Lucinda Williams and her Band — live event
Lucinda Williams’ music has gotten her through her darkest days. It’s been that way since growing up amid family chaos in the Deep South, as she recounts in her candid new memoir, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I told You. Over the past two years, it’s been the force driving her recovery from a debilitating stroke she suffered on November 17, 2020, at age 67. Her masterful, multi-Grammy-winning songwriting has never deserted her. To wit, her stunning, sixteenth studio album, Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart, brims over with some of the best work of her career. And though Williams can no longer play her beloved guitar – a constant companion since age 12 – her distinctive vocals sound better than ever. “I’m singing my ass off,” she told Vanity Fair in February, following her first European tour since 2019. The love emanating from audiences and her musical family onstage and in the studio exemplify the healing power of music, says Williams. In 2020, she spent a week in intensive care, followed by a month in rehab before returning home. The blood clot on the right side of her brain impaired the left side of her body’s motor skills, forcing her to relearn some of the most basic of activities, like walking. In July 2021, she played her first gig, opening for Jason Isbell at Red Rocks. She began seated in a wheelchair, but soon she was upright. “Just the energy of the audiences being so welcoming and warm and the band playing so great and being so supportive gave me so much strength,” Williams relates. “I figured, ‘Hell, all I have to do is stand up there and sing. How hard can that be?” Soon after touring with Isbell, she returned to the studio. “Writing had been part of my rehabilitation,” says Williams. “It didn’t occur to me to stop and not do anything.” During those long months working with physical therapists and regaining mobility and strength, Williams turned to notebooks of partial lyrics and jotted down some new ideas. She also began collaborating on songs with her husband, manager, and co-producer Tom Overby. The pair’s successful collaborations on several tracks from Williams’ critically acclaimed previous effort, Good Souls Better Angels (released in 2020 and nominated for two Grammy Awards) opened her up to cowriting – “it just expands things,” Williams says. But post-stroke, she had to revise her own songwriting process, since she could no longer play guitar. “My process has always been to come up with some lyrics, then get the guitar and come up with a melody and some kind of structure,” Williams relates. “Once I get that, then I’d go back and edit the lyrics and add more. Pretty much like when you write and revise a story, except the guitar is added to it. It was very rare that I’d ever write all the lyrics completely without the guitar.”
Starts: 2024-01-27T20:00:40Z
Ends: 2024-01-27T22:00:40Z
Where: 1099 Euclid Avenue Northeast, Atlanta, Georgia 30307, United States
Price: $49.5