Lucinda Williams performs at Temple Live in Wichita on Saturday, Oct. 5. The gig is part of a run that will see her on the road well into the late fall.
In 2023, she released the acclaimed book, “Don't Tell Anyone the Secrets I Told You: A Memoir,” which detailed her difficult childhood and her relationship with her father, the late poet Miller Williams. That same year, she issued her latest album, “Stories From a Rock ‘n’ Roll Heart,” which featured guest appearances from Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa, Angel Olsen, Margo Price and Tommy Stinson.
Both were made all the more remarkable in light of a stroke Williams suffered in late 2020, which required a long period of recovery and left her unable to play guitar.
Ever tenacious, she has moved forward with this new music and focused her energies on continuing to create and perform.
Williams recently spoke with KMUW about her new role as author, what she thinks about during live performances and her appreciation for the late Kris Kristofferson.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Last year was quite a year for you. You had a book, and an album come out. Either one on its own would have been remarkable, but both in that same window is even more so.
I hadn’t expected that to happen like that necessarily, but it felt really good. I felt like an accomplished person. It just happened that they came out at about the same time.
I’m sure you’ve had people tell you about how much your songs have meant to them, and now I would imagine that you’re hearing some of the same things with the book.
I did, and that felt really good. I met a young woman whose father was a poet and whose mother suffered from mental illness, so that was just like my situation. Because of that, we hit it off and got to be friends. In fact, her dad was a friend of my father’s.
No way.
Yeah, what a coincidence. Some people would tell me that they felt better being able to read about somebody else’s problem with mental illness because everybody doesn’t talk about it all the time, openly.
What was it like for you to sit down and write prose after all those years of writing songs?
It was really difficult, I have to say. It was just a whole new animal. I wasn’t sure how to get started. I was looking for advice from every writer I could find, not songwriters but people who’d actually written books before, everyone from Roseanne Cash to Nicholas Davidoff, who’s an accomplished writer who I’ve gotten to be friends with. I talked to him, and he suggested that I start off by writing every single night before I went to sleep; just to write in a notebook, like my thoughts, like a journal kind of thing. He said, “Do that every night for a while.” I guess to just exercise your brain and get used to the flow of that kind of writing. The prose writing.
Roseanne, it was really funny [because] she and I were talking backstage one night at a show, and I was really nervous because I was getting ready to start this book. I didn’t know how to go about it. I wanted it to be really well written; I wanted real writers to be impressed. Roseanne stopped me and said, “Lucinda, you don’t have to be James Joyce.” I said, “Yeah, but that’s just it. I want to be James Joyce!”
[Laughs.]
I was putting all this pressure on myself because I wanted to be seen as a … I didn’t want people to buy the book because my name was on it as a singer-songwriter. I wanted it to be seen as a well-written book and all that. I had grown up around serious writers. That’s what made it hard for me.
You said this thing about wanting to be James Joyce with your prose writing. When it comes to songwriting, do you have a similar thought, “I want to be …”
Bob Dylan. [Laughs.] I did, and I still do compare myself to other writers like that. Last night I was singing “Essence” at my show, and I was thinking about Lou Reed. He just popped into my mind. Every so often, I’ll be up there on stage, singing a song and wondering if it’s coming across to people. Do they actually like this song and all that. I was imaging what it would have been like for Lou Reed when he first wrote some of those songs, like “Waiting for My Man,” with his band Velvet Underground. Did it get across to people right away? Did it take a while for it to build up?
Stuff goes through your mind when you’re up there performing. Sometimes it can be a scary experience. You’re up there on stage in front of a few hundred people, or however many depending on how famous you are or how well known you are. And, of course, the lyrics to “Essence” are kind of edgy. “Shoot your love into my vein.” I’m singing that line, and I’m thinking, “Do people think that this is just ridiculous or do people think that that’s a good line? Is it a good line? Maybe I shouldn’t have written it like that.” That sort of thing. You start questioning yourself. What would Lou Reed do? What would Bob Dylan do? I think about that a lot, and when I’m writing, too.
But that’s the beauty of it all, having those artists as kind of teachers in a way. That’s partly how I learned, just listening to their records. Listening to other songwriters and picking things up from them. Learning what’s OK to say and what’s not. What’s better to say and what’s not.
Kris Kristofferson just passed. Was he a writer you admired, and did you know him at all?
I was getting to know him better. I’d met his wife, and I’d done a handful of shows with Kris. Really studied his songs and loved him. Oh God, I loved his songwriting and his voice and everything. His presence was felt just so strongly so many times for me. There wasn’t a songwriter I knew who didn’t admire Kris Kristofferson as an artist and a person.
In fact, I was working in the studio one time with [producer] Don Was, and I’d written this song about Janis Joplin. Don said, “Why don’t we get Kris on this song?” For obvious reasons. We brought in Kris to sing on this song I’d written about Janis Joplin, and you could tell that Kris was still affected by the memory of Janis. Kind of a sensitive topic for him. That’s what I picked up anyway, being around him in the studio talking about Janis Joplin and him reading the song lyrics. It’s called “Port Arthur.” I’ve been recording it in the studio, but it’s not on a record yet. I’m still trying to get the right version down.
