Lucinda Williams: A Profile in Music

She has a new album and recent memoir, so why not?

Read her excellent memoir a couple months back and printed excerpts here, covered her Americana tribute, and now there’s a brand new album (her first since her stroke, and she still can’t play guitar), which I have not heard but see below. Have been a huge fan for over 30 years. So a selection of songs below, including new album.

And noting again my acclaimed book The Beginning or the End, getting fresh attention with Oppenheimer coming, much more here. Subscribe to this newsletter, it’s still free:

Well, her entire new album, including the second cut with Bruce, is up at YouTube, so here you go.

Loved her first appearance on Austin City Limits 1989, with “I Just Wanted to See You So Bad,” about the time I became a fanboy.

After Car Wheels became album of the year she was back on ACL with “Right on Time.”

In her book she reveals that her father read or heard the lyrics to the sex-drenched “Essence” and told it was real poetry. She asked him if that meant she had “graduated.”

A real treasure: Obscure, early demos with some songs that became well-known later.

Her classic “Sweet Old World,” with Emmylou and Neil Young

An alternate, perhaps superior, version of “Still I Long for Your Kiss”

The rocking “Can’t Let Go,” later covered by Robert Plant and Alison Kraus.

Can’t resist her long ago cover of another fave, Nick Drake, “Which Will.”

Just got this oldie, “The Night’s Too Long,” on vinyl, great album.

Surprising to find out in her memoir that this “For Those Three Days” was written about a brief relationship with the troubled and troubling Ryan Adams.

From 2014, a song I have played for my wife several times….”Stand Right By Each Other.” You are free to borrow.