[Note: info on this gig has been sketchy from the beginning and apparently it has been postponed, but I have not had a chance to confirm everything. I have removed it from my music calendar. 7/25/11]
I’ve already added Lucinda Williams’ scheduled July 30th gig at Fort Stewart to my recently created music calendar, but I wanted to say a little more about her here in a regular post.
There’s not much info that’s been made public so far about that show at Fort Stewart, by the way, but it’s a big one for the area. And an exciting one.
I was actually involved in some tentative efforts to get Williams to Savannah a couple of years ago. She’s the daughter of former U.S. Poet Laureate Miller Williams, who read a poem at Clinton’s second inaugural. Miller and Lucinda have made a few joint appearances. Since they were friendly with Flannery O’Connor in the years before her death in 1964 (when Lucinda was 11), the board of the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home tried to contact them about an appearance here. But nothing came of it.
I know a couple of other music lovers around town who have batted around ideas for years of getting Lucinda to Savannah.
A great songwriter and one of the American scene’s most interesting singers, Lucinda Williams — despite big successes such as a Grammy for writing “Passionate Kisses”, a song popularized by Mary Chapin Carpenter — really didn’t break out as a public figure until 1998’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. That album won a Grammy for best contemporary folk album.
I don’t think I really paid attention to Williams as a vocalist until I heard the track “Main Road” (sometimes written as “Roads”), on the 1993 album Sweet Relief: A Benefit for Victoria Williams.
Here’s Williams performing “Drunken Angel”:
Here’s a wonderful, soulful version of “Still I Long for Your Kiss”:
I love the edge in this AOL Session performance of “Sweet Side” from 2003:
I’ll update my calendar with all the relevant info as it becomes available.The gig is listed here by Lost Highway Records.