When looking back on one’s life path, there’s usually a fleeting moment or instant that can be traced to where we are now—even though, in the moment, we don’t even know it’s happening. For Grammy-award winning songwriter Lucinda Williams, a woman who is known for taking her time with her craft, producing quality music, and tapping in to her family tree for song inspiration, her path can arguably be tied back to the day she met iconic Southern writer Flannery O’Connor while accompanying her father, the poet Miller Williams, on a visit to her home in Milledgeville, Georgia. “He was trying to get known as a poet, and she really encouraged him a lot. He always said that Flannery O’Connor was his greatest teacher,” Williams remembers. “She was a mentor to him.”
Much like O’Connor, Williams has kept her own pace and has remained dedicated to her craft. Since the release of her first album in 1979, she’s worked with everyone from Bob Dylan to Billy Bob Thornton, garnered multiple Grammys, and is now the creative director, so to speak, of her own label Highway 20 Records, under which she released 2016’s critically acclaimed The Ghosts of Highway 20, which NPR heralded as “a remarkable distillation of her writerly gifts.” As she prepares to head to St. Louis for two performances—at the Contemporary Art Museum and The Pageant, respectively—Williams talks about that fateful meeting, revisiting the past, and what’s next.
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What do you remember about crossing paths with Flannery O’Connor?
I was really young! I think I was about 4 or 5 at the most, and when we were living in Macon, my dad took me with him. She had invited him to come and visit with her Milledgeville. I vaguely have a memory of it. Part of it is what my dad told me, he said when we got there that Flannery had a strict writing schedule, and we were a little early. Apparently Flannery’s housekeeper came out on the front porch and said “Miss Flannery isn’t quite ready yet to receive guests, but you can wait out here the porch,” so we waited on the porch and then Flannery’s housekeeper came back out and said “Miss Flannery will see you now,” real old school southern. My dad went in, and I stayed outside and apparently chased the peacocks around, because she raised peacocks. I’m sure all of that sunk into my little 4- or 5-year-old psyche at the time, because then when I was about 15 or 16 I read everything I could get my hands on of hers. I’ve realized how much over the years her writing has informed my songwriting.
In what way?
Like in lyrics, descriptive imagery and everything. In my song “Get Right With God,” there’s one verse that said “I would sleep on a bed of nails/Till my back was torn and bleeding,” that was kind of borrowed from her book Wise Blood. The [protagonist] is going through all of this turmoil about Christianity and all that. Also my song “Atonement”—in Wise Blood, there was the guy who pretended to be the street preacher, he pretended to be blind, but he was really just a hustler. You can see it when you go through and look at some of my song lyrics. I try to make it so that everybody can understand what I’m singing about, what I’m talking about.
You are known for taking your time when it comes to releasing music. How did you arrive at setting your own pace?
That kind of started with the [self-titled] Rough Trade album. It got such critical acclaim…then I experienced that feeling all of a sudden—I had to come up with songs for the next one, which was Sweet Old World, and I remember actually going in and recording a bunch of songs and then I went, “You know what, it’s not up to the level of what the Rough Trade album was. I’m going to have to go back and work on some new songs,” and I did that. Which was a good thing, because that’s when I came up with songs like the title song. I ended up wit that one, and “Little Angel, Little Brother,” two of my best songs. I wasn’t used to that kind of pressure. I don’t know how people put out so many albums so close together. Once I got on Lost Highway I was pretty happy with the people I was working with. They knew from the beginning that I was going to want a certain amount of creative freedom. My contract ran out with Lost Highway, so now I’m on Thirty Tigers, and [my husband and manager] Tom [Overby] and I set up our own label under Thirty Tigers, Highway 20 Records. Now I can really do whatever I want to do!
What are you working on right now?
I just went in with my band and re-recorded the whole Sweet Old World, album and it’s amazing. if I may say so myself. I’m so excited about it. We just went in and knocked it out. Tom came up with the idea, and said “It’s the 25th anniversary of the Sweet Old World album. I have this really cool idea—you need to go into the studio and re-cut all those songs.” Some of them I still continue to do, but some of them I’d felt like I‘d outgrown. It just sounds like a brand new album. It was a little melancholy, because so many people have passed on who were on that album. My voice is different now—it’s richer. The keys are different on all the songs, some of the arrangements, the instrumentation. I think Tom wants to get it out by September.
What else is different on it?
This one song, and it turned out really great—it had a different title on the original album. It was called “He Never Got Enough Love,” and I went back and wrote a couple of new verses and changed the refrain to “He was driving down a dead-end street.” But it’s really cool. It’s like instant album—here it is!
The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis presents “An Evening With Lucinda Williams,” on Tuesday, April 25 at 8 p.m. The show is currently sold out. Williams will also perform at The Pageant on Wednesday, April 26 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30–$105, and are available online or at The Pageant box office. For more info, go to thepageantstl.com.
