MINNEAPOLIS — She just published a well-received memoir, put out one of the best albums of her 45-year career and lined up tour dates through next spring — including an unprecedented five-night stand in what she called “another hometown,” Minneapolis.
It almost makes you wonder if the news of Lucinda Williams suffering a debilitating stroke in November 2020 was exaggerated or misreported.
When longtime fans see one of the South’s most widely celebrated singer/songwriters return north for her marathon run at the Dakota this week — five sold-out shows through Saturday — they will unfortunately recognize one indicator those reports were true: She still can’t play guitar after losing some of her motor skills.
“I’m just hoping and praying it comes back in due time, like some other things have,” Williams, 70, said of her ability to play the instrument she had heavily leaned on since age 12.
“I couldn’t walk across the room without falling down at first, but I learned to walk again. So I’m hoping bit by bit the other things will come back as long as I keep pushing myself.”
In the meantime, Williams still has her other primary instrument to lead the way onstage.
None other than Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders put it in a social media post last week after running into Williams in an airport: “Her voice is better than ever in my opinion.” Fans who’ve heard Williams’ new album, “Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart,” can also confirm her voice remains the definition of rugged beauty, as rich and soulful as ever.
Talking by phone from Nashville, Tenn., in mid-July — she and her Twin Cities-reared husband/manager Tom Overby split their time there and in Los Angeles when not on the road — Williams confirmed that she’s feeling good in the vocal department. Really good, in fact.
“There’s the theory if you get a weakness in one area, another area comes back stronger,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s true in this case, but yeah … I do feel like I can still sing my ass off. I really don’t think the shows have suffered because of the stroke.”
Of course, the widely celebrated songwriter — whose breakthrough song, “Passionate Kisses,” became an even bigger hit for Mary Chapin Carpenter in 1992 — can still write, too.
The new album, issued in June, is loaded with rousing anthems for rebounding lost souls and beckons to let rock music and poetry save the world. It’s also filled with some notable guest singers, including Margo Price, Angel Olsen, Tommy Stinson and married E Street Bandmates Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa.
Springsteen can be heard prominently in the single “New York Comeback,” a rocker in which Williams sings, “Let me have the final say/ One last chance to do it my way/ One last shot, one last swing/ One final song to sing.”
“Whenever I hear his voice on there, I still fan out and am like, ‘Oh my God …!” Williams said, recounting several prior encounters with the Boss. “He’s been a fan and has always been real supportive. He’s just a really open, down-to-earth guy next door.”
‘Backbones of the songs’
Maybe an even stronger indicator of Williams’ continuingly strong knack for prose comes from her memoir, “Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You,” published in April via Penguin Random House.
In the revealing book, the native of swampy Lake Charles, La., opens up about mental illness and other woes in her family, her struggles and triumphs as a rising songwriter, and her many romantic forays with men of note over the years — including Minneapolis rock hero Paul Westerberg.
“My relationship with Paul didn’t last very long, because he was so inconsistent, so much of a hound dog,” she writes of the Replacements frontman.
She also reminisces about marrying onstage during a performance at First Avenue in 2009. Her late father, Miller Williams — a renowned poet and professor featured prominently in the new book — led the ceremony to start the encore in what should definitely rank as one of the most memorable nights in the club’s 53-year history.
“Tom said to me, ‘Let’s get married onstage,’ and I thought it was a great idea,” Williams writes. “Then we decided to do it at First Avenue, the famous club in Minneapolis where I had played many times. Tom is from there and it felt like a good place to do it.”
Those divergent examples of Minneapolis-related memories reflect what Williams now says she wanted to accomplish with the book, which was “a further way to expose the backbones of my songs.”
“Over the years I often tell the story of a song before I perform it, and people always still want to know more,” she explained. “I hear, ‘Who’d you write ‘Essence’ about?’ or, ‘Who’s that song about?’ Sometimes the stories were too hard to explain onstage, so the book is really an extension to all that.”
As for Westerberg — who inspired her 2003 song “Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings,” and more — she said, “We sort of just got tangled up in each other a little bit.
“I was writing about my life, and that was a part of it. He was an important part, I thought, somebody I felt like I wanted to bring him to the surface. And I feel like I have an artistic connection with him. That’s what we connected on mainly was the artistic connection, and being kindred spirits that way.”
Not coincidentally, two of Westerberg’s former bandmates feature heavily on Williams’ new album in a mellower, tender new song called “Hum’s Liquor” — named after the still-humming bottle shop on Lyndale Avenue South. It’s a tribute to the band’s late guitarist Bob Stinson, and it features his younger brother Tommy Stinson on guest vocals.
Like one of her best-loved songs, 1998’s “Drunken Angel” (about Texas tunesmith Blaze Foley), Williams said, “It’s a song about a beautiful misfit.”
“That one comes straight from stories (husband) Tom told me about living there in Minneapolis in an apartment close to Hum’s Liquor,” she explained.
“From the window of his apartment he could always see Bob walking to Hum’s Liquor every morning without fail. You could almost set a clock to it, like it was always a quarter to 10. The song is not meant to be judgmental in any way. It’s just an ode.”
Tommy Stinson just happened to be in town when they were working on the record, she said, “so we invited him in, and he was really moved by it and agreed to sing on it.”
Arguably the most moving song on the album, though, is the one that inspired the album title, simply called “Rock n Roll Heart.” It’s a testament to staying true to one’s creative urges, as Williams has so often done against odds in her career.
“As long as you’ve got a rock n roll heart/ It can’t be broken or torn apart,” she sings.
Williams was quick to point out that “Rock n Roll Heart” is one of the many songs on the album she co-wrote with collaborators, including her husband and her longtime friend Jesse Malin of the New York band D Generation (who sadly was also just sidelined by a stroke two months ago). This was a first for her.
“It came out of necessity because I couldn’t play the guitar, but I could still think of melodies in my head and write lyrics,” she said. “And then it turns out my husband Tom was a pretty darn good lyricist. He was real shy about it, like, ‘I just have some ideas; you don’t have to use any of it.’ But I was like, ‘This is pretty damn good stuff.’ ”
Learning to collaborate with others, she summarized, “was one thing that came out of the mixed-blessing pile from the stroke.”
