Lucinda Williams’ new album Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart is out now and her memoir Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets I Told You will published in Australia this Wednesday, July 5.
Williams is also the cover story for the July/August edition of Rhythms, being mailed to subscribers now. If you are not a subscriber then you can purchase a single issue here: RHYTHMS JULY/AUGUST 2023
Williams, who suffered a stroke in November 2020, has made a remarkable comeback to record one of her best albums to date with special guests including Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa.
“My voice is as strong as ever and a lot of people have been saying they think it’s even better than it was before,” said Williams when she spoke to Rhythms editor Brian Wise, who says that even abrief listen to Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart, her 15th album, will confirm that Williams’ voice and songwriting prowess remain undiminished.
“I feel fine though,” continued Williams. “I did a whole bunch of rehab and I jumped right into that pretty much right after the stroke. The doctors got me into rehab right away. Then after I got out of the hospital I had therapists come to the house and work with me there. So, it’s been a constant. I’ve been doing a lot of that and I’m sure that’s what’s helped so much.”
“A lot of people had been suggesting it for a long time and just saying, ‘You should write a book,” explained Williams about her memoir. “I think probably because they knew I was always telling stories around my songs when I would play live. All my songs had all these interesting stories behind them. So, I think that’s what made people think I should write a book.”
“A lot harder, I thought,” responded Williams when I ask how difficult it was to write the memoir compared with writing songs. “Just the process of it is so different. I really didn’t know how to start and or how to approach it. It was just kind of trial and error. I finally got started with it and just wrote whatever things I was remembering and tried to keep. I’ve got a great editor and copy editor, so they helped keep everything organised and in order. But there was a lot of research. My sister helped me a lot because I would call her and ask her what year it was when we were living in such and such town and all this stuff.”
The new album Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart contains songs written collaboratively by Williams with her partner Tom Overby, New York punk legend Jesse Malin and long-time road manager Travis Stephens. It also includes guest backing vocals by Jeremy Ivey, Malin, Buddy Miller, Angel Olsen, Margo Price, and Tommy Stinson of The Replacements, while the first single, ‘New York Comeback,’ features backing vocals by Patti Scialfa and Bruce Springsteen. The studio sessions included Williams’ longtime touring guitarist Stuart Mathis, keyboardist Reese Wynans, bassist Steve Mackey (Dolly Parton), Doug Pettibone on pedal steel and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ drummer Steve Ferrone.
“I’m real excited about Bruce being on it and his wife Patti,” said Williams of Springsteen and Scialfa’s appearance on the song ‘New York Comeback’. “Patti wrote us a long email and said how much they enjoyed doing it. In the email, she said, ‘Nobody’s writing songs like this anymore,’ and all of this praise. It was just really sweet and really great. I just love them as people, a lot. Very down to earth.”
Perhaps the most affecting song on the album is the ode to Tom Petty, ‘Stolen Moments.’ Williams and her band played on the same bill as Petty, one of her long-time supporters, the night before he died. Williams also recorded an entire album of Petty’s songs (Runnin’ Down A Dream) during lockdown as part of a series of tribute performances she streamed.
“I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for him and his music,” says Williams. “But when you do a project like that [Runnin’ Down A Dream] and you’re taking all these other people’s songs and going in and exploring through the song, it makes you realise what great songs they were. I was doing an interview recently and we were talking about this same thing, Tom Petty, his material and all, and the interviewer said something that he had realised was that Tom Petty’s songs are deceptively simple. That’s one of the beauties of them, one of the reasons they’re so great.”
‘Never Gonna Fade Away’, the album closer, might be Williams’ answer to Neil Young’s ‘My My Hey Hey (Out of The Blue)’. Where Young sings, ‘It’s better to burn out than to fade away’ and ‘They give you this, but you pay for that / And once you’re gone you can never come back.’ Williams has a different angle but is every bit as defiant as Young.
In what could become her signature song – and is certainly one of the anthems on the new album – Williams sings: “When my mind is on fire / And I’m losing my desire / And I’m burnt out and tired / And I want to go higher and higher / When I get like this and nothing’s gonna fix it / And I’m getting sick of it / And all I wanna do is quit / I’m never gonna fade away…”
The song ends with Williams singing over the ringing guitars and insisting another eight times, “I’m not going to fade away.”
After listening to Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart you’ll know that with songs this good Lucinda Williams will never fade away!
You can read the full 6-page feature in the July/August edition of Rhythms. You can subscriber or buy the issue here: RHYTHMS
Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart is out 6/30 via Highway 20 Records/Thirty Tigers.