"Hum's Liquor," featuring the Replacements' Tommy Stinson and written about his brother, Bob - in fact, the album is dedicated to the late guitarist, "a true rock n roll heart" - paints an empathetic picture of wayward brilliance gone astray, creating a diptyque with Car Wheels On A Gravel Road's "Drunken Angel," about Blaze Foley, in the chapel of Williams' memorials to idiosyncratic musicians whose habits of addiction and of artistry became tragically intertwined.īy bringing iconic rockers into the studio, in person and in spirit, Williams uses Stories to draft a lineage to which she belongs, as both inheritor and peer, disciple and godmother to a specific vein of American rock and roll. The piercing sunset drive of "Stolen Moments" pays tribute to Tom Petty, from the point of view of a traveler gazing out the window suddenly struck by the memory of a friend - a familiar heart-pang for any LA motorist passing Ventura Boulevard. The gruff meditation of "Jukebox," featuring Angel Olsen, brings to mind Danny O'Keefe's "Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues," if instead of our narrator's friends leaving him behind for Los Angeles, he was stuck at home in quarantine. Capturing Williams in a mournful reckoning with maturity, "Last Call For The Truth" is a bloodshot, lonesome brood for lost youth, eyeing the neon vitality once found in her scene's "ragtag mystique" as it evaporates into the mist of an older tomorrow. On Stories' songs of solitude, Williams is most emotionally uncompromising and astute (that is to say: most herself), as a bottoms-up rocker pensively picking the peeling vinyl off the busted bar stool upon which her inner voice perches. Unable to play guitar after a stroke in 2020, Williams shares writing credits with her husband and manager Tom Overby, as well features from other notable collaborators: Bruce Springsteen, Tommy Stinson, Margo Price, Angel Olsen and Jesse Malin (another beloved musician recovering from a severe stroke) who co-wrote three tracks, notably ones with the most New York character: "Let's Get the Band Back Together," "New York Comeback," and "Jukebox." Rather, much like the roots of rock music itself, the core sources of her sound - country, blues, folk - converge into the heart of it all, as if to say: she's not just a vein of rock and roll she's in its blood.įor her 16th studio album Stories From a Rock N Roll Heart, Williams brought in producer Ray Kennedy ( Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and Good Souls Better Angels) for a straightforward rock record shot through with bar band nostalgia ("Let's Get the Band Back Together," "Rock N Roll Heart"), alongside tender testimonies to a lifelong musician's road-worn inner compass. Perhaps what else is true is that taken as a whole, her music refuses to be heard as a divergence, a subset, an offshoot from the main artery of rock and roll. In her 2023 memoir, Don't Tell Anybody The Secrets I Told You, she resists the labels "Americana"and "alt-country ," though she may as well be the mother of them, citing the creative limitations of genre pegs. It all feels like one challenge too many, until Ellie starts to make her first-ever friends.Lucinda Williams' Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart is out June 30.Īt 70, Lucinda Williams is, true to her meticulous ethic, ready to fine-tune her legend. Except she's not just the new kid-she's the new kid in the wheelchair who lives in the trailer park on the wrong side of town. If she's not writing fan letters to her favorite celebrity chefs, she's practicing recipes on her well-meaning, if overworked, mother.īut when Ellie and her mom move so they can help take care of her ailing grandpa, Ellie has to start all over again in a new town at a new school. The thing is, Ellie has big dreams: She might be eating Stouffer's for dinner, but one day she's going to be a professional baker. That surprises some people, who see a kid in a wheelchair and think she's going to be all sunshine and cuddles. In the tradition of Wonder and Out of My Mind, this big-hearted middle grade debut tells the story of an irrepressible girl with cerebral palsy whose life takes an unexpected turn when she moves to a new town.Įllie's a girl who tells it like it is.
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