LUCINDA Williams's widely praised long-player Good Souls Better Angels is already an album-of-the-year contender.
The three-times Grammy Award winner upset a number of Donald Trump supporters when Man Without A Soul was uploaded to give fans a first taste of the album earlier this year. Down the line from her home in Nashville the singer/songwriter explains in a warm Southern drawl that she was taken aback by the attention.
“I can’t believe it. We posted the song on Facebook and I got these responses that were really shocking. The song doesn't have to be about Trump, it was one of Tom’s [Overby, Williams's husband and manager] songs and we worked on it together. I’m not telling people’s it’s about Trump; they are telling me! Once you write a song it’s out of your hands.”
Williams had expected Wakin’ Up to be the song that attracted controversy. The 67-year-old was advised not to include it on the record; it’s a demanding listen that documents her experience with a violent partner.
“Yeah Waking Up… that was me. I was in a really f**ked up, physically abusive relationship. I met this guy, he was sober when we met and I thought it would be OK; I didn't understand that if someone lives in a sober house you leave them there. He moved in with me and wasn't ready. He started drinking again.”
Williams continues to take us into the great American landscape, holding a mirror up to political issues and social concerns brought to our attention through her disenfranchised and struggling characters. Wakin’ Up is the final part in a trilogy of songs dealing with this dark chapter.
“His drink of choice was whiskey which would change his personality like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Out of the blue he would get hostile and angry over nothing," she recalls. "I sat on his stool at the kitchen counter and he pulled the chair out from under me.
"I wrote about it previously on Jailhouse Tears in a milder way and more comically on Buttercup but this one needed to come out. I was listening to it with a famous musician/songwriter; he told me I should maybe not put it on the record, that it was ‘too heavy and intense’. But Tom and the band were all very supportive. They said ‘This is your experience, it’s got to be on there and is going to help more people and women.'"
The record features Williams's well-established American gothic and religious imagery, with the likes of Pray The Devil Back To Hell, Down Past The Bottom and Big Rotator summoning the blues she was first introduced to by her poet father (Miller Williams) as a child.
A “pivotal” moment was when he took her to see Blind Pearly Brown, a preacher and street performer who passed on a compelling Christian stew of blues, gospel and country.
“I’ve always been drawn to that imagery, it’s a beautiful way to explain things," Williams tells me. "I’ve always loved and been fascinated by it. The visual aspect that has come out of it in folk art; the bleeding Jesus, and Mary with her heel on the snake, all of that fascinates me.
"It’s in the blues and early Bob Dylan; the one that comes to mind is Highway 61: ‘God said to Abraham, kill me a son. Abe said, ‘Man, you must be puttin' me on’. It brings a contemporary structure and I’ve always loved that contradiction in a song. Leonard Cohen did it and Nick Cave is another perfect example.”
Prior to working on this album Williams co-produced Jessie Malin's Sunset Kids, co-writing and performing on a number of tracks including Shane about Pogues front-man Shane MacGowan.
“I met Shane one time in New York with my band in the 90s”, she explains. “We met him in a bar and he ended up in the hotel. I have this vision of him walking down the hall playing a piccolo. Everyone had been drinking, it was late and there he was.”
Did working with Jesse Malin help set the tone for this record?
“That’s a good question that no-one has asked; I never thought of it consciously but it may well have because it was close to finishing Jesse’s record and listening to his rockin’ out…he’s always had that punk vibe. At the listening party for my album in New York he said: ‘Wow this record reminds me of a cross between Howlin’ Wolf and Iggy Pop… for Jesse to say that, it was perfect; he got it right away.”
The pair share a musical attitude and aesthetic that runs deep – the New York troubadour even picked out a stunning portrait of Williams for the cover of Good Souls Better Angels by rock photographer Danny Clinch.
“Tom said it was time for me to be on the cover again. I was playing the Outlaw Country Cruise with Jesse, we were all in the living room area while Tom was looking through some pictures when he saw that shot and said ‘That’s the cover; it’s iconic, it’s got a vibe like something on a Marianne Faithfull or Patti Smith sleeve.’
"The guys in the band said ‘You look really hot’ and that was all I needed to hear.”
Williams has previously paid her respects to Ryan Adams who played on the title track of her 2001 album Essence. Last year sexual misconduct allegations were made against the 45-year-old US singer/songwriter.
While it recently emerged Williams included Shadows & Doubt about Adams on her latest album, she makes it clear the song is not “defending” him.
“I still can’t figure out how people know that but, yes, his story inspired that song. But it’s as much about fame, the press, people talking and getting the wrong impression… the things that happen when you get talked about.
"When you know someone personally and you are reading these things it’s a whole different perspective than if you didn’t know the person.”
Like many during the current pandemic, Williams is awaiting a green light to hit the road in support of an album that is perhaps her best since 1998’s breakthrough long-player Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. A much anticipated show at Belfast’s Limelight is scheduled for August.
“Some summer shows in Europe have been moved to next year. Wwe don’t have anything until July but I want to get out so badly, I love it there. I’m a quarter Welsh – every Christmas Eve my father would play A Child’s Christmas In Wales. It’s that Celtic thing, along with African blues; that’s the root.”
:: Good Souls Better Angels is out now. Lucinda Williams is due to play Belfast’s Limelight on August 15.
