Stir Q&A: Lucinda Williams chimes in on the Delta blues, protest songs, and mortality
Released just as the pandemic was taking hold, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s 20th studio album, Good Souls Better Angels, seems especially timely now
Lucinda Williams. Photo by Danny Clinch/courtesy of the artist
TD Vancouver international Jazz Festival presents Lucinda Williams on July 2 at 8 pm at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre
THE TIMING WAS wrong, or so it seemed. Lucinda Williams released her 20th studio album, Good Souls Better Angels, in April of 2020, just as concert stages around the world were shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The record did not quite sink without trace, but circumstances conspired to deny it the attention it deserved as one of the bluesiest and most impassioned efforts in the Americana icon’s canon. It was a timely one, too, given that the 2020 election that anointed Joe Biden as the president of the United States was still being fought.
Donald Trump’s pustulant bulk looms large over many of Williams’s songs. He’s clearly the focus of the withering “Man Without a Soul”, in which Williams intones “You bring nothing good to this world/Beyond a web of cheating and stealing,” and while “Wakin’ Up” traffics in the dreadful details of an abusive relationship, it’s also a comment on the damage that men like Trump and his allies can do to the body politic.
In a just world, those slick-suited demons would have been consigned to the outer darkness, and Good Souls Better Angels would stand as a fierce relic of a darker time. Now, however, the record seems not only timely but prescient, with opening track “You Can’t Rule Me” a readymade anthem for the fight for abortion rights—and civil rights—in an increasingly theocratic United States. Adapted by Williams from blues artist Memphis Minnie’s 1930s original, it’s a devastating commentary on the arrogance and entitlement of those who set themselves up to dominate and judge.
Stir caught up with Williams on tour in Ottawa for a wide-ranging conversation that covered politics, song craft, inspiration, and the 69-year-old singer-songwriter’s recovery from the life-threatening stroke she suffered not long after Good Souls Better Angels’ release.
What was going on in your life at the time you wrote Good Souls Better Angels? It came out in 2020, so I presume you were writing it in 2019 or 2018.
Well, there was a lot of turmoil in my country, at least, with the elections and Trump and other people like that. So it was always in the forefront of my mind, you know, every day. Watching the news, reading the news… It was just something that I was thinking about quite a lot. I was always bothered about one thing or another, and recording all of that.
I really love the album, and although it might seem counterintuitive one of the things I love most about it is the anger in it, the politicized anger in it. That seems like something of a departure for you. Did the circumstances call this feeling out of you?
It’s something I’d been wanting to do for quite a while, and it was really inspired a lot by Bob Dylan’s writing, his politicized songs. I’d tried to do it before, but it’s not something that comes real easy to me. I found out that it’s very challenging to write that kind of song and still have it be a really good song and not have it sound too hearts-and-flowery. He was able to do that really well in so many of his songs from the ’60s. “Masters of War” is probably my favourite one. He just did it so well, and that was really my goal. I wanted to be able to do that. So the songs that you’re hearing that seem to be moving in that kind of direction, that was me attempting to write those types of songs. We used to call them protest songs.
One of the things that struck me when I put the record on today was that “You Can’t Rule Me” could be the anthem for this month’s protests.
Oh, yeah. I played that the other night. I did that song, and before we started I introduced it by saying ‘“I would like to dedicate this to the United States Supreme Court. It’s called ‘You Can’t Rule Me’.” And everybody in the audience of course responded, ’cause they knew what I was talking about. So, yeah, it’s perfect for that. It’s perfect for now.
I got that from a recording by Memphis Minnie, the country-blues artist. That’s a good one. She recorded it, but then I took it and rearranged it a little bit, messed around with it—like Bob Dylan does, again, with songs at times, with those older songs.
That song seems so prescient today.
We’ve always had things going on similar to this. Some of these songs were written back during the Depression era, the ’30s and ’40s, and they had their own issues to deal with back then. The songs that were written back then are very relevant to today, still. Some of those Delta blues songs… There’s one that Skip James did called “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues”, and I think it was written during the Depression era, and it’s very relevant today. I still do it sometimes because it just speaks so much to what’s going on now, even though it was written so long ago.”
I thought the Lu’s Jukebox series [in which Williams made album-length tributes to Dylan, Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones, Southern soul, and vintage country] was extraordinary, and I’m curious if there was anything in particular that you learned from doing that, from immersing yourself so much in others’ work.
“There’s always a lot to learn when you do that. Especially with Tom Petty’s material. He knows how to write a great rock/pop song, something that is going to get played on the radio and that a lot of people can relate to. I really enjoyed covering his material in particular—and the Rolling Stones, of course. That goes without saying!
We’re going to do some more of those. I’m still trying to decide which artists I’m going to pick next. I’m thinking of Neil Young, maybe. His songs are really always fun to dig into. But there’s so many great ones. Elvis Costello, Lou Reed… I used to perform a version of “Pale Blue Eyes” by Lou Reed.
I think one of the conditions of being a good artist is to have really big antennae, and to be really aware of your own needs and desires and fears. And I think that continues over to having really big antennae for social issues. Do you think that’s part of your toolkit?
Absolutely. I’ve always been like that. Even when I was a teenager, first learning how to play guitar and sing songs and listening to other peoples’ music and everything, I was always very connected with all of that. I started during that period in the ’60s when a lot of folk artists were writing topical material, and it was just around me everywhere. Even the Doors, even rock bands were delving into that kind of thing. And then of course I immersed myself in the world of Delta blues and country blues and discovered these songs that were so timely—like ‘You Can’t Rule Me’ and songs like that—that I could take them and make them my own and bring them into the modern world. And of course all of that inspired my own writing.
I was curious about the balance between self-analysis and political work. There are songs on this record that I’m hearing, like “Bone of Contention”, that are addressed to a specific male antagonist, but they also seem to be you talking to your self-doubt or your fear in that context.
That’s probably fair. Yeah, definitely. As a songwriter you need to be able to do that. There has to be some of you in there. Like, if I’m singing about a different person, a lot of it is still going to be about me. In that song “Drunken Angel” [from Williams’s superb 1998 effort, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road], I’m writing about a different character, but I’m thinking about myself also. I’m hearing where he was, but I was probably there also, at some point or another. I have to be able to be empathetic with the character in order to make the song better. That’s the key, really, to writing a good song.
Lucinda Williams. Photo by David McLister
Knowing a little of your medical history, and listening to “Big Black Train” in that context, it seems like a real premonition of mortality.
There’s a lot of that in my songs, because we all think about that at one time or another when you get to a certain age. Especially when something happens like a stroke. It just forces you to look at all that—your own mortality and all those heavy issues. I’ve written a lot about that sort of thing. It’s been on my mind, you know—just like you, probably!
How’s your health now?
I’m fine. I still have a little bit of trouble walking; my legs just don’t work the way I want them to. But I’ve learned a lot about the human brain and how it works—and I find that if I just keep moving, then it’s going to be better than just sitting. When we first started going back out on the road touring, I didn’t think I was going to be able to stand up during the whole show, so they set a chair out for me just in case, and I usually sat down for the first song. But by the end of the night I was standing up. I have the microphone stand, and I can kind of use that for balance, or I can put my hand on the back of the chair to steady myself. But basically I’m standing up for the whole show, which is something that nobody expected. I’ve progressed a lot!
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