Lucinda Willliams

Lucinda Williams is a daughter of the American South, born in Louisiana, who is proud of her heritage while also understanding the contradictions and the baggage that come with that. Tom Petty was a native Floridian who also loved the South without harboring illusions about it, and so it makes sense that Williams would be a Petty fan, and not simply as one gifted songwriter respecting another. As part of her Lu’s Jukebox series, designed to help independent music venues shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, Williams has cut a set of her favorite Tom Petty tunes, and Runnin’ Down a Dream: A Tribute to Tom Petty is long on songs about Southern life, including “Gainesville,” “Down South,” “Rebels,” “Southern Accents,” and “Louisiana Rain.”

Lucinda Williams took eight years to write and record her second album of original songs. While some producers and record executives have said that she is difficult to work with, one can never argue with the finished product. She crafts each song meticulously and deftly blends country, blues, and folk to create a unique sound that cannot be pigeonholed into any particular format. Her voice contains a heartache comparable to Emmylou Harris, but she has a darker side and a toughness that allows her to live inside the blues or rock with abandon…

Lucinda Williams is incapable of sounding anything less than 100-percent engaged and sincere. Whatever she has to say, she clearly means it, and that more than anything else is the thread that runs through 2020's Good Souls Better Angels, her fourth album since she launched her own record label and took full control of her process of recording and releasing music. Cut mostly live in the studio with her road band – Stuart Mathis on guitar, David Sutton on bass, and Butch Norton on drums – these 12 songs play like a long stream-of consciousness journey, with Williams writing in blues structures that repeat certain lines like a mantra while her band either sneak up on the music like a ghost or howl with elemental, bluesy skronk (the raw, gritty tone of Mathis' guitar matches Williams' vocals for sheer ferocity on numbers like "Down Past the Bottom," "Bone of Contention," and "Wakin' Up" like he's roots rock's answer to Ron Asheton).

Lu's Jukebox is a six-volume series of mostly full-band performances recorded live at Ray Kennedy's Room & Board Studio in Nashville, TN. Each volume features a themed set of songs by other artists curated by the multi-Grammy award winner, Lucinda Williams. The series aired as ticketed shows through Mandolin in late 2020 with a portion of ticket sales benefitting independent music venues struggling to get by through the pandemic. Like thousands of artists, Williams cut her teeth and developed her craft by playing in small, medium and large clubs throughout the country, and the world. These venues are vital to the development of artists and their music. Williams has never forgotten her roots, and often performs special shows in some of her favorite halls.This year, the Lu's Jukebox series will be made widely available on vinyl and CD.

The title of West reflects the change in Lucinda Williams' life as she moved to Los Angeles. It also reflects what had been left behind. Williams is nothing if not a purely confessional songwriter. She continually walks in the shadowlands to bring out what is both most personal yet universal in her work, to communicate to listeners directly and without compromise…

While many considered Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and Essence as definitive statements of arrival for Lucinda Williams as a pop star, she "arrived" creatively with her self-titled album in 1988 and opened up a further world of possibilities with Sweet Old World. The latter two records merely cemented a reputation that was well-deserved from the outset, though they admittedly confused some of her earliest fans. World Without Tears is the most immediate, unpolished album she's done since Sweet Old World…

After seemingly coming out of nowhere to be hailed as a major songwriter and roots music stylist, it took Lucinda Williams four years to prepare the follow-up to her masterful 1988 eponymous album. When it finally arrived, Sweet Old World proved to be every bit the equal of its predecessor, if not even better…

The second in a series of albums drawn from livestream concerts Lucinda Williams presented to benefit independent music venues hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lu's Jukebox, Vol. 2: Southern Soul – From Memphis to Muscle Shoals is the sort of album so well-suited to her gifts that one wonders why she didn't do this sooner. As a performer, Williams has never shied away from showing off the influence of vintage blues and R&B, and for this LP, she covers nine classic soul tunes from the 1960s and early '70s, with two ringers added for seasoning: a lean and swampy take on Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe" and a slow, sensuous reimagining of her own "Still I Long for Your Kiss." This material was cut live in the studio with Williams' road band, and they approach this music as true fans who happen to have some ideas of their own.

Lu's Jukebox is a six-volume series of mostly full-band performances recorded live at Ray Kennedy's Room & Board Studio in Nashville, TN. Each volume features a themed set of songs by other artists curated by the multi-Grammy award winner, Lucinda Williams. The series aired as ticketed shows through Mandolin in late 2020 with a portion of ticket sales benefitting independent music venues struggling to get by through the pandemic.