The latest issue of Uncut โ which is in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here, with free P&P for the UK โ features an in-depth interview with country-rock icon Lucinda Williams. In this extract from her wide-ranging conversation with Stephen Deusner, she discusses moving back to Nashville after a difficult period at the beginning of her career.
โWhat church do you go to?โ That was the question Williams remembers dodging back when she lived in Nashville in the 1990s. โIt wasnโt, โDo you go to church?โ It was, โWhat church do you go to?โโ At the time the city was geared toward a very conservative brand of country music, with hat acts like Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson leading a country-pop crossover that left artists like Williams behind. โThere was no-one wearing leather motorcycle jackets and biker boots.โ
Williamsโ time in Nashville was marked by rejection and frustration. Artists were covering her songs, but aside from Mary Chapin Carpenterโs version of โPassionate Kissesโ, their labels werenโt pushing them as singles, mainly because radio programmers objected to lyrics like, โAnd the only thing I regret is I never kissed your mouth.โ
After the release of Sweet Old World in 1992, it took six years to follow it up with Car Wheels On
A Gravel Road, during which time she recorded the album and then had to re-record it. Itโs one of the most acclaimed albums of that decade, but it still didnโt ingratiate her in Nashville. โWhen I got nominated for a Grammy for โGet Right With Godโ in 2001,โ she says, โI decided to drive out to Los Angeles. In the back of my mind I was thinking
I might just stay there.โ
Nearly 20 years later, the Nashville machine remains rigid and intractable, but Williams isnโt even trying to break in any more. โI donโt have to deal with the music industry now,โ she says. โThereโs still crap coming out of Nashville. Thereโs still stuff that annoys me, like four people getting songwriting credit on a song. Why does it take so many people to write a bad song? Tomโs like, โHoney, just ignore it.โ Iโll try. I guess I canโt have a perfect town. At least nobody is asking me what church I go to.โ
Still, Nashville has been a readjustment for her. โI like the anonymity I had in LA,โ she says. She does get recognised on the street more often here than out in California, and everybody she meets is somehow connected to the music industry. โEvery time I take an Uber or a Lyft, the driver is a singer-songwriter. When they find out Iโm a musician, they always want to know what kind of music I play.โ
With her adventurous new album Good Souls Better Angels using blues and country as springboards into heavy rock, punk, rural psychedelica and even hip-hop, thatโs become a difficult question to answer. โI feel like Iโve been misunderstood to such a degree for so long,โ she reveals. โI started out on acoustic guitar doing folk songs, then I moved into Delta blues, but I was always listening to edgier stuff like The Doors and the Stones. I got locked into the singer-songwriter thing by default. When youโre first starting out, usually itโs just you and your guitar. You immediately get put into that category, but Iโve always loved all different kinds of music.โ
You can read much more from Lucinda Williams in the new issue of Uncut, out now with George Harrison on the cover.