Tag Archives: “Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone”

A Note of Thanks to Lucinda Williams

1035x1656-lucinda-cropHad I stuck to my plan, you’d likely be reading about the emergence of cowboy hats in roots music, after the genre enjoyed a brief fling with the fedora. Coupled with prairie couture, this year has seen a subtle shift in fashion and style among the younger set in particular, and it seemed to be a topic of interest that I am admittedly and imminently unprepared and unqualified to speak of. While I was nevertheless going to regale you with the history of the Stetson and bring in scientific theory as to why the ten-gallon hat holds only three quarts of liquid, a postscript to this year’s award show at the Americana Music Festival felt like it should take precedent.

I’m sure some of you already have heard that Lucinda Williams, along with her co-producers Tom Overby and Greg Leisz, received the album of the year honors for Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, her sprawling and sparkling collection of 20 songs that clocks in at 135 minutes or thereabouts. It’s an album that has received much praise from music writers and bloggers on websites such as this, as well as in daily newspapers and monthly magazines. In his review that was published last year in The New York Times, Ben Ratliff wrote:

She’s pithy and penetrating, bruised but steadfast, proud of the grain and drawl of her voice. Her music places itself in a vanishing, idealized Southland where country, soul, blues and gospel all share a common spirit and a vocabulary of twang, and where life lessons can be delivered by a bar band.

Her new songs are full of advice, empathy and testimony to obstacles that have been overcome, or will be.

Fred Mills at Blurt described the album as “a snapshot — or feature-length film, take your pick — of a 61-year old woman fully renewed and at the height of her creative powers.” And Andy Gill at The Independent said that it “may be the best work of her career, a compelling survey of love and life to challenge the bitter insights of West and World without Tears.”

As these reviews mirrored my own listening experience, it pleased me to hear the news of this recognition. Williams is a beloved outlier who I connected with through her self-titled Rough Trade cassette, and Overby is an old friend. Admittedly I don’t usually pay close attention to polls and awards, and the concept that there is just one song, one album, or one artist that is better than the rest sort of gnaws at me.

There was a time in my life where I could argue for hours about the merits of one album over another. I was very opinionated about what I felt was good or bad, to the point where speaking or writing in a condescending tone was my default position. Somewhere along the line, I became agnostic in my relationship toward music. In other words, its all good. Or, an even better way to say it: it’s all respected.

It never ceases to astonish me that a series or pattern of notes, words, and/or beats can create a highly individualized emotional and physical experience. This past year, Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone took me exactly to the space that the title promised. You can figure out for yourself if you think it was the best or not. For me, it’s just another reason why I love music. And while I’ve got no trophy to hand out, this will have to serve as my own thank you note for a job well done.

This was originally published at No Depression dot com, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.

Poetry At The Intersection of Miller and Hank

millerwilliams

As this year begins, America has lost Miller Williams. The husband of Jordan, and father to Karyn, Robert and Lucinda, he was a poet, editor, critic and translator with over thirty books to his credit. In his biography published on the Poetry Foundation website, they posted that his work was known ‘for its gritty realism as much as for its musicality. Equally comfortable in formal and free verse, Williams wrote poems grounded in the material of American life, frequently using dialogue and dramatic monologue to capture the pitch and tone of American voices.’

For someone who spent his life in academia, teaching at several institutions before joining the faculty at the University of Arkansas in 1970, he seemed most comfortable writing in a style that was both accessible and captured a rhythmic quality. This unattributed quote about himself is one he seemed to enjoy: ‘Miller Williams is the Hank Williams of American poetry. While his poetry is taught at Princeton and Harvard, it’s read and understood by squirrel hunters and taxi drivers.’

Miller passed away on January 1. It was the same date that Hank died fifty-two years earlier, and what I find most interesting is the story of how the two men met. In March 2013, Oxford American published an interview with Miller by Jackson Meazle, and this is an excerpt:

Q: You have written somewhat extensively in argument for rhyme and meter in poetry. How has music informed your work? Arkansas, like many Southern states, has such a rich musical heritage. Has music always been of interest to you and your work?

MW: I do believe that poetry is more satisfying when it has a pattern similar to those of songs. I wish that I could sing well, as I’m sure you know my daughter Lucinda does, and writes her own songs. Hank Williams (no kinship there) told me that since he often wrote his lyrics months before he set them to music, they spent those months as sort-of poems. I think the kinship is real.

Q: Did you ever meet Hank Williams in person?

MW: Yes, [in 1952] I was on the faculty of McNeese State College in Lake Charles, Louisiana, when he had a concert there. I stepped onstage when he and his band were putting their instruments away and when he glanced at me I said, “Mr. Williams, my name is Williams and I’d be honored to buy you a beer.”

To my surprise, he asked me where we could get one. I said there was a gas station about a block away where we could sit and drink a couple. (You may not be aware that gas stations used to have bars.) He asked me to tell his bus driver exactly where it was and then he joined me.

When he ordered his beer, I ordered a glass of wine, because this was my first year on a college faculty and it seemed the appropriate thing to do. We sat and chatted for a little over an hour. When he ordered another beer he asked me about my family. I told him that I was married and that we were looking forward to the birth of our first child in about a month.

He asked me what I did with my days and I told him that I taught biology at McNeese and that when I was home I wrote poems. He smiled and told me that he had written lots of poems. When I said, “Hey—you write songs!” he said, “Yeah, but it usually takes me a long time. I might write the words in January and the music six or eight months later; until I do, what I’ve got is a poem.”

Then his driver showed up, and as he stood up to leave he leaned over, put his palm on my shoulder, and said, “You ought to drink beer, Williams, ’cause you got a beer-drinkin’ soul.”

He died the first day of the following year. When Lucinda was born I wanted to tell her about our meeting, but I waited until she was onstage herself. Not very long ago, she was asked to set to music words that he had left to themselves when he died. This almost redefines coincidence.

“Compassion” is a poem by Miller that was published in 1997. Should the words be familiar, it might be from the song of the same name that Lucinda released this year. The poem is rather short, and the song speaks volumes.

Have compassion for everyone you meet,

even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit,

bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign

of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.

You do not know what wars are going on

down there where the spirit meets the bone.