners and that's how I learned to cook.

We got married and unfortunately it all turned into two people leading two separate lives under one roof. I did a lot of things by myself, then, too.

Once--Sue and I were already going out--I went hiking up in the Whites with Bob like we used to. It was supposed to be for a couple of days and we ended up on top of Mount Bondcliff the first night with the sun going down and I threw down my tent up there and one point I looked up and the moon was coming up over the Presidentials in front of me and the sun was setting over over my shoulder over the Franconian Ridge, and I thought to myself, dammnit, I've done this so many times by myself, I'd like Sue to see this. I came home the next day. I just wasn't mentally prepared to be up there alone, although I've done that so many times.

But tonight I just wanted to be alone. And in a funny way, sitting here writing these words I don't feel so alone knowing somebody's going to be reading them soon. That's what I keep harping about, about how we're all connected, so connected we don't even know how connected we are. If we aren't, I ask you, how come I don't feel alone knowing people will read these words and that will connect us? Again, just because you can't see it or explain it logically doesn't mean it doesn't exist or happen. Aristotle and all those logical Greeks didn't know it all, you know.

Anyway, tonight I made something new: Southern okra (as if there's any other kind.) And I intend to read and play a little guitar. Just feel my own skin for awhile. And I feel pretty good. It's nice to be alone with yourself for a short time.

It's also nice knowing Sue will be back tomorrow. That's real nice knowing that.

Lucinda Williams wrote a real nice song about all this. It's called, Side of the Road. Once you hear it, it's all pretty self-explanatory. If it's not, well, I feel sorry for you.




You wait in the car on the side of the road
Lemme go and stand awhile, I wanna know you're there but I wanna be alone
If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind

I walked out in a field, the grass was high, it brushed against my legs
I just stood and looked out at the open space and a farmhouse out a ways
And I wondered about the people who lived in it
And I wondered if they were happy and content
Were there children and a man and a wife?
Did she love him and take her hair down at night?

If I stray away too far from you, don't go and try to find me
It doesn't mean I don't love you, it doesn't mean I won't come back and
stay beside you
It only means I need a little time
To follow that unbroken line
To a place where the wild things grow
To a place where I used to always go

La la la, la la la, la la la, la la la
La la la la, la la la, la la la, la la la
If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind.

Drunken Angel

It's a question I've asked myself so many times...though I'm no angel.

Little Angel, Little Brother

Sometimes a song just touches you. It doesn't necessarily mean you identify 100% with a song, but there's always something. This is a wistful song for me. Maybe I always wanted s sister who thought of me like this. (Can you imagine having Lucinda Williams as a sister? Now there's a truly weird fantasy.)

I have two sisters, one who I haven't seen since I was around 12 years old, the other one I haven't spoken to in about six years. That's my family for you, or what goes for a family. I'm not blaming any of them. It's just the way we are. They can say the same thing about me, I guess. But I hate it. My dad left us all pretty much alone in the world, and unfortunately, I think I did it to my own kids. Parents just pass along what they know. And it's so hard to change. It's hard to live life a different way than what you're taught. What you know.

I've learned in life that you can have dreams, and dreams can come true, but you have to be able to distinguish between dreams and reality. And sometimes too much dreaming just means you're sleeping.

Your R & B records your music books
Your sense of humor and your rugged good looks
I see you now at the piano
Your back a slow curve
Playing Ray Charles and Fats Domino
While I sang all the words
Little angel little brother
Your bad habits and your attitude
Your restless ways and your solitude
I see you leaning your lanky frame
Just inside the door
A figure behind the kitchen screen
Staring down at the floor
Little angel little brother

SOLO

Little angel little brother
Your passion for Shakespeare and your paperbacks
Your chess pieces and your wisecracks
I see you sleeping in the car
Curled up on the back seat
Parked outside of a bar
An empty bottle at your feet
Little angel little brother
Your R & B records your music books
Your sense of humor and your rugged good looks
I see you now at the piano
Your back a slow curve
Playing Ray Charles and Fats Domino
While I sang all the words
Little angel little brother
Little angel little brother of mine

The best time of day

It's become my favorite time of day. The morning. I've never been a morning person. Not a morning person didn't even begin to describe it.

But then insomnia set in...hard. I'd even hate to go to bed. I'd stay up as late as I could, watching a movie or worse, forcing myself tired, hoping I'd just plow through the night. But whatever it was, it never worked. Nothing could keep down the troubles rising in my head. And then just as quick, after a long time, it went away.

Now I sleep all through the night until the alarm goes off. (Currently we're waking to Jan Garbarek.) It's hard to believe I'd be wide awake at five. That's in the a.m. And now, I can sleep in and I don't race for a train anymore, and my commute is a civil 30 minutes door-to-door.

But my favorite time is still sitting on couch in the morning with my best friend with a cup of coffee and talking.

If I had my way I'd be in your town
I might not stay but at least I would've been around
Cause there's something about what happens when we talk
Something about what happens when we talk
Does this make sense It doesn't matter anyway
Is it coincidence or was it meant to be
Cause there's something about what happens when we talk
Something about what happens when we talk
Conversation with you was like a drug
It wasn't your face so much as it was your words
Cause there's something about what happens when we talk
Something about what happens when we talk

I've learned to appreciate whatever good life brings my way.

Side of the Road

I walked out in a field, the grass was high, it brushed against my legs
I just stood and looked out at the open space and a farmhouse out a ways
And I wondered about the people who lived in it
And I wondered if they were happy and content
Were there children and a man and a wife?
Did she love him and take her hair down at night?

If I stray away too far from you, don't go and try to find me
It doesn't mean I don't love you, it doesn't mean I won't come back and
stay beside you
It only means I need a little time
To follow that unbroken line
To a place where the wild things grow
To a place where I used to always go

Live Nation should sell tickets more fairly

The business of buying and selling concert tickets just keeps getting more annoying. I bought tix for Thursday night's Lucinda Williams’ concert a couple of weeks ago. I used the link from the Bank of America Pavilion to Live Nation to Ticketmaster, chose “best available” and got what I considered pretty good tickets in Section Three considering I didn’t buy them when they first went on sale. Today, just for grins, I looked for tickets following the same link, and for the same price was offered fifth row seats in the center section. And of course the tickets I first bought can’t be refunded. Hey, I got decent seats. I shouldn’t complain, right? But what’s wrong with this picture? Just goes against an American’s ingrained sense of fairness, that’s all. I guess "best available" isn't available for all of us.

Lucinda moves up in the world

Was in Borders at Downtown Crossing checking out some Wilco CDs and noticed Lucinda William's CD was on a special rack out in the aisle but she was near the bottom.

I looked both ways then moved her up to eye level.

The peeps need to know about her.

Boston Herald loves Lucinda

Williams sings most ‘Righteously’
By Christopher Blagg/ Music Review
Monday, March 26, 2007

No one makes sounding weary and depressed as sexy as Lucinda Williams. At times raunchy, and other times more gently sensuous, the 54-year-old Louisiana-bred singer-songwriter expertly toed the line between heartbreak and desire in front of a riveted capacity crowd Saturday night at the Orpheum.

With a sympathetic three-piece backing band, a long, wild-haired Williams concentrated most of her set on recent material, including the just-released “West.” A sometimes erratic performer (her stumbling, profanity-riddled 2004 Newport Folk Festival appearance comes to mind), Williams was thankfully on top of her game this night, possibly due to just finishing up a pressure-laden week in New York that included gigs at Radio City and with David Letterman. “Now we can relax and just have some fun,” Williams said.

Relaxed was definitely the case early on. Williams began the night with a string of gorgeous acoustic ballads including the loping, pedal steel-weeping “Ventura,” and the Sam Cooke-inspired country soul of “Fruits of My Labor.”

Despite it being her breakout record, Williams only dipped twice into “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” the album’s childhood reverie-laden title track garnering the night’s biggest response from the devoted crowd.

Things got decidedly steamier as the set wore on. Williams’ bourbon-soaked drawl rambled through sexually suggestive tunes such as the slinky “Essence,” and “Come On” - a bluesy anthem for the sexually dissatisfied woman that had Williams howling, “You didn’t even make me . . . Come on!”

A few missteps crept into the set, notably the tongue-twisting “Righteously” and the awkward spoken-word blues of “Sweet Side,” in which Williams found herself clinging a bit too tightly to the safety net of her music stand and its lyric sheets.

The night ended as it began, with Williams retreating back to acoustic balladry for a quietly powerful encore set that included the lost love lament of “Everything Has Changed.” Williams’ artfully bruised alto managed to suffuse a glimmer of hope in the swaying “West,” before ending the night with a cover of Skip James’ mournful Delta blues standard “Hard Time Killing Floor.”

Cincinnati’s finest power trio Heartless Bastards charmed the pants off the unsuspecting audience with a rather phenomenal opening set of blues-infused garage rock that featured the enormous lungs of pint-sized singer Erika Wennerstrom. Expect big things from this diminutive woman.

LUCINDA WILLIAMS, with HEARTLESS BASTARDS at the Orpheum, Saturday night.

Lucinda Williams, Boston, Good karma or good luck?

Saturday night Sue and I had the worst seats in the house. Front row, house left. We were two feet from the wall in front of us and a tower of speakers, well, towered over us. We couldn’t see s**t.

I don’t know if you, gentle reader, remember, but I got the last two tickets for this concert. Twenty-nine bucks. Remember? I called Sue from the box office and she said, “For twenty-nine bucks, honey, go for it.”

The Heartless Bastards opened the show, and Sue and I listened to most of their set from the upstairs rotunda. You can’t bring beer into the theater, and at $8 a cup, we weren’t just going to chuck them when the show started. Sue and I, in our inestimable way, just shrugged and made our own fun.

Partway through The Heartless Bastards’ set we made for our seats, and that’s when we realized just how bad they were. So we listened to the music and looked at the crowd. Check that. We laughed at the crowd. Concerts in Boston can be so funny. You just see this sea of white faces sitting quietly in their chairs, staring, looking for all the world like they’re in their living rooms watching television.

At intermission, I’m not sure how this happened, but Sue and I were coming back from the bathrooms to our seats and we both just intuitively walked through this door and up these stairs next to our seats. We found ourselves upstairs in the side boxes. Where we watched the entire concert. We started talking to this one woman sitting there who was with her long-time friend and they were just like, “sure, why don’t you just hang out here?” Sue and I, for the second time that night, just shrugged and said, what the hell, and they actually let Sue and me sit for awhile while they took off and later came back and were dancing out in the hallway.

Lucinda Williams, Boston, 3.24.07

Not sure if I was at the same concert Saturday night as the Globe reviewer. That was a nasty dig, wasn't it? I actually agreed with a lot of what she wrote, but it didn't bother me that Lucinda read the lyrics and I didn't mind too much that she didn't really crank on Righteously. And I don't agree at all that her songs are dark and banal. Well, maybe dark, but certainly not banal. You live a certain way on this planet and you start feeling like Lucinda does.

Lucinda (yeah, fans call her by her first name; there is no other) was open and talkative and almost downright bubbly that night, unlike the flat, straight-ahead way she used to perform. Yeah, she read the lyrics or the chords or whatever. I noticed that too, and it actually made me smile a bit, thinking that it was funny that she didn’t know the words, or maybe the chords, to songs that she wrote and has been really steeped in. But so what?

She looked good, even a little chunky. Life looks like it’s treating Lucinda pretty well lately.

Doug Pettibone is awesome to watch…and listen to. You could see Lucinda leaning hard on him to keep things cranking. Well, I guess that’s why you got a guy like that in the band.

Not sure what the reviewer was talking about when she wrote that they “inflicted their tasty , soulless arrangements on sun-dappled Ventura and the country gem Fruits of My Labors…” How do tasty and soulless go together in the same sentence? Ventura just happens to be one of my favorites, though. I love the lyrics, the story they tell, and the dreamlike melody that carries the character to Ventura.

I wanna watch the ocean bend,
The edges of the sun, then
I wanna get swallowed up
In an ocean of love.

When I act I come up with a soundtrack for the character. I used Ventura once for a real lost soul when he was just trying to pull himself up. As with so much music, Ventura really hits me on a personal level, so it’s hard to criticize the way she sang it, like parents sometimes can’t see fault in their kids. Sometimes you go to a concert just to hear a song live from the performer.

Righteously was flat, though, which is a shame because it has so darn much potential to really rock. But she made up for it with so many other songs.

She cooked on Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings.

Joy just ripped. That one single chord that she just hammers on is like that one single point she (and so many of us) have tried to hammer home to some s**ts in our life.

You stole my joy, I want it back.

Her encore consisted of West and one of the songs from her roots in the Delta. She talked a bit about the Delta blues, and how they're still very much alive. Weird that she just threw that in, but it also was kind of like a dessert, just something sort of sweet and different.

Lucinda Williams, Boston Globe

From today's Boston Globe. A review of Lucinda William's concert Saturday night at the Orpheum.



Williams displays glorious voice, beaten heart
By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff | March 26, 2007

Lucinda Williams' s new album, "West," is an alt-country ex orcism, a collection of bluesy chants and rootsy incantations meant to vanquish the artist's grief at her mother's death and rage at one more love gone wrong. Williams had come unmoored, and most of the songs follow suit: They're heavy, banal, drifting things that left this listener wishing that Williams had waited to reclaim her heart -- and her poetry and her melodies -- before putting out another album.

The first third of Williams' s concert Saturday at the Orpheum was as slow-moving and dreary as her new album, although only five tracks from "West" were included in her nearly two-hour set. The singer seemed to be reading from a script. In fact she was reading from lyric sheets on a music stand, and glancing down after every phrase seriously diminished her ability to either connect with the audience or build any kind of flow into her delivery. Still, Williams' s voice sounded glorious: bigger and warmer and clearer than the ragged demo vocals she opted to keep on the final mixes for "West" in the name of emotional authenticity.

A trio of seasoned veterans -- guitarist Doug Pettibone , drummer Don Heffington , and bassist David Sutton -- recreated the album's muted and contained accompaniment on "Rescue" and "Learning How to Live," two of the more user-friendly songs. They also inflicted their tasty , soulless arrangements on sun-dappled "Ventura" and the country gem "Fruits of My Labors," from 2003's "World Without Tears," and the title track from Williams' s 1998 breakthrough, "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road." Williams limped through "Righteously," unable to conjure the snap and bite of the song's half-spoken appeal for real manhood. But Pettibone heard her message, finally flexing his formidable guitar muscle and setting the concert on a looser, grittier, and far livelier course.

With her band unleashed, Williams seemed to suddenly reconnect with all kinds of delicious motivation. She found her desire on "Essence," a jubilant paean to being a mess, and flirted with rock 'n' roll heroics on "Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings." She danced while spewing the chorus to the talking-blues poem "Sweet Side," and it was a rare and rewarding reprieve from Williams' s constant consultations with lyric sheets.

Erika Wennerstrom -- singer and guitarist from the excellent Ohio blues-punk trio Heartless Bastards, which opened the show -- joined Williams and company for "Joy" a raw and utterly persuasive reclamation of control. "You took my joy/ I want it back," she growled, and then followed it up with "Everything has Changed," a simple folk song written a decade later, featuring this refrain: "I can't find my joy anymore."

Happiness is elusive and no one knows it better, or has played it out more publicly, than Lucinda Williams. By the time she got to "West," the single ray of light on her misery-choked new album, she sounded more tired than hopeful. Or maybe it was just the novel sound of contentment: Williams is engaged to be married.

It just keeps getting better...*

It's officially Lucinda Williams Day.

Borders had her new CD on sale for $12.99. I'm listening to it now. "Are you alright?" is such a sweet song. God, is this woman living a parallel life in another universe? No, she writes truthfully about the things we all go through. Just tell the truth in this life, and people will be amazed.

Then I got the last two seats at her March 24 concert at the Orpheum in Boston. They're front row obstructed, so they were only twenty-nine bucks. I called Sue from the box office and told her the sit. "What the heck, honey, for twenty-nine bucks, go for it." Did I die and go to heaven or what?







*IJKGB is something I said to Sue as a joke when we were just getting to know each other.

West

Sometimes there does seem to be a God in heaven.

Opened the paper today to see that Lucinda Williams has a new CD out today, named West. Lucinda writes right to the bone, and sings in a nasally twang that speaks truthfully about pain, love, despair; to those who think she's depressing, she even writes about hope and laughter. You just have to be able to see it. Or maybe live the kind of life she has.

And tell me the woman's not hot.

Drunken Angel

Why'd you let go of your guitar
Why'd you ever let it go that far
Drunken Angel

How do we get so far from where we’re supposed to be? Maybe only by making wrong turns will we figure out where the right place is.

I’ve been learning to play the guitar for less than a year. But already when things aren’t going right, when things are unsettled, one of the best places for me to be is clinging to the neck of my guitar. Holding the body close.

My good buddy, Baxter, who fights more demons on a daily basis than any of us could imagine, found me drifting, more dead than alive, face down in the water. What he was doing that far from shore is a good question. He handed me a vintage Burns six-string guitar, saying she was meant for me. Keep it, he said. And I clung to her just like I was, a drowning man, a man thrown overboard and left for dead, who clings to a piece of flotsam in the big empty ocean and just prays.

After awhile, I named her Lulu, in honor of the singer/songwriter who wails the words that opens this blog. Lucinda Williams.



As you can see, Lulu is missing some parts. I guess you could say the same thing about me. She’s missing the plate that covers the bridge. And her twang bar. I don’t know what I’m missing, but I can feel their absence. Despite her flaws, I think Lulu is beautiful. Thankfully, there are some people who think the same about me.

There are nights when heaven is sitting trying to figure out the smoothest way for the fingers on my left hand to go from D to A to G and back to D. Now I’m leaving Normal and heading for Who Knows Where. Still haven’t figured it out yet.

What's the big deal about downloading music?

Today's big find:

http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/


This was in today’s Globe’s Sidekick. Great site with lots of archived concerts. Right now I’m listening to a Stevie Ray Vaughan concert from April 15, 1984 in Austin, Texas. I also did some impulse buying this morning when I first logged on to the site. Bought a poster from a concert on June 5, 1989 with the Cowboy Junkies and Lucinda Williams. Now if you scroll down just a bit and glance just to your left, you will see a partial list of some of my favorite music, and while it’s in no particular order, you will notice the first two artists are those very same that played together 17 years ago or so. The poster’s gonna look nice, framed and all, hung here in my cube on the 12th floor overlooking Cosi’s.



It’s the new paradigm for music. Everybody’s downloading and taking it for free, or so people who have been living off the music industry cash cow are complaining. That would be the fat cats in the suits at Sony and BMG and wherever, and the musicians, too, although the musicians still aren't making out like the execs. There’s money to be made, it’s just that the business model changed. Sorry, it changed for all of us. You just gotta deal with it, or die.

I see nothing wrong with downloading music for free. Here’s why. It’s been the way of the world for writers for all time. Say I wrote a book, and let’s say you actually bought the hardback for full price. And you read it and thought it was great. What would you do? You would tell your friends. But they wouldn’t go out and buy my book and read it. They’d borrow yours. Or Xerox it. It’s just like downloading for free, right? Or your friend would go to the library. Either way, I still wouldn’t make any money on sales. Those are my words and my thoughts. My talent and artistic ability is being showcased. But you don’t have any problem not compensating me.

The Internet was a long time coming and music execs should have seen this day sneaking up on them. But they didn’t. They were too busy counting their money instead of keeping their eyes on the business. They were rich, not smart. There’s a difference, although some people don’t get that. They figure if someone is rich that that person is smart, too. Rich and smart don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Greedy and rich do. But rich and smart? No.

So, now all the rich folks are crying foul, instead of figuring out that the way to make money is off the one-offs: ticket sales (if they keep them reasonable, instead of gouging prices to make up for the loss in CD sales), t-shirts, DVDs, posters, and all that.

The world changes. Get over. Change or die.