As she releases her 15th album, some say she’s never sounded better.
“It was all very biblical,” saysLucinda Williamsof the series of events that dominated her 2020.
And so that came through in some of the songs."
Lucinda Williams.Danny Clinch
“And your stroke,” pipes in her husband and manager Tom Overby.
Oh, yeah," she replies, as if underlining her refusal to accept defeat.
“And my stroke that I had.”
Lucinda Williams.Danny Clinch
Her 2023 tour schedule is similarly packed.
“I’m recovering.
It’s a slow process, but I’m getting there,” she says.
“I can’t play guitar right now,” says Williams.
“That made a big difference as far as songwriting to me.
Actually, that was one of the reasons I fell into collaborating because I wasn’t playing.
But I expect that to come back at some point, just like everything else has.
So I’m trying to think positively about it.”
“We wanted to break some new ground somewhere,” Williams says.
So that makes me feel good that it kind of stood out as something new and different."
As for why she’s become so much more productive later in her career, Williams has an explanation.
“I’m a freak,” she says with a laugh.
“I’m an anomaly.
“And that’s a big part of it,” Overby adds.
“She is singing great in the studio.
She actually has gone from despising the studio to loving being in the studio now.”
“Basically, theRock n Roll Heartalbum is part one of two.
But they kind of didn’t fit with this group of songs.
So we got three real corkers just sitting there ready to go already.”
Asked if she considers herself a rock & roller, Williams doesn’t hesitate.
“Yeah, I do,” she says.
Even when I was playing acoustic guitar by myself, that was more because it was convenient to play.
I didn’t always have a band.
I became a singer-songwriter sort of by default.”
Stories From a Rock n Roll Heartis out June 30.
