Posts: 2,980
Threads: 177
Joined: Aug 2006
My favorite lesser known artist is Lucinda Williams. Although Lucinda has won a grammy or two, I still think she is greatly underrated. If Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin got it on together, Lucinda would be the likely result. Her lyrics are among the most poetic you will ever hear. Her voice can be whispery and pretty, bluesy and nasal, jazzy and cool, or blast-you-back against-the-wall rockola. I will never forget when I first heard her. I met my first real boyfriend in a laundromat in San Francisco. He had a thick Southern accent for which I have a genetic predisposition, flaming red hair, and a paperback of Nietzsche in his back pocket, which he had actually read. He hated San Francisco. Thought it was soulless and dead. Long story short, he talked me into leaving my perfect life and moving to New Orleans, where I had never been. It was the best move I ever made and caused me to embrace instead of reject my Southern roots. Leaving San Francisco and moving to New Orleans is the difference between watching the play Streetcar Made Desire at a downtown theatre and having decaffeinated coffee afterwards in teeny cups, and becoming the inspiration for a play like Streetcar Named Desire. In New Orleans, you are part of the play, one of the actors. Everyone is. Windows get broken. Trusts are betrayed. Carnality gets its own two week celebration and Old Man River just keeps on rolling.
Anyway, I eventually went back to San Francisco. I couldn't take the heat anymore and wanted out of the kitchen. He followed me back, but I had moved on. He was kind of like Isadora, and I was the stable, reliable one, but I was completely devoted to school and no longer had any desire to fuel his artistry (he was a great artist). We broke up. He moved to Portland, went off the deep end like in Drugstore Cowboy and I lost track of him. Then I got a call from his Mom, who I had never met. He had died of AIDS (acquired after we parted). It was basically a suicide. I went for a long walk listening to my radio. Terry Gross was interviewing Lucinda Williams about a song she had written for a friend whose father had committed suicide, called Sweet Old World.
It goes, "See what you lost when you left this world? This sweet old world....the breath from your own lips...the touch of fingertips...a sweet and tender kiss...the sound of a midnight train....wearing someone's ring.....someone calling your name....looking for some truth, dancing with no shoes.....the beat...the ryhythm, the blues.......". I was like who IS this woman. I bought every album she produced, and sort of became a stalker and followed her around.
I went back to New Orleans in 2001 to visit, and saw her at the House of Blues. She was fantastic. The next day, I walked by her in the French Quarter and had the pleasure of meeting her. I told her the story about how I first heard "Sweet Old World". She was very sweet and I got a picture.
Anyway, my favorite songs by Lucinda are the incomparable and drunken "West", in which she dares a lover to move out West and be the best that he can be (of course, the "West" I think of is west of California). Some lyrics:
Who knows what the future holds
Or where the cards may fall
But if you don’t come out west and see
You’ll never know at all
I look off in the distance
And blow a kiss your way
The thousand miles between us
Will disappear some day....
I also love "Righteously" and the hit she wrote for Mary Chapin Carpenter, "Passionate Kisses":
Is it too much to demand
I want a full house and a rock and roll band
Pens that won't run out of ink
And cool quiet and time to think
Shouldn't I have this?
Shouldn't I have this?
Shouldn't I have ALL of this, and
Passionate kisses
Passionate kisses, whoa ohh oh
Passionate kisses from you......
But my absolute favorite song by her is Ventura. You have to hear it to believe it. Hypnotic:
I think I'm gonna make myself a little something to eat,
Get a can down off the shelf, maybe a little something sweet.
Haven't spoke to no one, haven't been in the mood,
Pour some soup, get a spoon, stir it up real good.
Go out with a friend, they know a little music might help,
But I can't pretend - I wish I was somewhere else.
I wanna watch the ocean bend,
The edges of the sun,then
I wanna get swallowed up
In an ocean of love.
Put on my coat, go out into the street,
Get a lump in my throat, and look down at my feet.
Take the long way home, so I can ride around,
Put Neil Young on and turn up the sound.
Drive up the coastline, maybe to Ventura,
Watch the waves make signs out on the water.
I wanna watch the ocean bend,
The edges of the sun,then
I wanna get swallowed up
In an ocean of love,.....
Oh, by the way. Lucinda has some serious addictions. Gotta love her for that, too.
]