LUCINDA WILLIAMS
THURSDAY, JULY 30, 2015 | 7 P.M. DOORS, 8 P.M. SHOW
FARGO THEATRE
314 BROADWAY N, FARGO, ND 58102
Tickets on-sale Friday, June 12, 2015, 11 a.m.
Reserved seating is $39.50.
As
a rule, you can divide music into three categories -- the kind that
aims for the head, the kind that aims for the heart and the kind that
aims for the hips. Forging two of those connections at once is pretty
impressive, but connecting on all three? That’s a rare accomplishment
indeed, one that Lucinda Williams manages on her 11th studio album,
“Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone.”
“Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone”, the
first release on Lucinda Williams’ own Highway 20 Records label, is
easily the most ambitious creation in a body of work that’s long on
ambition. Over the course of two discs, Williams leaves no emotional
crevice left unexplored, drinking deeply from a well of inspiration that
culminates with an offering that overflows with delta-infused country
soul.
Williams
has been maneuvering down a path all her own for more than three
decades, emerging from Lake Charles, La., (a town with a rich tradition
in all of America’s indigenous music, from country to the blues) having
been imbued with a “culturally rich, economically poor” worldview.
Several years of playing the hardscrabble clubs of her adopted state of
Texas gave her a solid enough footing to record a self-titled album that
would become a touchstone for the embryonic Americana movement –
helping launch a thousand musical ships along the way.
While not a huge commercial success at the time – it went out of print and stayed there for years – “Lucinda Williams” (aka,
the Rough Trade album) retained a cult reputation, and finally got the
reception it deserved upon its reissue earlier this year. Jim Farber of
New York’s Daily News hailed the reissue by saying “Listening
again proves it to be that rarest of beasts: a perfect work. There’s not
a chord, lyric, beat or inflection that doesn’t pull at the heart or
make it soar.” In calling it “a masterpiece,” Blurt magazine
dubbed it “a discovery worth making and music that will live in your
heart and mind long after the disk stops spinning.”
For
much of the next decade, she moved around the country, stopping in
Austin, Los Angeles, Nashville and turning out work that won immense
respect within the industry (winning a Grammy for Mary Chapin
Carpenter’s version of “Passionate Kisses”) and a gradually growing cult
audience. While her recorded output was sparse for a time, the work
that emerged was invariably hailed for its indelible impressionism --
like 1998’s “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” which notched her first Grammy as a performer.
The
past decade brought further development, both musically and personally,
evidenced on albums like “West” (2007), which All Music Guide called “flawless...destined to become a classic” and “Blessed” (2011), which the Los Angeles Times dubbed
“a dynamic, human, album, one that’s easy to fall in love with.” Those
albums retained much of Williams’ trademark melancholy and southern
Gothic starkness, but also exuded more rays of light and hope -- hues
that were no doubt imparted by a more soothing personal life, as well as
a more settled creative space.
Those vibes come to the fore once again on “Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone.” While
she stays very much rooted in the here and now, Williams also conjures
up the spirit of classic ‘70s country soul -- the province of Dan Penn,
Bobbie Gentry and Tony Joe White. The resulting warmth of tone gives the
album a late-night front-porch vibe -- one that could be accompanied by
either a tall glass of lemonade or something a little stronger, all the
better to let the sounds envelop the listener like a blanket of dewy
air.
“I
didn’t set out to do a whole album of country-soul, but once I started
working, a stylistic thread kind of emerged,��� she says. “It’s a sound I
can relate to, one that’s really immediate and really timeless at the
same time -- kind of sad in an indefinable way. It’s like something my
dad said to me many years ago, something I wrote down and included in my
song “Temporary Nature (Of Any Precious Thing)” because it was so
profound to me -- ‘the saddest joys are the richest ones.’ I think that
fits this album really well.”
Tickets are
available at JadePresents.com, at the Tickets 300 box office (300
Broadway, Fargo; open Monday – Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.) or by calling
(866) 300-8300.
