BOOKS, BEER, BOURBON, BALLADS ... AND BUBBLES – THE LUCINDA WILLIAMS SOUL RECIPE

"There are still things to be amazed by," says Lucinda Williams. Photo by Danny Clinch

TWO YEARS AGO, on the eve of publication of her memoir, Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets I Told You, Lucinda Williams wasn’t sure what the reaction would be – from friends, family or fans.

After all, she was telling exactly the kind of secrets she warned about in the book’s title, she was dispensing truths from a near-50 year career, and while she was still recovering from a stroke that had ended her guitar-playing (but not songwriting) days, she was laying out exactly where those experiences, those bruises and regrets, those joys she sings about had come from.

As she only semi-jokingly said to me then, that memoir had been put off for some years as she thought “I can’t do it yet because I’ve got to wait until more people die”.

Now, on the eve of a return to Australia for shows with Paul Kelly, and a night of her own at the Sydney Opera House where she’ll present book, songs and home films together in the one show, the verdict is in. And this modern giant of American roots music is mightily relieved.

“It’s been really positive overall,” Williams says in her elongated Southern drawl. “I’ve had a few women come up to me, girls and women, and tell me that they can relate to my story, with their parents maybe. My mother suffered from mental illness and I’ve had several girls come up to me and tell me it really helped them deal with their own experiences. That helped me most, hearing that.”

Buoyed by this, do the songs feel different now contextualised with the expanded stories?

“Maybe a little. It’s interesting to talk about stuff from when I was 11 or 12 years old, when I wrote my first song,” she says.”

Can we expect to hear that first song in the show?

“I don’t usually play it. I mean, if you ask really nice I might play a snippet of it, but it’s not a fully realised song.”

Fair enough, Williams was only 11 after all.

“I wasn’t where I am now in terms of songwriting,” she smiles.

Her musical career shows her as a quite different person now to the one who pushed her way through on 1980s’ Happy Woman Blues, let alone the pre-teen songwriter. What does she think of the person she was at the beginning of her career?

“I think she had a certain amount of fearlessness and artistic openness and was able to laugh at things. Was able to cry at things,” Williams says. “I developed a global view of the world at a really young age, partly because we travelled around so much: we lived in different countries when I was very young so I was exposed to a lot of wonderful people and cities and music. I think that really helped my sense of the world, it wasn’t just about me.”

Is there anything about the young Lucinda Williams that she wishes she still had?

“Probably something that we all have more of when we are younger, a sense of wonder. A sense of play and wonder and joy over small things. I’m still capable of that but it probably doesn’t happen as much as it did then.”

It is hard to keep a sense of wonder when you’ve seen as much of the world, for good and bad, as she has.

“Yeah, but there are still things to be amazed by. My father [the poet and literature professor Miller Williams]} used to say never lose your sense of wonder.”

Speaking of wonder, I remind Williams that in one of our first interviews a couple decades ago I told her how I had sketched out a future journey through America based on her songs and the way my imagination was fired by them. But now, I could flesh this plan out with book in hand and notes from this show which begins in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where she was born, and retraces her circuitous path that began with her father’s university career across the states and elsewhere. Indeed, her father is never far from her thoughts or her stories.

“He used to tell the story of how he went to see Hank Williams play right before I was born. He loved Hank Williams, adored him. Hank was playing in Lake Charles and my dad introduced himself after the show, and of course they have the same last name, and then Hank invited my dad to go to a bar and have a drink and chat and get acquainted,” says the daughter and songwriting namesake. “So they went to a bar and hang and Hank asked my dad what he was drinking. He used to drink Jack Daniels, and he told Hank he was going to have a bourbon and soda or something, and then Hank immediately said ‘Williams, you ought to be drinking beer coz you’ve got a beer-drinking soul’.

“My dad just thought that was the most profound thing anyone could have said. It was like Hank saw who he was, the essence of who my dad was, which was basically a smalltown Arkansas boy, though he had just started teaching college. I imagine that evening my dad was dressed for the occasion, like a college professor: he had a beard and he used to wear a beret, probably had a tweed jacket on and slacks. So he kind of looked like a beatnik.”

In the absence of Hank Williams’ insight, what would Lucinda Williams’ soul be? Does she have a beer drinking soul? A dark spirits-and-soda soul?

“I do a lot of beer drinking songs, some of them Hank Williams songs, and I think he would say I have a beer drinking soul,” she says. “But sometimes it’s a champagne soul, you know.”

READ MORE

Secrets And Lies And The Stories We Tell: Lucinda Williams 2023 interview part 1 

Something About What Happens When We Talk: Lucinda Williams 2023 interview part 2 

Confessions Of The Demon Spice And The Inconsistency Of Paul Kelly: interview 

SEE MORE

Lucinda Williams plays the Sydney Opera House on August 31.

She is also on tour with Paul Kelly and Fanny Lumsden. For dates and tickets go to https://www.frontiertouring.com/paulkelly