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Profiles for VIPs / New Site Coming Soon
Lucinda Williams - Singer, SongwriterLucinda Williams was born in Lake Charles, La., on Jan. 26, 1953. Her father is Miller Williams, a literature professor and published poet who passed on not only his love of language but also of Delta blues and Hank Williams. The family movedfrequently, as Miller took teaching posts at colleges around Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas, and even Mexico City and Santiago, Chile. Meanwhile, Williams discovered folk music (especially Joan Baez) through her mother and was galvanized into trying her own hand at singing and writing songs after hearing Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. Immersed in a college environment, she was also exposed to '60s rock and more challenging singer-songwriters like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. Williams started performing folk songs publicly in New Orleans and during the family's sojourn in Mexico City. In 1969, she was ejected from high school for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and she spent a year working her way through a reading list supplied by her father before leaving home. In 1974, she relocated to Austin, Texas, taking part in that city's burgeoning roots-music scene. She later split time between Austin and Houston, then moved to New York. A demo tape got her the chance to record for the Smithsonian's Folkways label, and she went to Jackson, Miss., to lay down her first album at the Malaco studios. Ramblin' on My Mind (later retitled simply Ramblin') was released in 1979 and featured a selection of traditional blues, country, folk and Cajun songs. She returned to Houston to record 1980's Happy Woman Blues, her first album of original compositions. Williams flitted between Austin and Houston during the early '80s, then moved to Los Angeles in 1984 and attracted major-label interest. CBS signed her to a development deal in the mid-'80s but wound up passing since neither its rock nor its country divisions knew how to market her. Around the same time, a short-lived marriage to drummer Greg Sowders dissolved. Williams eventually caught on with an unlikely partner -- the British indie label Rough Trade, historically better known for its punk output. The album Lucinda Williams was released in 1988, and although it didn't make any waves in the mainstream, it received glowing reviews from those who did hear it. With help from guitarist-producer Gurf Morlix, her sound evolved into a seamless blend of country, blues, folk and rock. While it made perfect sense to roots-music enthusiasts, it didn't fit into the rigid tastes of radio programmers. But it was clear that she had found her songwriting voice -- the album brimmed with confidence, and so did its assertive female characters, who seemed to answer only to their own passions. Many critics hailed Lucinda Williams as a major statement by a major new talent and Patty Loveless covered "The Night's Too Long" for a Top 20 country hit. However, it would be four years before Williams completed her official follow-up. She signed with RCA for a time but left when she felt that the label was pressuring her to release material she didn't deem ready for public consumption. Instead, the small Elektra-distributed label Chameleon released 1992's Sweet Old World, an unflinching meditation on death, loss and regret. Even its upbeat moments were colored by songs like the title track and "Pineola," two stunning, heartbreaking accounts of a family friend's suicide. The record won rave reviews, and Williams toured Australia with Rosanne Cash and Mary Chapin Carpenter. On that tour, Carpenter decided to record Williams' "Passionate Kisses," which won its writer a Grammy for country song. Other artists started mining Williams' catalog for material. Emmylou Harris recorded "Crescent City" on 1993's Cowgirl's Prayer and "Sweet Old World" for 1995's alternative country landmark Wrecking Ball. Tom Petty covered "Changed the Locks" for 1996's She's the One. As the buzz around Williams grew, so did anticipation for her next album. With Chameleon having gone under, she signed with Rick Rubin's American Recordings label and began sessions with Morlix again co-producing. Dissatisfied with the results, Williams' rigorous retouchings led to Morlix's departure from the project and her backing band. In 1995, Williams moved into Harris' neighborhood in Nashville and through Harris hired Steve Earle and his production partner Ray Kennedy. At first, she was so enamored with their work that she re-recorded the entire album from scratch. But when it was finished, she decided that the results sounded too produced and took the record to Los Angeles, where she enlisted Roy Bittan (onetime E Street Band keyboardist) to co-produce a series of overdub sessions that bordered on obsessive. During the long wait for the album, the media began to pay more attention to Williams. Some of the coverage was fairly unflattering, painting her as a neurotic control freak, but she always countered that it was unfair to criticize the process if the results were worthwhile. Rubin mixed the final tracks, but the album was further delayed when he entered into negotiations to sell the American label. Mercury stepped in to purchase the rights to the album, which was finally released in 1998 under the title Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Boasting a bright, contemporary roots-rock sound with strong country and blues flavors, not to mention major-label promotional power, the album won universal acclaim, making many critics' year-end lists and winning The Village Voice's prestigious Pazz & Jop survey. It also won a Grammy for best contemporary folk album and was certified gold. After a merger shakeup at Mercury, Williams wound up on the Universal-distributed roots imprint Lost Highway. She was the subject of an extensive, widely acclaimed profile in The New Yorker in 2000, written by Bill Buford, who was nominated for a National Magazine Award for his work. However, Williams and some of her supporters took issue with some of his more objective-minded analysis. Williams delivered her next album, Essence, in 2001, after a relatively scant wait of just three years. An introspective collection, it often found Williams taking a simpler, more minimalistic lyrical approach and was greeted with rapturous reviews in most quarters. The track "Get Right With God" won Williams her third Grammy, this time in the best female rock vocal category. She returned in 2003 with World Without Tears. Contact Information & Links www.myspace.com/lucindawilliams www.LucindaWilliams.com
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