Lucinda Williams Sings the Blues

The October 21st Lucinda Williams concert at Somerville Theater was an eclectic mixture of quiet integrity and hard-edge rock sensibilities. The thoroughly polished diamond-in-the-rough performance was filled with superhuman guitar solos and riffs setting off Williams' contrastingly sweet and achingly clear voice. The concert was not just a performance but also a journey into Williams' musical roots. The night began with series of her more packaged songs, during which Williams herself appeared disenchanted. As she moved away from the pop and plunged into bluegrass and blues, the crowd, like clockwork, was set electric. By the end of the night, she had set the stage on fire, two times over.

Lucinda Williams, a singer/song-writer from Nashville, is presently on tour for her new album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Williams, a self-proclaimed perfectionist, spent the last four years writing Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. In her 20-year musical career, Williams has only released five albums, all on different labels. Although her songwriting skills have garnered her a Grammy, Williams own music has eluded much of the mainstream music population. However, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road has been heralded as one of the year's best albums and inscribed as the Blonde on Blonde of the '90s by producer Joe Boyd. Certainly, this is not to say her straightforward narrative style somehow mirrors Bob Dylan's layered poetry; rather, both song-writers are not so self-absorbed as they are selfless.

Somerville Theater seemed like a rather unusual place for Williams to perform--the theater's interior is scattered with an odd array of gilded Corinthian columns painted black and silver reminiscent of severe Ayn Rand lightning bolts. The rest of the theater had an almost sickingly disproportionate amount of mauve. A mostly middle-aged crowd, situated comfortably in plush seats, waited anxiously for Williams arrival.

Williams then appeared on stage, her hair dyed black and spiked under a cream-colored cowboy hat. She looked more like a bluegrass Chrissy Hynde than what one might expect from the fragile and sometimes child-like voice of her albums. But once she began to sing, one was quickly reminded of the fragility that belies her appearance. With a faraway glance and a solemn face she swayed, at times awkwardly, to the tunes of "Pineola" and "Metal Firecracker." Like a '90s Snow White she stood almost defiantly surrounded by four of her (actually rather tall) dwarfs: electric guitarists John Jackson and Kenny Vaughn, acoustic guitarist and harmony singer Jim Lauderdale, bassist Richard M. Price and drummer Fran Bryne.

Williams stopped briefly before her third song, "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road." She explained, "This song is about life through a child's eyes." In the span of two hours, Williams showed so much of herself, one was left ashamed. Did she not care that the audience had given nothing of themselves? But it is this exact artistic truth without expectation of sympathy that transcends mere integrity, that makes Williams' music so inviting. Speaking about "Right In Time," an achingly passionate ballad of lost love, Williams related that "on Good Morning America, they wanted us to leave out that line about me `lying on my back and moaning at the ceiling'...We left in anyway."

Williams is an example of the consummate artist--she aches to share her life with us. Unabashedly, she related the story behind "Drunken Angel," a song about a troubled friend who was shot dead in Austin. In contrast to her album, where Williams drunkenly drawls out the lyrics, vividly mirroring the sloshing of her friend's life, Williams performed a rather toned-down version. But she seemed more contemplative, more reflective. After the awkward anguish of Angel," Williams was finally ready to actively reveal her true self. Her words and lyrics were woven so seamlessly with the subdued melody of "Greenville": "You're not my man," she sights, "Go back to Greenville." Here she silently commanded, almost begging--eyes sparkling with emotion--even more tremulous than on her record.

Her emotional trance was broken with the country-blues waltz, "Still I Long For Your Kiss." A much more confident Williams, with full-throated ease, belted the lyrics. Continuing, she switched to an electric guitar and playfully smiled as she tried to hit every high note of the terrifically lustful "Hot Blood." Williams delved deeper and deeper into blues until the crowd was in a virtual frenzy over the metallic guitar solos so vigorous they seemed super-human. The crowd bravely vibrating in their chairs, yearned to stand. Many even made due by dancing in their seats. Williams joked: "Gee, I feel weird singing this blues stuff in a theater, y'all should be standing up and drunk or something."

Williams ended the official performance with the popy "Change the Locks," as if almost to quiet down the frenzy of the crowd. But she reappeared a few minutes later to ignite another flame. This time it was fueled with pure blues and folk, from Kate Wolf to Howlin' Wolf. "Come to me baby, slide a little love to me," she huskily faded out.

Comparisions to Dylan aside, Lucinda Williams managed to give a show that shook Somerville Theater with not just the noise of guitars but the sweet resonances of her own truth.