So it should come as no surprise that when she engaged in written correspondence with Ray Wylie Hubbard back in the day, she had thoughts of living in poetry. Literally.
“We would correspond sometimes, and I remember getting something in the mail from him, and it said ‘Poetry, Texas.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, I want to live there!’” Williams says with a laugh.
This brief aside seemingly transitions into the plug of the story, which is a show she is playing in Fort Worth. As the conversation turns to the topic of Texas, she says, “For some reason, I always think about Ray Wylie Hubbard when I think of Dallas or Fort Worth.”
This happens quite often, considering the numerous treks Williams has made to North Texas over the years, especially earlier in her career when she lived directly south. In 1974, Williams moved to Austin, where she would frequent the stretch of Guadalupe Street known as “The Drag” and venues such as Armadillo World Headquarters and Hole in the Wall.
“[Austin] had that perfect blend of that small-town friendliness, but at the same time, culturally, it was just booming with all this music and great food and friendly people,” she says. “Then the money started coming in.”
But notwithstanding the Joe Rogan-ification and other affronts against Texas’ capital over the years, it remains a special place for the singer and stirs an emotional flurry of bittersweetness and nostalgia within her.
At that time, her career was a thankless grind that paid in food pantry peanuts. It was a long one, too: more specifically, 14 years before Rough Trade released her 1988 self-titled album and introduced her to a niche but still international audience, and nearly a quarter-century before her 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road became a Grammy favorite and obvious entry for music critics’ “Best of” lists.
Time has, of course, rewarded Williams for this hustle via warm esteem from her peers, admiration from multiple generations of artists and a loyal fanbase. Tom Petty, an artist Williams has long admired, has reciprocated this admiration. Bruce Springsteen is also a fan, having collaborated with Williams on two songs off her 2023 record Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart. Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield said in a 2021 Observer interview that Williams’ music changed her life and "recontextualized country music for [her] in a way that was super important.”
Jeff Tweedy. Jason Isbell. Old 97's. The fans and their own contributions to music and pop culture are as much a testament to Williams’ enviable talent and timeless repertoire as her records themselves.
This high praise is hardly novel, but Williams’ modesty about it is anything but false, and she responds to it as if she’s hearing it for the first time.
“Some people will compliment me on something and they’ll say, ‘Oh, you probably hear this all the time,’ and I say, ‘I can never hear this too much.’ I mean, it’s great,” she says. “I try to accept it graciously as much as possible.”
Springsteen’s collaborations on Rock n Roll Heart are quite a demonstration of all that, but also of how her blend of rock with blues, country and folk (people often call that “Americana,” but we won’t succumb to that here) comes naturally to her. The record's title is even more apt considering that it also boasts collaboration with The Replacements’ Tommy Stinson, whose late brother and bandmate, Bob Stinson, inspired the track “Hum’s Liquor.”
Williams expounds on the rich and tragic Replacements lore: “The story [my husband] Tom [Overby] told me was, he had an apartment in downtown Minneapolis. There was a window in his apartment — he could look out and see a liquor store called Hum’s Liquor right across the street. [Overby] swears up and down, [saying], ‘I could see Bob Stinson every morning like clockwork standing outside the door of the liquor store waiting to get in. Every single day.’ That’s how bad it was.”
Miss Americana
Overby, with whom Williams celebrated her 15th wedding anniversary in September, is also her manager and faithfully synergetic collaborator. Speaking to Williams, Overby’s name comes up enough to where we are already on a first-name basis with him. On one of those occasions, Williams discussed her admiration of The Band and the privilege of being asked to play a Robbie Robertson tribute concert in Los Angeles later this month. Other artists billed for the Oct. 17 event include Eric Clapton, Noah Kahan, Taj Mahal, Ryan Bingham and Bobby Weir.Williams’ acceptance of the opportunity came swiftly, but Overby relayed a difficult task.
“The first thing he said was, ‘You have to pick [one] song,’ and I picked two,” Williams says. “The two I was trying to decide between were ‘Whispering Pines’ and ‘Makes No Difference.’ Those are my two favorite ones.”
Williams says The Band had a formative impact on her artistry.
“I was like a lot of other people when they first came out, was just really impressed with their sound,” she remembers. “I was listening to [‘Whispering Pines’] last night on my phone, and it just killed me. I was just like, ‘God, why can’t I do that? I want to write a song like that, and I want it to sound like that.’ That’s how I felt when I first heard them.”
Williams is quite fixated on how The Band had an Americana sound before music journalists and bloggers brought that genre label into common usage. It’s a label often bestowed on her, and while she does not suggest a disdain for it, there is something about describing her creativity with one catch-all label that seems repugnant to her.
Recalling a time when artists pulled off the same stylistic blend before the phrase “Americana” entered the lexicon, she reminisces, “It just was what it was. Nobody worried about, ‘What do you call that kind of music?’ It was just, ‘It’s The Band. It’s Creedence. It’s Buffalo Springfield. It’s Bob Dylan.’”
In that spirit, it’s Lucinda Williams, and Poetry, Texas, should thank its lucky stars.
Lucinda Williams plays Tannahill’s Tavern, 122 E. Exchange, Suite 200, Fort Worth, on Friday, Oct. 11.
