ROLLING STONE
Albums Of The Year

#18 “Little Honey” Lucinda Williams has been channeling hard-won wisdom into laments for so long, it is a shock to behold the singer love-struck. Williams being Williams, the happy songs hedge their bets, but high spirits predominate, as do snarling Stones-ish guitars, brisk tempos and a slew of funny punch lines.

SPIN
Top 40 Albums Of 2008

#30 “Little Honey” After 30 years of weepers and heartbreakers, Williams proves she can also sing he-done-me-right songs. The aggrieved ex who growled, "You took my joy / I want it back" on 1998's Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is now singing "Tears of Joy" -- though still slinging stormy riffs, honky-tonk harmonies, and bourbon-soaked soul. Apparently, not even domestic bliss (the recently engaged singer reveals she found love "standing up behind an electric guitar") can water down her liquor.

TIME
Top 10 Albums of 2008

#9 “Little Honey” After years in misery's ditch, Williams finally put out a happy album, but it's a little more nuanced than its publicity. Songs like "Tears of Joy" and the grinding guitar-rocker "Real Love," show off a singer no longer ill at ease with easy pleasures (although, uncharacteristically, she's suddenly at ease with lyrical cliché) while the Elvis Costello duet "Jailhouse Tears" proves she can even be funny. For all the smiles, there's also plenty of material where the mood darkens. "Circles and X's" and the glorious "Wishes Were Horses" ("If wishes were horses/ I'd have a ranch") get Williams back to longing, territory where she's unrivaled as a writer and unbeatable as a singer. The balance, though, makes this Williams' sweetest album.

BLENDER
Top 144 Songs of 2008
#13 “Real Love”

AUSTIN CHRONCILE
Top 10 National CD’s of 2008 - #1

PASTE
Best Of 2008

#9 “Little Honey” It’s her most sonically and emotionally diverse record ever, and her best since Car Wheels On A Gravel Road.

NEWSDAY
Best Albums Of 2008

#2 Happiness suits Lucinda Williams. On “Little Honey,” she rolls out non-sappy love songs (“Tears of Joy”), alt-country prayers for serenity (“The Knowing” and “Heaven Blues”) and all-out rockers (“Honey Bee” and “Real Love”).

NEWARK STAR-LEDGER
Top Albums of 2008

#7 "Little Honey," Lucinda Williams (Lost Highway)
…one of the year's best.

MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
Favorite Albums of 2008

#8 "Little Honey." She's in a love-struck (not love-sucks) phase for a change. Which means: less poetic but harder rocking.

CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
Top 10 Albums of 2008

#7 "Little Honey" (Lost Highway) The belle of the Americana ball shines on "Real Love," a fun remake of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top" and "Jailhouse Tears," a twangy duet with Elvis Costello.

FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
Little Honey: Lusty, loose and wonderfully ragged, this explosive country-rock collection is the singer/songwriter’s most consistent, compelling disc in a decade.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Top 10 albums of 2008

#5 Williams proves that a happier, more fulfilled life can yield an album just as compelling as those of her more downcast, introspective periods.

CREATIVE LOAFING
Top 10 CD’s of 2008

#1 On Little Honey, alt-country queen Lucinda Williams returns to the more focused, rock-oriented sonics of her breakthrough 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

POPMATTERS
Best Albums of 2008

#34 Believe it or not, folks, this is Our Lucinda’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, her “Crazy in Love” and it’s mostly breathtaking, as strong as all save one (you know which) of those records she put out back when she was (ostensibly) miserable, an almost 20-year (!) stretch bookended by 1979’s Ramblin’ and last year’s West.

Best Singles of 2008
#43 “Rarity” Nearly nine minutes, this gorgeous, honest song seems part eulogy to the nurturing music industry artists were fortunate enough to enjoy in the ‘70s and part damning indictment about what that industry has devolved into.

BLURT
Best of 2008 - #15

NO DEPRESSION
Top 40 Albums of 2008 - #6

NPR
Listener’s Poll

#39 From the album’s opening track, the surging, angular, almost punk-feeling riff-rocker “Real Love”; through several blues compositions, country-honker “Well Well Well” and the swampy, slide/harp-fueled “Heavy Blues;” Little Honey never falters.

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Americana, Bluegrass & Country’s Best of 2008

#2 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

Lucinda Williams relies on her road band, Buick 6, from the false start of “Real Love” that kicks off Little Honey to the final gospel-blues assault on AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top” that tucks it away. Wit this tour-tested chemistry behind her, Williams delivers the voice of experience, offering advice to a self-destructive “Little Rock Star,” embracing the security and simplicity of live in a world gone to way in “Plan to Marry,” and holding tight to her integrity in a business desperate for the almighty buck in the brass-enhanced, spooked-organ arrangement of the 9-minute epic “Rarity.” Her voice is the perfect instrument – charred, broken, weather in all the right places, the sound of a country-blueswoman who has spent years on the road. Only her duet with Elvis Costello on “Jailhouse Tears” sounds forced, as EC’s bluster turns emotion into self-parody.

Music: FOUR (out of five) STARS

Sound: FOUR (out of five) STARS

Lucinda Williams’s West, in 2007, was a stunning effort, her strongest in nearly a decade. Yet it was an emotional downslide, and its cathartic declarations of unrequited love no doubt took their toll in the ensuing months onstage. At some point, she must have longed for a way to kick things into high gear. Little Honey (Lost Highway) fills just that void and, happily, finds Williams in a better place; she hasn’t sounded this content—or ebullient, even—since 1988’s “Passionate Kisses.” If the upbeat nature of the album’s single, “Real Love,” comes as a surprise, wait until you hear the ferocious “Honey Bee,” her hardest-rocking love song ever. There’s much to like here: the down-home “Heaven Blues,” a paean to self-destructive types in “Little Rock Star,” a fun country duet with Elvis Costello, and yes, a few melancholic gems (“If Wishes Were Horses,” “Plan to Marry”). Williams’s newfound optimism does take some getting used to, however; where this solid release leaves the “pain equals art” argument depends on whether or not you think an album of hers should include an AC/DC cover.

How good was Lucinda Williams' performance Friday night at the Wiltern?

Crazy good. And sane good, sexy good, playful good, anguished good, angry good, cathartic good, brawny good, rockin' good, bluesy good -- head, heart and soul good.

Above all, the Louisiana-born singer-songwriter revels in the music of the soul, and judging from the remarkably rich litany of songs she's written over the last three decades, she's got one of the saddest-sweetest ones ever passed out.

The delightful thing about her new album, "Little Honey," is the way she's allowed the sun to come beaming through the dark spaces of the human experience.

No doubt that has something to do with her relationship with album co-producer and fiancé Tom Overby, whom she seemed to celebrate in several of the new songs in Friday's set, including "Real Love," "Tears of Joy" and "Honey Bee."

One of the hallmarks of Williams' talent is the multi-dimensionality of those songs. "Real Love" could indeed be viewed as an ode to a long-sought-after soul mate:

It can also be read as the confession of a woman who, having established a profound connection with another human spirit, has fully embraced herself and her musical calling.

She is assisted mightily in that calling on the album and at Friday's performance by her backing band, Buick 6, a quartet that recently put out an album of instrumentals and offered up its own invigorating 35-minute opening set. Guitarists Doug Pettibone and Chet Lyster provide Williams the kind of double-barreled attack Keith Richards and Ron Wood give the Stones, a rock-country-blues muscle she exploited in the resigned-to-fate two-step "Well Well Well" and the earthily sensual rocker "Honey Bee."

After last year's tour, when she played five studio albums in their entirety, Williams may have felt liberated to focus on the freewheeling newer stuff. But she did cherry-pick through her catalog -- performing songs including "Can't Let Go," "I Lost It" and "Joy" from her 1998 breakthrough "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" album, the title track from 2001's minimalist workout "Essence" and the bawdy "Come On" from last year's "West."

"Come On" is built on a stinging play on words directed at an ex, but Williams, her voice ever fuller, darker and grittier as the years go by, used it to chart a path out of anger and into emotional release. The band supplied the controlled burn of Crazy Horse at its most urgent, emphasizing focused power, not bombast.

She took Neil Young-like rock-infused blues to a soul-deep place that seemed to let loose her inner Etta James. It's long been debated whether a white man can truly sing the blues, but Williams left no doubt that this white woman feels the blues down to her marrow.

Having moved back to L.A. after years in Nashville, Williams tapped a couple of Southland music scene veterans, Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, for harmonies on "Little Honey" that they recreated at the Wiltern, adding to the cozy, hometown feel of the 100-minute show.

She ended with "It's a Long Way to the Top," the song that also closes "Little Honey" on a note of both celebration and warning to anyone who aspires to scale a peak. She dedicated it to President-elect Barack Obama with the authority of one who's been to the top and bottom of the mountain, and who's entirely cognizant of what she's gained every step of the way.

Beginning her two-night run at the tight downtown Seattle venue Showbox at the Market, Lucinda Williams was pert, poignant, and a powerhouse of rock 'n' roll.

And a picture of contentment all evening long.

Though dressed demurely in plain brown slacks, light blouse, and dark vest, Williams quickly showed she was revved and ready: "It's a refreshing treat to be playing a rock club!" The audience yelped their approval.

Williams started off the night strong, sober, and full of gentle sway as she belted out the dreamy but definitive tune "Rescue" from her "West" album. "He can't save you from the plain and simple truth; the waning winters of your youth," she sang at her raspy best.

The concert was dominated by scintillating rock, interspaced with her traditionally satisfying alt-country palette. With "Ventura," a country-folk ballad from "World Without Tears," Williams displayed her trademark soul searching.

She prefaced "Circles and X's" — from her latest album "Little Honey" — saying, "This song sat around for 20 years. ... It still survives."

The first singalong commenced when Williams sang the familiar "I Lost It," a tune of hopeful discovery, from the grammy-winning "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road."

Like many singer-songwriters, Williams' compositions begin with autobiography, and her Showbox set list was filled with ballads and alt-country turns like "Tears of Joy," "Right In Time" and "Real Love."

But the most persistent audience cry of the concert was "Let's rock 'n' roll!," and "Out of Touch," a seminal jewel of a rocker, found Williams quite primed to rock out. "Out of Touch" transformed the performance, inducing an avalanche of overhead clapping, whooping and vigorous head bobbing.

From here to the end of the nearly two-hour set, Williams let go with a vengeance, as she and her four-member backup band, Buick 6, produced some qualitatively feverish, sizzling and hall-shaking rock.

She satisfied the audience with an electric encore of "For What It's Worth," the Buffalo Springfield '60s anthem, which became yet another singalong, and a fitting end to the lovefest between Williams and her Showbox crowd.

On her new album, Little Honey, it seems Williams has arrived at a new place. Critics are calling it her first "happy" album, but the singer says it's not so simple.

"I think there's this sense that I'm having a good time," she says. "The band's having a good time."

....CLICK HERE to continue reading as well as listen to Lucinda on All Things Considered.

Lucinda Williams is the first official "country" artist that we’ve featured thus far in our "On The Download" column here at AccessHollywood.com, and what more credible artist could we suggest to you?

If you haven’t heard of Lucinda, you’re not alone – she’s no Carrie Underwood or Keith Urban, in terms of mass-market appeal.

But in terms of talent, for over 30 years this three-time Grammy Award-winner has been at the top of her game. She’s always reminded me as a Southern version of Rickie Lee Jones or Stevie Nicks.

I was first introduced to her music in 2003, through her album "World Without Tears" – her song "Righteously" from this disc remains one of my all-time favorite singles.

Now, the Louisiana-born Lucinda has just released her ninth studio album, "Little Honey," which for me, is every bit as strong as what many consider her magnum opus; 1998’s "Car Wheels On A Gravel Road."

This album is more rock n’ roll than any of her previous work that I’ve listened to, as evidenced in the opening track, "Real Love," which is much more Austin than Nashville.

Not to be missed is her duet with Elvis Costello on "Jailhouse Tears" – the twang in her voice when she drawls out the word "Teeeeaarrrsss" is classic Lucinda.

It’s emotional and narrative – this single sung word alone tells a whole story in and of itself.

But the most amazing thing about Lucinda is that it’s impossible to classify her music – you can’t call it just country, or rock ‘n’ roll, or R&B – it’s none… and yet, it’s all.

If you’re a music fan who’s scared of the word "Country" (like me!), Lucinda is a very comfortable introduction.

Except, of course, for those who have already long been in the know!

It's hard to believe Williams took a six-year break between albums in the '90s. Since 1998 she has reliably been releasing strong, often heartbreaking discs with seemingly effortless ease.

Little Honey continues the string, with the proviso that Williams has now found happiness in her life. Despite the occasional downer like If Wishes Were Horses, we get no song as soul-numbing as the brilliant, savagely depressing Everything Has Changed from the album West. But maybe a little break is needed anyway.

The album is full of great lyrics and vocals, highlighted by the duet with Elvis Costello on Jailhouse Tears. Williams continues to distinguish herself as one of the most important writers in modern music. The cover of AC/DC's It's a Long Way to the Top just adds to the fun.


Grade: A-

The first thing Lucinda Williams announces on her ninth studio album is that she found the love she was looking for standing behind an electric guitar. Twelve songs later, she signs off with a bit of wisdom from the late Australian philosopher Bon Scott: “It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll.” The message? After chilling (and bumming) out on last year’s mortality-fixated West, which she said was inspired by the electronic blues of Thievery Corporation and Kruder & Dorfmeister, Williams goes back to the roots-rock well and takes a long, satisfying swig. The result is her finest record since Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, the decade-old masterpiece by which her career will always be judged.

Little Honey is a retrenchment, but it isn’t narrowly focused: “Real Love” and “Honey Bee” are rowdy bar-band rave-ups; “Knowing” and “Rarity” have gorgeous vintage-soul horn arrangements; “Well Well Well” jumps with electric bluegrass rhythms. Over the scrappy juke-joint groove of “Jailhouse Tears,” Williams trades soured lover’s accusations with Elvis Costello. What unites the songs is the restored hope in Williams’ singing, whether she’s describing her engagement to Little Honey coproducer Tom Overby in “Tears of Joy” or the purity of an unnamed musician’s talent in “Rarity.” Amid all this emotional renewal, even the closing AC/DC cover sounds pretty profound.


FOUR STARS

Lucinda Williams has a great laugh—it’s a joyful sound to hear on the aptly titled Little Honey, the 10th album in her three-decade career. A sweet sense of renewal imbues Williams’ latest work, which encompasses all the elements of her eclectic catalog—from her stark early sets Ramblin’ (1979) and Happy Woman Blues (1980) to her 1988 self-titled breakthrough to last year’s textural West, co-produced with Hal Willner (Lou Reed, Bill Frisell). But not since her masterpiece, 1998’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, has Williams dug so deep and come up with an album that brims with such varied, impeccable writing. Aided by loose-limbed playing from her band Buick 6, some notable party guests, and a voice full of everything from righteous gusto to hard-won wisdom, Little Honey is Lucinda Williams at her best.

A sharp contrast to the studied tapestry of sound and embittered lyrics of West, Little Honey finds Williams in celebratory mode, with raucous rock, bluesy testimonies and tongue-in-cheek twang. Her brooding introspection—found here on a handful of moody tone poems and mournful ballads—adds depth to the proceedings. A decade ago, the Louisiana-born Williams proffered that her best work was borne of emotional crises and the ensuing solitude—exactly the circumstances surrounding West, which examined a harrowing breakup and the devastating loss of her mother. But Little Honey proves that philosophy wrong: This time out, Williams has found “Real Love,” the barnburner that kicks off the album, and she sings “Tears Of Joy,” a stunning Chicago-meets-Texas blues. On both tracks, her chansons d’amour are abetted by the straight-ahead backing of her touring group: longtime (for Williams) guitarist Doug Pettibone, joined by axman Chet Lyster, bassist David Sutton, and drummer Butch Norton, who give the album its punch.

The direct, autobiographical narrative “Tears of Joy” could have been written by Memphis Minnie: “Uprooted and restless, I paid the cost / I’ve been a mess, misguided and lost / But I’ve been so blessed since our paths have crossed / That’s why I’m crying tears of joy.” Williams gets straight to the heart of the matter with some of her strongest vocals ever. Likewise, on the spare “Heaven Blues”—on which she pays tribute to the Delta, recalling Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was The Ground”—Williams has been to hell and back and is ready to make her own heaven. Norton’s inventive percussion (including a washing machine and a manhole cover) is the perfect rhythmic backing to Williams’ crossroads declaration.

Little Honey also acknowledges the other roots music that has so informed the Americana queen’s songcraft. Her peals of laughter follow the wry honky-tonk number “Well Well Well,” with its classic C&W ending: “If you hang around trash you can’t come out clean.” Helping out on harmonies are Ryman throwback Jim Lauderdale and the eightysomething Charlie Louvin, the surviving member of country’s great duet, the Louvin Brothers.

Williams playfully nods to the tradition of “he said/she said” duets—think the evil twins of Conway and Loretta—on the fabulously fun “Jailhouse Tears.” As the “three-time loser,” Elvis Costello hasn’t relished such a down-home vocal role since he took on the guise of a country killer in “Psycho.”

Little Honey does have its somber moments, and this is where Williams’ poetry shines: Both “Knowing” (a dozen of its lines starting with “I didn’t know”) and the exquisite “Rarity” employ a lamps-down-low horn section and Hammond B-3 to create a lush soundscape for Williams’ bruised delivery. “Little Rock Star,” its soaring chorus provided by Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, is the follow-up (a beautiful loser, L.A.-style) to “Drunken Angel,” Williams’ 1998 character study of doomed Texas songwriter Blaze Foley. And remorse is the theme of windswept ballad “If Wishes Were Horses” and the mothballed “Circles and X’s,” written in 1985.

One of the most moving moments on Little Honey is the stark “Plan To Marry,” which features Williams alone with her acoustic guitar: “When the destitute and isolated / Have all been forgotten / And the fruit trees we planted / Are withered and rotten.” Williams once described the difficulty of writing a truly meaningful protest song—she’s done it here.

Little Honey is bookended by glorious rockers: Following a false start of blasting guitar, “Real Love” finds Williams swept up in a sea of crunchy Fenders, reverb and Rob Burger’s Wurlitzer. And straight from the School of Rock (or is it hard knocks?), she closes with AC/DC’s “It’s A Long Way To The Top,” bringing gospel-style fervor to the hell-raisin’ nugget: While Williams belts it out, Memphis soul sister Susan Marshall and company join her in a frenzied testimony. In between, there’s “Honey Bee,” a lusty rocker during which Williams bares all.

Co-produced by West engineer Eric Liljestrand and Williams’ fiancé, Tom Overby, Little Honey is the happy ending to 1998’s “Joy.” During the finale of her late-’90s concerts in ever larger halls, Williams and her band were known for vamping on the song’s rhythmic hook, “You took my joy / I want it back.” A decade later, on Little Honey, she’s got it and she gives it. How sweet it is.

"That song and this one are real country music," quipped Lucinda Williams between two songs from her new album, "Little Honey," at the Riviera on Friday night. "Country music that's too country for Nashville."

The words, while delivered with humor, pretty much sum up Lucinda Williams' renegade relationship with the commercial country scene. Aptly mining country, blues, folk, pop and rock, Williams defies genre pigeon-holing, and though that has been appreciated by fans, peers and critics, it's perhaps also limited her reach within country circles.


Her last appearances in Chicago a year ago comprised two sold-out stints at the Vic and traversed more of her heartbreaking songs. The Riviera, while well attended, was not sold out.


Touring on "Little Honey," an album housing a more celebratory sound, Williams focused on her more rocking, if not always as poignant, fare. Williams pulled out many classics during the nearly two-hour set, which illustrated that while her latest work may sizzle musically, the lyrics—one of Williams' most prominent fortes—are more straightforward and less poetic. "Honey Bee's" rollicking musical wallop was lyrically repetitive and beneath Williams' capable storytelling. Her gift for phrasing was lost in the formulaic chorus of new songs such as "Real Love."


Her stellar backing/opening band, Buick 6, and Williams, who alternated between acoustic and electric guitar, gave the new material extra punch with extended instrumentals live. Vocally, Williams was at her finest. Whether it was the gritty and defiant "Joy" or the wistful "Out of Touch"—her emotive intonations added even more depth to her lyric's conveyed emotions. New songs, such as the swinging "Jailhouse Tears" and her huskily delivered bluesy "Tears of Joy" aligned well with her early work.


She encored with covers of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" from a forthcoming protest EP and AC/DC's "Long Way to the Top" from "Little Honey."



Though her recent lyrics aren't always on point, the 55-year-old Williams just keeps getting better.

I was inspired by [singer and songwriter] Laura Cantrell. I have these really old songs that nobody ever heard before. I was really inspired because when she put her last record out, Humming By The Flowered Vine, somehow she got a hold of this real old song of mine called “Letters” that had never been out on anything. Maybe it was on some demo I did - I guess it was floating around. Somehow she got a hold of that song, and lo and behold, there it was on her record. I was happy to see it, but I was also surprised. ‘Cause I always look at that song as being a really, really early song, something I wrote 25 or 30 years ago, believe it or not. Like when I was in my twenties, probably, and just getting started and stuff. So it’s one of those songs you don’t think about any more. Like, whatever, that’s that song for that time, and it will never see the light of day. And there it is on her record! And sometimes when I run into really old friends of mine, from when I used to play in Austin, Texas, they ask me about these early songs, from when I was of that age, in my twenties-some people I know still remember those songs. So I started thinking about revisiting my early stuff, that’s kind of what lead me to go back and rediscover some of the songs like “If Wishes Were Horses.” I thought maybe I should revisit those songs, and give those songs a chance, too. Like, a lot of the stuff that was on my early albums, even my Rough Trade album and Happy Woman Blues, people still like those songs, you know?

It’s hard as a songwriter sometimes, to go back and appreciate some of the early stuff. But that’s what I was attempting to do.

I kind of go back and remember, I just sort of bring them up-to-date now, and when I’m singing ‘em, I’m singing ‘em for now, but I also remember the moment when I wrote them. So it’s kind of like lookin’ at an album of old photographs, and you look at yourself and say wow that was me then [laughs]. It’s an exploration, looking back and moving forward at the same time. That’s kind of what this new album is about.

So you don’t practice automatic writing?
I go through and edit and re-edit until I get it write, as I’m writing a new song. I don’t throw anything away, so I keep a folder of everything I’ve ever written. Once I’ve written a song and I’ve used all the lines, I’ll take it out. The only time I’ll throw those notes out is when I’ve used up all the ideas. But if there’s one little line from 20 years ago that I wrote down, I still have it. So the beauty of that is, sometimes when I have the time, and I’m in the mood, I’ll get all those notes out. Or I might be working on a new song, and I’m kind of stuck, and I need a line, so I’ll go back and browse through all that stuff. Something might pop up that I’ll be able to use now, whereas I might not have been able to use it before. So it’s always good to keep everything.

I’m always writing ideas down and then I stick ‘em in my pocket and put ‘em in that folder so I don’t loose them. Like, somebody might say something, and I’ll go, oh that’s a good line, and that goes in the folder too. It’s kind of an on-going process for me.

When you recorded the duet with Elvis Costello, “Jailhouse Tears,” did he change any of the lyrics around?
No, I wrote all the lyrics. He just sang them the way I’d already written them. It was great; he’s a sweetheart. We’ve known each other for a few years now. I sang on one of his songs on a record he’d done a few years ago, Delivery Man. He’s always been a big fan and really supportive, and he’s a great artist. He just continues to grow as he gets older, he’s still out there doing it, he’s still making great records. I really admire artists like that-Elvis Costello, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, who’s a great inspiration too, and a friend also. It’s a real honor to have these guys kind of in my camp now, you know. Because they were who I was listening to when I was learning how to write.

So with Elvis, he happened to be in town for just a couple of days, and he made the time to come in and do that song with me. He had heard it before because I had been doing it live. And sometimes when we were doing the same festival, he’d jump up on stage and sing with me. He’s just one of those artist who loves to get out there and play music and be supportive of other artists.

You cover AC/DC’s “It’s A Long Way To The Top” on this album - did I read correctly that you weren’t a fan initially?
It’s not that I wasn’t a fan. I didn’t have any of their records, they weren’t really on my turntable on a regular basis. I was more into Bob Dylan, The Byrds, and Neil Young, and all the ‘60s rock bands, like Cream and The Doors. It’s funny, now that I’ve gotten older, I’m actually able to go back and appreciate more hard rock. Now I’ve gone back and listened to some of those bands. There’s so much music, you can’t take in every single thing.

I mean, I heard them on the radio, of course, and I always admired the guitar player and stuff, but it wasn’t the kind of music that I listened to on a regular basis, cause I was just into different styles of stuff. But it was really [Little Honey producer and William's fiance] Tom Overby who said “You know, we need a good rock and roll song for this record, let’s try to think of a cool cover we could do, like an older song.” I would have picked this one song by this band Mountain. I was thinking more of that style, more of a blues-based rock band. And then Tom found this AC/DC song, and I said, I don’t know, you know? I didn’t even know the song. He said let’s just try it and see. He took it into the band first, they worked it out. And then I came into the studio later, at the end of the day, and I went in and said, “OK let’s give it a shot,” but I was still kind of resistant. And then I went in, they had the lyrics printed out for me - it took a little time for me to figure out the phrasing and everything. I took a stab at it and we ran through it a couple of times I guess, and I thought, “wow, I can do this!” That’s how we approach things, real spontaneous like that. It just goes to show you never know, you know? I wasn’t even sure if we should put it on the record, I wasn’t sure if people were going to like it-because I hadn’t done that before, on any of my albums. I very rarely do any covers. And if I do one, it’s usually one nobody’s ever heard before, like a Little Son Jackson song, something like that. I did a Nick Drake song with Tom a long time ago. And then on Car Wheels I did a Randy Weeks song that nobody had heard because it’d never been recorded anywhere, “Can’t Let Go.” He was in this band the Lonesome Strangers.

When I first moved out to L.A. in late ‘84, I opened a few shows for them. Randy’s got his own thing going now, he’s living in Austin. He’s a great songwriter. I love his stuff. I like to seek out material from other writers like that to do.

Did you write “Rarity” with someone specific in mind?
I was actually really inspired by this artist named Mia Doi Todd. She’s just a really, really brilliant songwriter kind of more in the underground folk pop thing I guess. She goes out and tours and stuff. I guess there was a situation that inspired the song, but of course all my songs are bigger than one person. But there might be a person or an event that plants the seed for the song, but then the song becomes bigger than that. But what had happened was, a friend of turned me on to her, a record she put out on a little indie label, and this was when I was still living in Nashville, before I moved back to Los Angeles about six years ago. And I really was just struck by her lyrics. Her voice was soft and moody sounding, and her melodies were great, but her lyrics really impressed me. I’d never heard of her before. Then I was in a record store in L.A. and saw that she had a record out on a subsidiary of universal, I think it was on hip-o, maybe. But obviously she had some major label distribution, and I went, yay, finally. She’s got a chance to sell some records and get better known and things. Next thing I know I read that she’s been dropped by Universal, and now her next record is out on an unknown little indie label, so that’s what spurred the idea for the song. Because I had seen that so often, and I’d been through that myself, to some degree, and seen it happen with a lot of really good artists: where if they don’t sell enough records, they don’t really get a chance. It’s the same old story that you’ve heard a million times. So that’s basically what planted the idea for the song.

We finally got to meet, she lives in L.A., and she had came in, and I recorded a song that was going to go on West, but we had so many songs that we couldn’t put them all on the record. We sort of ran out of time, budget, money, time to record all the songs. But I had a demo of it, she came in and heard the demo, and she was really touched.

I don’t get as chance to see her play very often, but she’s just one of those unusually brilliant songwriters who probably if she had a chance to do something back in the, if she’d been around back in the day, when people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, writers like that were coming out, she would have probably stood a better chance in getting recognition. She definitely has a cult following, that’s for sure. That’s kind of the only way you can do it now anymore, if you’re just starting out. You have to build your own thing like that. I mean, I’m lucky, ‘cause I just barely got in by the skin of my teeth. But if I was just starting out now, I’d have a hard time. I’m lucky I got as far as I did! Just before the door slammed on me, before the industry kind of went to hell and a hand basket.

Time magazine called you America’s best songwriter. How did it affect your career, and how did it affect your psyche?
I’m sure it helped my career to some degree. All those accolades, all the positive press, it always helps. As far as how it affected my psyche, I remember feeling extremely honored, of course, but the thing you have to remember is… I don’t know if they still do it, but they would pick whatever songwriter it was for that year, or that decade. I don’t know exactly, but… Because my first reaction was, wait a minute! What about Bob Dylan, what about John Prine, what about Leonard Cohen? So what I was told was, they’re talking about now, for this specific time period. That made me feel a little more comfortable [laughs]. I felt a little humbled, to say the least. But that’s kind of my nature. I’m always kind of looking out for the other guy.

But I remember talking about it; they had Bob Dylan some other time. I mean all that stuff is a little, I don’t want to say hard to handle, but it’s certainly humbling, when you’ve been playing as long as I have, and things have taken a while to get to that point. And you never forget your beginnings. I don’t have a hard time keeping everything in perspective, you know? I probably have a hard time enjoying the fruits of my labor, and just being comfortable with it, just letting it happen, letting it be.

What’s the story behind the song “Come On,” from West?
That’s one where I was thinking, “Oh no, I don’t know about this.” And actually as it turned out, that was the one song that people went nuts over. Because I just looked at it like a silly little song, it wasn’t exactly like “Drunken Angel.” It wasn’t something that I worked that long on the lyrics or anything [laughs]. It’s sort of a playful look at those, kind of, hard rock songs, almost a parody on those kind of songs. Kind of like a parody of the hair bands of the ‘70s and ‘80s, where the guy’s out front going (makes a caterwauling sound), the whole thing. The irony of it is, of all the songs on West, my attorney, who I’ve been with forever… she’s been with me twenty-something years, and she has great taste, very refined taste, and she heard the album and said, oh that song “Come On” is incredible. And I said, thanks, but what about the song “West”? What about some of these other kind of more refined songs? She said, “Yeah, yeah, they’re great, but ‘Come On’-that’s gonna end up being your anthem, an anthem for women everywhere!” Then the next thing I know I got nominated for a Grammy for that song for best rock vocal and best rock song. That is funny! It just goes to show you, you slave away and write these introspective songs that you spend hours and hours on, and then… I guess it’s just that rock and roll thing, people respond to it.

They’re hard to write, though-those kind of songs-for me. I find it a lot easier to do the more kind of waltzes and slower songs. But I want to learn to write; I’ve always wanted to write songs like The Doors “Light My Fire,” stuff like that.

I’m kind of a late bloomer when it comes to certain bands, but I just discovered Audioslave, the songs on that album [Audioslave] are just amazing! Everybody’s like, that came out so long ago, and I’m like, I missed it!

You’ve said that Little Honey is the most eclectic album you’ve done. How so?
All my albums have had a little bit of this, a little bit of that. This one probably has a wider stretch of material on one album-it has more country stuff, like Car Wheels had, with “Well Well Well,” “Circles and X’s” and “If Wishes Were Horses.” But then it also has r&b stuff like “Tears of Joy,” and it’s got rock and roll stuff too. But I’ve always been an eclectic artist in general. Maybe this album reflects that the best.

It seems like people are responding to this album in a way that they haven’t since the Car Wheels one, and I think that’s because I have more country songs on there. I haven’t done that in awhile-stuff that’s kind of straight ahead country.

I mean, people loved West, the last record, too, but it was a different kind of record; introspective and a little sad and dark, because it was right after my mother died. This record has more up stuff on it. It’s more rock and roll. The Car Wheels record was the one that really defined me, and people have compared all my records to that one ever since then. And I think I’ve come in a big full circle since Car Wheels. First there was Essence, I don’t know who you’d describe that one, but it was kind of different, and it was the first one after Car Wheels, and it kind of freaked people out a little bit. And then there was World Without Tears, and then there was West. People loved those records, but everyone always goes back to the Car Wheels one. That’s always their favorite.

With Little Honey, it’s like I’ve come full circle; I kind of see it as the best of everything, as far as styles go. It’s got blues, country, and rock. I don’t know what goes on in people’s heads all the time, I just make the record I want to make at the time. It’s hard to explain, really.

Over the last three decades, Lucinda Williams' reputation slowly grew to the point that she's now routinely cited as one of the best songwriters of her generation. Yet during that time, the building blocks of her songs have remained essentially the same: love, loss and longing. While her music has run the gamut from rock to country to folk to blues, the emotional tenor of her lyrics has almost always centered on anger, heartbreak or sadness. It seemed that the one emotion Williams' expressive, whiskey-soaked voice couldn't tap into was joy.


So it might surprise fans to learn that Lucinda Williams is officially happy.

"When I made my last album, West, my mother had just passed away and I was coming out of an abusive relationship with a drug addict who had to go back into rehab," Williams explains. "Then I met my fiancée and everything just changed for the better. I'm kind of a late bloomer, but everything in my life right now is the best it's ever been."

While anyone who has followed her career can't help but be happy for her, fans may also worry that the Lucinda Williams they've come to know and love may be a thing of the past. Certainly, her latest album Little Honey is the loosest album Williams has ever made, but it's still as gritty and soulful as ever. While it lacks some of the unity of 1988's Lucinda Williams or 1998's Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, both of which were near-perfect, it's a breath of fresh air from the relentlessly downbeat West. There's a freewheeling duet with Elvis Costello ("Jailhouse Tears"), an ecstatically upbeat roadhouse rocker ("Honey Bee") and even an AC/DC cover ("It's a Long Way to the Top"). Perhaps the biggest surprise is how well it all works. After all, any music fan came name dozens of classic songs that are sad or angry. There hasn't been a great happy rock song since "She Loves You," something that Williams tacitly agrees with when she observes that upbeat tunes are "really hard to write without moving into the mushy sugar-coated place you don't want to go. You have to keep a tiny bit of sarcasm in there. The best songs that do that are classics from people like Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole. It harder to do in this genre because rock ‘n' roll is all about angst and leather and studs."

Still, Williams had no choice but to try. Where most singer-songwriters say fans shouldn't read too much about their own lives into their songs, Williams admits that she's only really good at writing about one subject - herself.

"Bob Dylan is great about writing about people he doesn't know personally," she says. "He can take a story out of the newspaper and write about it, like ‘Hurricane.' For me, it has to be something I can reach out and touch. There has to be a personal connection between me and the person in the song. Not necessarily a personal friend, but at least someone going through something I've experienced myself."

As college students are learning every day in this age of Twitter and Facebook, there are downsides to making your life an open book. For Williams, it means that she's required to dredge up pain from her past every time she steps on stage. To some extent she looks at it philosophically - that's simply the lot of a working musician. But she also sees some emotional benefit to it, explaining, "It's like going back and looking at pages from a diary. We can choose to forgive, but we're not going to forget. You still have those feelings in you. Letting them out can prove to be very therapeutic. You also sing those songs to help other people who might be going through the same stuff."

Williams' personal life isn't the only thing that has changed over the last few years. She has also become a much more prolific writer. Where she had once been known for taking four or more years between albums ("I used to marvel at how I'd meet other songwriters and they'd have 2,000 songs they'd written. I'd have just enough songs to make the one album I was working on."), her last four records have come at a steady clip. She attributes the change to developing more confidence in herself and her music, and that newfound confidence allowed her to go through her old notebooks searching for lost gems. Two of them wound up on Little Honey: "Circles and X's," and "If Wishes Were Horses," both of which were written in the mid-‘80s. The inspiration for her journey through the past struck when she heard Laura Cantrell's version of her song "Letters," which Williams wrote around 1975 and recorded on a demo but never officially released.

Explains Williams, "She got a copy from a mutual friend and did a beautiful, really sweet version of it that made me think ‘Wow, she brought this early song back to life, maybe I should go back and review some of my old stuff.' I've got all these tapes of old little songs, but I never thought they were good enough to do anything with. I wrote the hook for ‘Circles and X's' in 1984 or ‘85 but never finished it. I guess it wasn't ready to be born yet."

Williams adds that part of the reason she was able to give birth to it now is that she's no longer as hard on herself as she once was. It's a strange comment from someone who has long been known in the music industry as a demanding perfectionist.

"I've always had this voice in the back of my head that says ‘I know this is good' but then it never fails that when I'm making a record, I start to question this and that," she says. "That's what the song ‘Fruits of My Labor' [from 2003's World Without Tears] is about. When am I gonna enjoy the fruits of my labor and stop worrying?

"But that's just me. It's not something that's ever going to go away, but I'm working on it. We all have our stuff we have to battle and if that's what it takes for me to write these songs, then so be it. Whatever it takes."

From the false start on the opening rocker "Real Love" to the fade-out of AC/DC cover "It's a Long Way to the Top," anyone familiar with Lucinda Williams may notice something unusual while listening to her new disc.

After years without it, Lucinda Williams seems delighted to be in a stable relationship with a stable guy.

You'll catch yourself smiling a lot -- laughing, even. On balance, it contains some of the most joyful music of her career -- this from a woman with a song "Joy" that rages about the loss of it.

"It basically does reflect my life," she said. "Personally, professionally and creatively, I'm in the best place I've ever been, at least in my adult life."

Williams, 55, smiled like a flustered teenager onstage recently while mentioning her fiance/manager Tom Overby's 50th birthday. She sang the new "Honey Bee" for him, describing the extended sexual metaphor as her favorite song to perform now. "Honey Bee" and "Real Love" are straight-ahead rockers destined to be mainstays in her live set for years.

She goes a long way toward shattering a couple of myths about herself -- that she's a perfectionist who needs years to write, and can't write without personal turmoil as source material.

The new album, "Little Honey," comes less than two years after its predecessor.

"Everyone's been asking me what makes me so prolific," she said, "and the only answer I know is having done it enough times and learning the craft. As I'm getting better, I'm getting more confident. It's just like anything you do. Everyone's different. Bob Dylan was 19 when he started writing his masterpieces and it just blows my mind."

She's always considered herself a late bloomer.

Going deeper behind the energetic rock songs, her disc has material that reflects contentment and maturity without seeming starry-eyed. "Tears of Joy," "Plan to Marry," "Circles and X's" and "Knowing" are songs from a woman who doesn't take love for granted.

On "Little Rock Star," Williams is the mother figure offering advice to a young musician facing familiar traps. One song that's a leftover from time spent with a drug-addict boyfriend, "Jailhouse Tears," is hilarious: a country duet with Elvis Costello acting strung-out and promising he's changed while Williams profanely tells him he's full of it.

Her father Miller Williams, a poet and her daughter's literary mentor, once said that there is a pitch-black well, and all of us stand at its edge. Some fall in, and some don't.

"I loved that image," she said. "It made so much sense to me. And I've seen it happen time and time again ... That's what my writing deals with a lot -- what makes someone stand at the edge and jump in and what makes some of us not."

That's plain in older songs like "Drunken Angel" and "2 Kool 2 Be 4-gotten." Williams seemed like someone who worked best when her life was a mess.

"That's the oldest myth around and I bought into it," she said. "We all did when we were starting out. I don't think I really thought of it on a conscious level. That's just part of being young and going through the muck and mire that you have to go through. I wasn't consciously making myself miserable so I could write songs. Maybe on some subliminal level I was, I don't know. Who knows? I guess I would have to undergo psychiatric evaluation to find out."

She and Overby, a longtime music industry executive, have been together more than three years. They met nearly 15 years apart, the first time at a meet-and-greet reception for Williams in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he lived in the early 1990s.

She was, Overby recalled, the shyest artist he'd ever met. "You got the sense that it was the first time she'd ever done that," he said.

"It probably was," Williams recalled.

Fast-forward to 2005 in Los Angeles, California, where both had settled. They had a mutual friend who wanted to set them up, but before that could happen they met by chance at a hair salon and spent hours talking.

"I was immediately smitten with him," she said. "He was so shy. I thought he didn't like me because he was so shy. That was the last night I drank tequila."

Maybe a little too much. He took her home, put her to bed and left a note with his phone number. She called the next day. On their first date, Williams took Overby to a studio to play all the new songs she'd written.

After years without it, Williams seems relieved and delighted to be in a stable relationship with a stable guy.

"I had to get over my bad-boy thing," she said. "Now I realize that all men have some bad boy. You just have to find it."

Overby mildly protests: "I was not exactly wearing a pocket protector."

For someone who was a big fan of Williams' music before knowing her, it must be pretty amazing for Overby to hear her sing "I found the love I've been looking for" and realize she had written it about him.

Except ...

She didn't.

"Real Love" was actually written about an unrequited crush that Williams had in between the drug-addict boyfriend and Overby. She was ready to toss it away before making "Little Honey," concerned that she would not be able to get into it emotionally.

Overby convinced Williams otherwise, a sign of business acumen and a reminder of a truism about her craft.

"Therein lies the key to good songwriting," she said. "It's irrelevant who the song was written about. If a song can't be universal, then you haven't written a good song."

With a healthy relationship and a creative spurt she calls the most prolific in her career, alt-country's queen of pain and heartbreak sounds sweet—and shockingly upbeat—on her ninth studio album, Little Honey. Here, she gets in touch with her feminine side.

Q: You do a cover of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top" on the new album. Are you a closet headbanger?

A: I was into a lot of the blues-based rock bands like Cream, the early Stones. The punk thing flew right by me, but the metal bands like AC/DC were holding on to that blues stuff. I also got into Tool, Audioslave, Machinehead.

Q: You take brat rockers like Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse to task on "Little Rock Star." Was there a particular inspiration?

A: It's not really about Pete Doherty, but I just kept seeing his face popping up all fucked up when I was writing. Amy Winehouse is terribly disheartening, bless her little disheveled soul. Really, the song had a lot to do with Ryan Adams—he's a friend of mine—before he sobered up.

Q: Do you feel like the weary rock matriarch dispensing advice?

A: I'm 55 years old, and Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde are the only women in my age group who are doing this thing. It's shocking. But I'm in the best place in my whole life on every level. Except I don't look as good as I used to.

The People
Sometimes it’s hard to live in a city and feel comfortable with people all of the time but the people of The Valley are some of the nicest folks I’ve ever met. They remind me of the people I grew up with. They have families and regular jobs and the majority of the people who live in The Valley do so because they were born here and grew up here. I was born and raised in the South and, growing up, often heard stereotyped descriptions of Southerners, as a whole, such as, “People from the South are racist, redneck, backwards, ignorant, Bible-thumping dumbasses” or “You mean, they smoke pot in Arkansas?” I would often find myself explaining to “ignorant yankees” that each Southern state carries with it its own brand and flair, not all Southern accents are the same and not every Southerner has had the same “raisings.”

Like the South, Los Angeles is often stereotyped but, in reality, it’s an extremely diverse, richly cultural city boasting different “towns.” I came out to Los Angeles in the fall of 1984. During the next six years I lived in various neighborhoods including Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Atwater and Burbank. Being the rambling woman that I was back then, I tried out Nashville for a while but, happily, moved back to Los Angeles in 2001. After I returned, I moved around from Burbank to North Hollywood and then to Silver Lake. But when it came to deciding where I wanted to live, if I could live anywhere in Los Angeles, I chose the neighborhood of Studio City, in The Valley.

The Reaction
People will say, “Oh, you live in The Valley?” and roll their eyes. The Valley—devoid of culture, bland, suburban and un-hip. I have found that the best places to live are often places that have not been endorsed by the “counterculture.” The fact is, a lot of people who now live in L.A. were raised in the equivalent of what is commonly referred to as “The Valley,” people who are trying way too hard to forget where they came from. They will never admit to an upbringing in Austin, Minneapolis or Ames, Iowa. They’ll talk about searching out a vegetarian BBQ joint in Silver Lake but won’t talk about the BBQs they used to enjoy in their childhood backyards. They’ll dress in vintage aprons tied around polka-dotted vintage dresses but won’t remember the stains on their mothers’ kitchen aprons. They’ll dye their hair all shades of blue but then speak with disdain of their blue-haired aunt back in Idaho.

Fixtures
Ventura Boulevard: Shopping in The valley is the bomb. I have friends who live in West Hollywood but do all of their shopping in The Valley because it’s so much easier. There is nothing quite like driving down Ventura Boulevard, especially in a yellow El Camino, on a bright sunny day when you’re not in a hurry.

Waitresses who like their jobs: These gals aren’t paying their way through art school and do not talk about their boyfriend’s band while you’re trying to read the menu and then insist on handing you a demo tape while you’re writing the check.

Valley girls: Yes, they really do exist and they’re proud of it. If you look closely you can see them driving down Ventura Boulevard, brown-skinned, top down, radio blasting. Check out Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’’’ and Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer.”

Amazing cars: You have never seen lowriders like the ones you see in The Valley. And the deeper you venture into The Valley, the cooler cars you will see. Cool cars are an important part of the L.A. culture and The Valley represents cool cars, big time.

The heat in the summer: Love it. I’m from the South. Some people complain because the temperature in The Valley is always about ten degrees warmer than it is on the west side. Big damn deal. Turn on the AC,jump in the pool, whatever! Trust me, it’s worth the compromise.

Driveways: I will never again live where I have to compete for parking on the street.

Cheaper rent: Do you want to have to park on the street and pay more rent?

NOHO: Acronym for North Hollywood. Come on, you’ve gotta love it. Get in while the rents are still cheap.

Restaurants
The Valley is completely underrated, as far as restaurants go. A few of my favorites…

Don Cuco’s: My favorite Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood. It’s been there for probably 50 years. The same waiters have worked there for about as long. Where else can I go for a late-night dinner at 10:45 p.m., talk politics, have a conversation about Vicki Carr and sing along to “Besame, Besame, Mucho”? And on your birthday, they bring you flan, serenade you, plop a big sombrero on your head, snap a Polaroid and give it to you to take home. I have celebrated three birthdays there, so far, and have the Polaroids to prove it.

The Eclectic Café: Great wine list, Dexter Gordon in the background and local art on the walls. I have become fast friends with the manager and some of the fun, feisty girls who work there.

The Firefly: Late-night menu, buzzing, neighborhood bar, no sign on the door, and on the weekends you’ll see dressed-up, mini-skirted girls and dressed-up Euro guys on dates, checking out the girls (you have to see through all of that and have a sense of humor, which is generally a good rule of thumb to follow if you’re going to live in Los Angeles).

The Sportsman’s Lodge: Fifty-year-old Sherman Oaks institution. This is where you will find tour busses parked in the expansive parking lot and maybe run into Dwight Yoakam’s tour manager at the poolside bar.

“Eeeww, you live in The Valley?” Yep!

Lucinda Williams released her ninth studio album, Little Honey, on Lost Highway Records. Check out the new track, “Wishes Were Horses,” on this issue’s CD [Relix, Nov '08] .

In order for Lucinda Williams to write a song, the conditions have to be perfect. "Nobody can be around," she says. "I like to be totally alone. I get out my guitar, and I spread all of my notes across the kitchen table." In early 2005, being alone wasn't a problem. Her love life was in a shambles after a long-term relationship she describes as "really destructive and really difficult" came to an end. "Then I had this brief, uneventful rock & roll fling — just oil for the motor," she says. Her mother had passed away, leading her to cancel dates from a world tour behind her seventh album, World Without Tears.

Hunkering down in total solitude, Williams entered the most prolific period of her life — a blast of creativity during which she accumulated more than 20 songs. Cuts like the tender eulogy "Mama You Sweet" and "Unsuffer Me" (sample lyric: "My joy is dead") ended up on West, the somber, soul-baring collection that Williams released in 2007. But she also wrote plenty of songs that weren't as grim. Some of the more upbeat, rocking tracks — "Real Love," "Circles and X's" and the hilarious "Jailhouse Tears," on which she duets with Elvis Costello — form the core of her righteous and raw new disc, Little Honey.

On a chilly night in August, Williams is sitting at the kitchen table of her new home in the hilly L.A. neighborhood of Studio City. Her blue fingernails match her Doors T-shirt, and she's sipping a glass of red wine. Seated beside her is the reason her mood lately has matched the upbeat vibe of the new record: her fiance, Tom Overby. Unlike basically every man she's been in a relationship with, Overby isn't a musician. "That last unhappy relationship was the straw that broke the camel's back," she says, looking into Overby's eyes. "I said, 'That's it! I'm done with the fuckin' games and the rock & roll bullshit. I'm done with the bad boys!' "

Of all places, the couple met in a Hollywood hair salon, where Williams was treating a girlfriend to some new hair extensions. "We were the last ones there," she says. "Tom dropped in to get his hair cut, and he introduced himself to me. I was attracted to him right away — that sweet smile, those twinkly eyes, that gold tooth." After a night on the town, hitting the Hollywood spot Velvet Margarita and the singer-songwriter haven the Hotel Café, Williams was smitten. Overby, who has worked as an A&R director and an executive at Best Buy, drove Williams home. "The tequila went to my head," Williams says. "I plopped into bed and woke up hoping that there was a note from him. And there was."

Initially, Williams had doubts about Overby. His low-key demeanor troubled her, causing Williams to fear that a relationship without rock & roll turmoil might negatively affect her art. "To be honest, it was a big test for me after I got involved with Tom and we moved in together," she says. "I said to myself, 'Am I still going to be able to write songs? Am I still going to get inspiration? Will that part of me continue to grow and be alive?' Because if that part of me dies, then I die."

Williams conquered her doubts. "I actually started writing positive love songs," she says, citing Little Honey tracks like "Tears of Joy" and "Plan to Marry" — both inspired by Overby. On "Honey Bee," Williams growls, "I'm so glad you stung me/Now I've got your honey/All over my tummy." On the slow-burning blues number "Tears of Joy," she sings, "You give my life meaning, that's why I wear your ring/And why I'm crying tears of joy." It's a happiness that she's been searching for since her 1998 breakthrough, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, when she famously declared, "You took my joy and I want it back."

"I've finally found the right relationship where I can blossom as a writer and grow with somebody and be happy," she says. "I had to wait until I was in my 50s, but, you know, I'm a late bloomer anyway." Overby, who is 50, is a calming influence on Williams, who no longer drinks hard alcohol. "I still like to go out and drink, but now it's just red wine." And though her life as a drifter has been well documented in her lyrics, her new home — which she calls her first "star house" — is a major step toward stability. Her future husband, who shares Williams' deep knowledge of traditional music, also took the reins of her career, shortly before the 2007 death of Williams' longtime manager, Frank Callari. "He's full of great ideas," says Williams.

Last year, Overby arranged a series of concerts in New York and L.A. in which Williams performed her classic albums — 1988's Lucinda Williams, 1992's Sweet Old World, 1998's Car Wheels, 2001's Essence and 2003's World Without Tears — in their entirety. He also encouraged Williams to record an EP of protest songs, titled Lu in '08 (to be released digitally on October 28th), which includes a topical new song, "Bone of Contention," in addition to live versions of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" and Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth." "I'm a yellow-dog Democrat," Williams says, "which is a Southern expression that means you always vote Democrat. I love this country, and I'm concerned that people aren't going to be looking at the issues. Like, 'I'm gonna vote for the cute babe who hunts.' "

In late August, Williams flies up to Seattle with her band for the annual Bumbershoot festival. Performing on an outdoor stage in the shadow of the Space Needle, she reminds thousands of fans to "get out there and vote." On a warm late-summer afternoon, Williams hides her eyes under the brim of a black fedora. Despite her crippling fear of crowds, which she's never been able to shed (her nervousness causes her to drop lines, so she performs with lyrics propped on a music stand), she seems confident and happy. Backed by her heavy-hitting band, Buick 6, Williams kicks into "Real Love," Little Honey's opening track. "I found the love I've been looking for/It's a real love, it's a real love," she sings, shooting smiles into the wings, where Overby stands. Eventually, he breaks his managerial pose — arms folded, all business — to crack a smile and expose his gold tooth.

The irony is that Williams didn't even write "Real Love" about Overby — but she sings it to him now. "I got that song out of that fling before I met Tom," she says at her kitchen table. "I mean, a lot of the guys I've been with, if they're rock & roll musicians, there ends up being a little competition — they feel threatened. But rather than feeling threatened by my strength, Tom is inspired by it, because he's a real man. He gives me confidence, and confidence is everything."

“…LITTLE HONEY is Lucinda Williams at her best.”  Rating: 92 Phenomenal - Paste Magazine

“…it's her most rocked-out set to date, and also her happiest.” - Philadelphia Inquirer

“Lucinda Williams checks in with her most electrifying new release since ‘Car Wheels on A Gravel Road’…” - Arizona Republic

“You'll catch yourself smiling a lot — laughing, even. On balance, it contains some of the most joyful music of her career…” - Associated Press

On October 28, two weeks after the release of Little Honey, Williams will release a politically-charged, digital only, four-song Live EP titled Lu in 08. The EP will feature three covers and one Williams original. The tracks will be Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” Bob Dylan’s “Masters Of War,” Thievery Corporation/Flaming Lips collaboration “Marching The Hate Machines” and the unreleased “Bone Of Contention.” The three covers were recorded live in Greensboro, NC in September 2007 and “Bone Of Contention” in Milwaukee, WI of July 2008.

After nearly three decades of writing songs about life's dead ends and the men who've done her wrong, Lucinda Williams has finally released a record that critics have deemed her "happy album."

Wouldn't you know it, though, she's not actually happy about it being called that.

"Yes, I'm in a great relationship and in a great place in my life," Williams said, "but I still have plenty of things to be miserable or upset or disturbed about. It's not like I don't have bad days anymore."

Talking by phone from the road last week, Williams laughed as she pointed out that there's also plenty of misery on "Little Honey," the new disc, which she'll perform in its entirety Thursday at First Avenue (for a live webcast on LucindaWilliams.com) before returning for a regular show Nov. 5.

"Look at the song 'Jailhouse Tears,'" she said, referring to a duet with Elvis Costello. "It's written about a drug addict, alcoholic guy. That's not exactly a happy song. I've had people ask me, 'Are you still going to be able to write interesting songs?' And I'm like, 'Come on!' When was the last time one person fulfilled another person's every need?"

Williams' fiancé, Tom Overby -- who's from the Twin Cities -- is indeed filling many a role in her life and career. A former Best Buy music executive, Overby is co-producer of the new album and also her manager now. They met at a hair salon in Hollywood about four years ago.

Overby had gone to work for record distributor Fontana in Los Angeles, where Louisiana-bred Williams, 55, has lived for about a decade. He went to work for her following the death of her longtime manager, Frank Callari, last October.

Said Overby, "I told her I'd do it on two conditions: No. 1, if it all affects the two of us, she'd find somebody else. And No. 2, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it all the way and manage other artists, too. She said, 'Absolutely. Let's go.'"

As they handed off the phone to each other, both Overby and Williams laughed over the fact that most listeners and critics have surmised that he's the "soul connection" she refers to in the new album's first single, "Real Love," currently in heavy rotation at the Current (89.3 FM). Some of the song's gushing lyrics include "I've found the love that I've been looking for" and "Come on baby, we really got something."

"I hate to burst everybody's bubble, but 'Real Love' was actually written before I met Tom," the singer said. "Sometimes you can just meet someone somewhere one night and go home and write a song like that, if you have enough fantasy in your head."

Referring to another new song with a blissful tinge, "Knowing," Williams said, "I think it's interesting that I wrote them right before I met Tom. It's almost what I wish was happening. It was kind of a burst of fantasy. It was something I was feeling at the time, but looking back on it, it was more like a longing."

• • •

She's right, though, that plenty of the songs on "Little Honey" feature the old, downbeat Williams that we've grown to love -- and who's earned three Grammy Awards and widespread critical praise over a quarter-century.

In addition to "Jailhouse Tears," there's "Plan to Marry," a poetic epic about love being a weapon against everything else, and "Circles and X's," about a romance growing distant.

"Circles and X's" is one of two tunes on the record that date back 15 to 20 years. The other, "If Wishes Were Horses," is another lament with the refrain, "If wishes were horses, I'd have a ranch." Williams remembered the track being around during her first marriage, a brief one in the mid-'80s with former Long Ryders drummer Greg Sowders.

"I don't know why, but for some reason when I was demo-ing songs and in that writing surge, I went back to those songs," she recalled. "When I really get into that [writing] mode, I get out this giant folder I have with bits and pieces of songs I've had for 20, 25 years. I just dump it out and start going through years and years of song ideas. Who knows? I might finish an old song I never finished, which is what happened."

Many of the other songs on "Little Honey" were written at the same time as the tracks on Williams' last album, 2007's "West." One of the best but probably the most sullen of Williams' nine records, "West" reflected on the death of her mother and the end of another relationship.

"I really wanted to get those songs [on 'West'] out and put them all behind me, because I didn't know if I'd be able to get behind these songs emotionally in another year's time," she recalled.

After "West," Williams put together a new touring band, dubbed the Buick 6, which includes her former guitar player Doug Pettibone plus guys who've played with the Eels and Tracy Chapman. The band added more of a rousing spirit to the new disc. Williams added a couple of freshly written tunes to the mix when it came time to record last winter, all leading to the disc's more uptempo vibe.

Among the newest songs is "Little Rock Star," in which Williams talks to an unnamed singer who's dead-set on self-destruction. "Will you ever know happiness, Little Rock Star?" she sings, "or is your death wish stronger than you?"

Williams said the song isn't about anyone specific but came from "a string of those kinds of artists" written about in the tabloids, especially British singers Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty.

"You could go all the way back to Kurt Cobain, or way back to Jim Morrison, but I was thinking more in terms of the contemporary ones," she said. "Amy Winehouse, I think she's so talented, and everything you read about her is just so dreadful and sad. And I knew Ryan Adams in his heyday, too. I'd been in there with all that big partying. I can see how you can go one way or the other. It is kind of coming from a long place saying, 'I do understand how you can slip into that downward spiral.'"

In the end, Williams did confirm that things are on the upswing in her own life. In addition to romantic contentment, she also admitted that -- after years of bumping heads and making waves in the music industry, especially around the time of her landmark 1997 album "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" -- she now feels satisfied in her career, too.

"I made sure a long time ago that everybody knew I was a stubborn artist and hard-headed," she said. "I knew that, deep down inside, I had the talent to back it up. You have to know that. So I made sure they understood I was going to do what I want to do, or I'll just walk.

"It probably made things happen a lot slower. I probably would have been famous a lot sooner. But I think it paid off in the long run."

FULL Q&A

Here's a condensed transcript of last week's interview with Lucinda Williams. It happened on a day off from touring, while she was hanging out with her fiance and manager, Tom Overby, a Twin Cities native and former Best Buy exec.


Q You're playing two shows here at First Ave, but they're two weeks apart. Any explanation for that?

A I'm not sure, really. I guess it's because we've got a break in between those two shows. The first one's near the end of the first leg, and then we have like 10 days off. So Tom and I are going to hang out there in Minneapolis, where his family and friends are. The other guys in our crew will fly home.


Q Have you been coming here more because of Tom?

A I've always loved playing there, but we haven't really gotten to hang out there much because we've been so busy. I met with his parents when we played the zoo this last time, this summer. We had a day off then and we had lunch with them.


Q How did you and Tom meet?

A We met when I was on tour for the "Sweet Old World" album, which would've been '91 or '92. He was working for Best Buy in Minneapolis. He remembers it, but I don't. It was some kind of a meet-and-greet. It was one of those, "Hey, how ya doing?"

Flash forward 15-some years later. I moved back to L.A. Tom had moved to L.A. to go to work for Fontana [a record distribution company]. You're gonna laugh at this: We re-met at a hair salon in Hollywood. I was there with a friend, and they were getting ready to close. The guy working at the salon is this real cool rock 'n' roll kind of guy who I had met at the Whiskey seeing Hank III, and he said he'd like to cut my hair. Tom had been having this guy cut his hair, too. Tom thinks the guy maybe set us up. I was there with my friend Shyla, who had known Tom when she worked at Giant. There was nobody else in there, and Tom walks in. He introduces himself.

We also had a mutual friend in Minneapolis, Bonnie Brown, formerly Bonnie Butler. She was a friend of mine from the early '90s when we first starting playing at First Ave. She was married to Danny Murphy of Soul Asylum at the time.


Q Any firm wedding plans yet?

A No. We've been so busy with everything. I was recording demos for "West" when we first got together, and it's been a whirlwind of activity since then.


Q You have been busy lately. This record is only coming a year after the last one, whereas it took you six years to put out "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road." What's different about your process now vs. back then?

A You know, I was looking back on my schedule just recently. There was a year between when my mother passed away, which was March of 2004, and it was almost exactly a year later when Tom and I met. During that year is when I wrote all these songs. It kind of make sense when you look at it that way: My mother had passed away, and I was coming out of this other relationship with a guy who was having drug and alcohol problems, and he went to rehab. That was all happening around same time. The beginning of 2004 was pretty rough.

Every song that's on "West" and a majority of songs on "Little Honey" were written in that period. Only a few came up a little later. So "Little Honey" is almost like "West, Vol. 2."

I really wanted to get those songs out [on "West"] and put them all behind me, because I didn't know if I'd be able to get behind those songs emotionally in another year's time.


Q How did Tom go from being your beau to being your manager?

A Tom brought a lot to the table because he had been working in the music arena for so long. I was still working with my old manager Frank Callari when we met, but Frank passed away about a year ago. Tom was ready for a career change, so when Frank passed away, he was able to step in.


Q Any worries of mixing business with pleasure?

A No. We're just one of those couples who can do it. I know it's unusual. A lot of people were concerned about that, like my attorney, Rosemary Carroll, who's been with me since before the Rough Trade album [1988's "Lucinda Williams"], and tour manager Frank Riley.

Tom had to pass the muster, as they say. They both loved him after they started meeting with him, though. He was able to show them he knew what he was doing. He brings a lot to the table creatively.


Q Everyone assumes the genuinely gushing new songs like "Real Love" and "Tears of Joy" were inspired by your current relationship. Is that true?

A I hate to burst everybody's bubble on that. "Real Love" was actually written before I met Tom. That and "Knowing." Everybody thinks it's about him, but it was sort of a little temporary thing that occurred. Sometimes you can meet someone somewhere one night and go home and write a song like that, if you have enough fantasy in your head.

I think it's interesting that I wrote them write before I met Tom. It's almost what I wish was happening, so it's more like that. It was kind of a burst of fantasy. It was something I was feeling at the time, but looking back on it, it was more like a longing. It was kind of a schoolgirl crush.


Q Everyone's calling this your "happy album," as if you've never written a happy song before. How do you feel about that?

A Yeah, I don't really buy that. Yes, I'm in a great relationship and in a great place in my life, but I still have plenty of things to be miserable or upset or disturbed about. It's not like I don't have bad days anymore, or don't have things that bum me out.

I've always had ups and downs. The difference now is I have a more committed thing and people can tell we're like a real couple, it's a real thing.

I've had people ask me, "Are you still going to be able to write interesting songs," and I'm like, "Come on!" When was the last time one person fulfilled another person's every need. Go back and listen to my song "Rescue," it's true. That's a lifetime song for me. Love can't rescue you from everything.

Look at the [new] song "Jailhouse Tears," it's written about a drug-addict, alcoholic guy. That's not exactly a happy song. And "Circles and X's" and "If Wishes Were Horses," those were written like 20 years ago.


Q I wanted to ask about that. How do these songs come back after all this time and make it onto a record?

A I don't know why, but for some reason when I was demo-ing songs and in that writing surge, I went back to those songs. I keep everything until I finish it. When I really get into that [writing] mode, I get out this giant folder I have with bits and pieces of songs I've for 20, 25 years. I just dump it out and start going through years and years of song ideas. Who knows? I might finish an old song I never finished, which is what happened.

"If Wishes Were Horses" was pretty much done, but I always thought it was kind of too simple. But I got re-inspired.


Q One of the reasons "Little Rock Star" is so effective is because it's not judgmental. Was that a conscious thing?

A To me, it goes back to the song "Drunken Angel," which was also written about a musician who led a pretty self-destructive life, Blaze Foley [from Austin, Texas], who was eventually shot in an argument. I didn't know him real well. Around that same time, Townes Van Zandt died, who was Blaze's hero. Some people would say Blaze tried to keep up with Townes, which no one could ever do.

When I wrote that song, I didn't want it to be judgmental. Same thing with "Lake Charles," about another person who was self-destructive like that, another wild and woolly character.

I had been reading in the paper a lot about Amy Winehouse. There had been a string of those kind of artists. Now, that's all you read about in press. It's not just one thing -- Pete Doherty, he was just one of several I read about like that. But you could go all the way back to Kurt Cobain, or way back to Jim Morrison. But I was thinking more in terms of the contemporary ones.

Amy Winehouse, I think she's so talented, and everything you read about her is just so dreadful and sad. And I knew Ryan Adams in his heyday, too. And I'd been in there with all that big partying. I can see how you can go one way or the other. It is kind of coming from a long place saying, I do understand how you can slip into that downward spiral.


Q "Little Rock Star" and another song, "Rarity," are also about fame and surviving the music biz. Are you content on those fronts?

A I'm happy, yeah. There's not one great place to be. Once you get to a certain point, it's like that old spiritual adage. When I was younger, I just thought I'd be happy if I didn't have to work a day job. Then it becomes something else: If I get a record deal. Then you get a record deal, and it's something else. It's like anything else in life.

Tom and I just bought a house. Thank God this recession hasn't affected us yet. But I didn't grow up with much. My dad [poet Miller Williams] was a college professor. He has a new book that just came out. I love the title: "Time and the Tilting Earth."

I didn't want to make a video when everybody else was making videos. I didn't want to sell out. I was horrified at that. Certain things now, though, I'll say, "What the hell?"

Over the years, I've gotten more confident. I'm not so worried about fans thinking I've sold out if I make a video or, God forbid, if I get on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Finding love, finding fame

Although Williams is generally known as an album-oriented artist, her singles receive significant airplay on satellite radio and progressive rock stations. Her current single, "Real Love," has reached No. 22 on Billboard's Triple-A (adult album alternative) chart.

Williams' ninth studio album, "Little Honey," has two key themes. One is about the importance of finding true love. The other is about rock 'n' roll stardom. "Little Rock Star" is an empathetic look at self-destructive artists, while "Rarity" examines insidious pitfalls of the music industry. The album closes with a cover of AC/DC's ode to touring, "It's a Long Way to the Top."

"I wasn't consciously thinking of the connection," Williams said while on the road in Albany, N.Y. "Those songs just sort of stumbled together like that. Tom [Overby, co-producer of 'Little Honey'] came up with the idea of trying a cover of 'Long Way to the Top,' and he actually pointed out that similarity, that thread running through."

On Oct. 28, Williams will release "Lu in '08," a digital-only EP consisting of four protest songs, including a cover of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War."

The songs' subject matter, the EP's title and the timing of the release are all intended to influence fans' behavior when they go to the polls on Nov. 4. "I do want to affect people's thinking, but most of the time I feel like I'm preaching to the choir," Williams said. "When I go out and play live, I don't know how many people in the audience are Republicans. I would imagine very few."

LUCINDA WILLIAMS
WITH BUICK 6
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday
Where: Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine
Tickets: $35
Phone: (312) 559-1212

Lucinda Williams is known for her brokenhearted country rock songs. She's recorded songs about suicide, one-night stands and changing the locks after a breakup. Her album, "Little Honey," due out Tuesday, finds the 55-year-old singer-songwriter in a happier mood. She was engaged in 2006, and after years of personal turmoil involving the death of her mother and bad relationships, she says she's in "a good place." But is happiness good for her art?

The opening track sets the new album's more joyful tone. "Real Love," an upbeat rock number, features the lyrics "I found the love I've been looking for." On another song, the optimistic "Plan to Marry," she sings, "Keep on believing in love." Ms. Williams says she didn't set out to write a "happy record" and that the album just shows her current outlook on life. "I've been through a lot of hell and I've come full circle and lived to tell about it," she says. "The album represents that. It's sort of a celebration in a way."

She says she wrote many of the songs on the album when she was "between houses" and living in a motel in Burbank, Calif. She would wake up, make coffee and sit at a table to write. Lyrics usually come to her first, and, guitar in hand, she would find music to match. Sometimes an idea would pop into her head when she was at dinner with friends and she'd scribble something on a napkin. She keeps a folder with partially formed song ideas.

Ms. Williams says she's inspired by seeing strangers and imagining their stories. She says her father, a literature professor, taught her at an early age about the importance of empathy and she's used it in her writing.

Not all the songs on "Little Honey," are blissful. "Jailhouse Tears," a duet with Elvis Costello, is about a couple separated by prison bars. But Ms. Williams says happy songs present more of a challenge than mournful ones. "It's harder to write a song about joy because of the tendency to possibly get too flowery, too mushy, too sugar-coated," she says.

Do artists need pain to create great art? Tom Overby, Ms. Williams's fiancé and manager, says, "Any artist worth their salt would say 'I'm an artist because I'm an artist, I'm not an artist because I'm suffering.'" In any case, Ms. Williams says she's never happy "100% of the time" and is always able to draw on her past. "There's this well, with all these memories stuffed in there from my childhood," she says. "And I can just reach in there and pull something out whenever I want to write and there it is."

Several of the happiest songs on "Little Honey," including "Real Love," were actually written before Ms. Williams met Mr. Overby, who co-produced the new record. She played "Real Love" for Mr. Overby one of the first times they met. "Fantasy helps a lot when you're writing," says Ms. Williams.

Whatever the subject matter, Lucinda Williams’ music has always dripped with the feel of the old, rural Deep South, but as I talk to her before the release of her 10th record, Little Honey (out Oct. 14), she’s at her home in Los Angeles, having just finished a conversation with online music portal iMeem about her 10 favorite protest songs. The times, they are a-changin'.

Paste: So, what was number one?
Lucinda Williams: “Masters of War.” That’s one of the songs on the list that I still do. We’re releasing a digital-only EP of protest songs that I recorded live in the past year while we were out on the road. I didn’t record them on purpose to put them out, but they turned out so good that we’re releasing them all. There’re four of them. One of them I wrote; it’s a new one, called “Bone of Contention.” It’s a pretty angry one. I recorded it in the studio, but I decided I didn’t want to put it on [Little Honey]. I didn’t quite like the version we recorded. But we were playing at Summerfest, and I went out for the encore and just blasted out an acoustic version of it. It really went over well, so we captured it on tape. And then another show, for an encore, we did “Masters of War,” “For What It’s Worth” and “Marching the Hate Machine,” and those apparently came out really good, too. We’re having them mixed and everything, so we’re going to release them during this very crucial time.

Paste: Had you written very much in the way of protest songs before?
Williams: You know, I haven’t. I’ve found protest songs or topical songs to be the most challenging types of songs for me. I find myself having a hard time not sounding either to in-your-face angry or too sugar-coated sappy, like “OK, everybody get together.” It’s just so hard to do.

Paste: I haven’t heard “Bone of Contention” yet. Do you think you got that balance between the two?
Williams: I think I got it down, you know? Yeah. It’s kind of written a kind of a blues, almost like ZZ-Top-ish, or even like Tony Joe White—you know that sort of swampy, bluesy thing that he does? Almost like [singing]: “You’re a bone of contention. You’re a bone of contention.”

Paste: Nice. When is that coming out?
Williams: That’s coming out, um, in October, two weeks after the release of the album [Oct 14].

Paste: Does the EP have a name?
Williams: Lu in’08, and it’ll have “Bone of Contention,” “Masters of War”-- which, of course, is Dylan-- the Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth,” and “Marching the Hate Machine” off the Thievery Corporation album. The lyrics were written by Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips. Really cool song.

Paste: On almost every one of your previous records, with maybe the possible exception of Car Wheels, you sort of ease into each album with a softer song. On Little Honey, you blast into “Real Love,” one of your hardest rockers ever. Why’d you choose that one to lead it all off?
Williams: Well, it just kind of sets the tone of how I’m feeling right now in my private life and how I connect to the album and the album connects to me, although ironically enough, the majority of the songs on this new record were ones that didn’t end up on West. So I didn’t just write those. I thought I was going to put them on West, because I just wanted to get them out there and move on. But I wasn’t sure how they were going to work on a new album, like if I was going to be able to get into them, because I had written them like, a couple of years before. But I feel like we were able to breathe a new life into them with a new band, and having gone out and played some of the songs and tested them out on the road. So they seem like they were all just written for this record, even though a couple of them are really old. “If Wishes Were Horses” and “Circles and X’s” were first conceived, believe it or not, back in the mid-’80s. So those songs are about 20 years old.

Paste: Yeah, “If Wishes Were Horses” seems like it could have been on Sweet Old World or Car Wheels.
Williams: Yeah, actually. And it was just kind of sitting around for a long time, and I never really thought it would ever see the light of day. It’s just one of those early songs that I didn’t really think was good enough, I guess. Sometimes that happens with early songs that you like.

Paste: That’s funny, it’s actually one of my favorites on the album.
Williams: That’s what somebody else has said. It’s so funny. It just shows you how sometimes we can underestimate. We can get in our own way, because Hal Willner told me that too, when we were cutting the songs for West. The funny thing is when I talk about Little Honey, I have to go back and talk about West because the songs on Little Honey were songs that were going to be on West, because we had about 24 or 25 songs to pick from when we were putting the songs for West together, so the ones that didn’t end up going on West seemed a bit better together as a separate album. And we were going to try to put out a double album of West, so we could put them all out, because I wanted to get them all out then. I said, “I’m not going to want to relive these songs a year and a half down the road,” but we weren’t able to do that. So one group of songs ended up being West and then the other group of songs ended up being Little Honey, with the addition of some new songs that I’ve written. The later songs that are on Little Honey are “Honey Bee,” “Tears Of Joy,” “Little Rock Star” and “Plan To Marry.”

Paste: So “Real Love” was written for West?
Williams: “Real Love” was actually written for West. And I was just in a writing mode, and we were in the studio demoing. We went in with about 10 songs and just kept writing new songs. This was when I was just doing the demos, with my old band—[Taras] Prodaniuk, [Jim] Christie and Doug Pettibone. So we were just in there putting the songs down, just the four of us, and during the process is when I started coming up with all these other songs, like “Knowing” and “Rarity.” And I went back, and we discovered these really early, early songs, “If Wishes Were Horses” and “Circles and X’s.” I don’t know why but I just-- sometimes I when I get really into the writing mode, I’ll go and look, because I keep everything. I don’t throw anything away. I have all my old notes. Anything that wasn’t really finished, I keep around. So I went back and looked at those few songs, and, you know, I’ve been thinking for a while about revisiting really early material, just to see if there was anything there that might be worth saving. It’s been on my mind for a while, so those ended up being part of the West demos. And that song “Well Well Well,” it goes back a ways too. It was actually written for Sweet Old World, but didn’t end up on Sweet Old World. That was in 1991, so I’ve got an early, early version of “Well Well Well” on a cassette tape somewhere. All this stuff has been surfacing lately, reel-to-reel tape and old demos.

Paste: Well, it’s a very eclectic record. You go right at the beginning from the swampy rock to honky-tonk. And then, it just goes all over the place. Is that because you were kind of pulling songs from these different eras of your life?
Williams: Yeah, it probably is. And I was actually a little worried about whether it was all going to fit together, but Tom [Overby] and Eric [Liljestrand] have been assuring me, “Yes, it’s going to work, because that’s the nature of what you do. It’s real eclectic.” I’ve always done a little bit of that on my albums, but maybe not as much as I’ve done on this album. Even on Essence, I had “Get Right With God.” So there’s always been one or two that would sort of stick out. I’ve always kind of worried about that, though. I always worry about, “OK, are all these songs going to fit together?’ Like when we did “Little Rock Star,” I was concerned about that, because it’s so big, you know? With the horns and the harmonies and vocals, which I love, but I was worried about—is it going to overshadow some of the other songs? Oh my God! A mouse just ran out from the pantry!

Paste: Oh no! Yikes!
Williams: Sorry. I don’t know how they fly in and out, underneath doors. That’s amazing! Sorry, I didn’t mean to change the subject. I had seen this mouse, I could see it through the pantry screen door, and I just wasn’t going to open the door, and just now I saw the mouse run out. We knew we had some, or maybe one, I don’t know. I hope it’s just one, because I saw the tell-tale signs.

Paste: So do you feel settled then, to your life in LA there now?
Williams: Yeah. I love it here. We bought a house in Studio City up in the hills. And we share this house with all kinds of bugs and spiders—

Paste: And rodents—
Williams: —and lizards, because we have trees and all these plants everywhere, every plant imaginable. And the house backs up to this whole woodsy area, and yet we’re right in the middle of the city.

Paste: That’s fantastic. Did you miss Nashville much?
Williams: No, not at all. I feel much more comfortable out here.

Paste: Well, the album seems a lot happier in some ways. I know there are definitely places where it alternates between joy and sorrow, but do you feel like you’ve got your “joy” back?
Williams: Yeah, definitely. Even though some of the songs were written before I met [boyfriend/manager] Tom [Overby], so some of them are carried over from my life before Tom. But I still think, because of the nature of the band, of working together and everything… Like, “Real Love” was written before Tom, but it has this happy feeling to it. “Jailhouse Tears” was written about this other situation, obviously before Tom, but I think having Elvis Costello on it, it almost has sort of a wryness to it. So even the darker songs are not as much about me as they are about other people or surroundings, like looking at another situation, like “Rarity” or “Little Rock Star.” So it’s not as much that darker, introspective scene, the way West was. And that was a great album too, but it was just a different. I think I was just ready for this, and everybody else was, too. It just went in this direction and all the pieces fell together. We had a great team of people working in the studio with us. Like I said, Eric, the engineer and co-producer, worked with me on West. So we got to know each other then and worked really well together. Hal Willner was the co-producer with me. And then Tom was kind of the unofficial executive producer. And he brought a lot to the table, so when we went to do this record, it was obvious to everyone that we didn’t need another outside producer. We could just do it with Tom and Eric and me. Because Tom worked for so many years doing A&R and marketing, and doing some producing when he was working for Universal Music Group. So he understands the whole other side of things—the creative end of it and how all the other stuff works to. So he’s really good at sequencing songs and looking at the big picture and conceptualizing and coming up with ideas and all that.

So as we went along doing this record—I mean, I questioned a lot of things, as I always do, ’cause I get kind of nervous with the whole process of recording, you know. So there were some things that I thought, “OK, I don’t know about this.” Like the AC/DC song, which was Tom’s idea, but now I love it. But I was worried about, “Should we put it on the record? I don’t know. What are people going to think?” But everybody loved it. I’m excited now about making the next record because we’ve gone through all the pitfalls now of getting to know each other in the studio. And I’ve learned to trust him, and that’s just invaluable when you’re going to make a record. His ideas have proven to be great ideas. He’s proven himself over and over again. And that’s a thrill for me because now I know that if he has an idea, we’ll talk about it, but I’ll be more likely to go “OK, if that’s what you think, let’s go ahead with this,” instead of being afraid to try different things. But yeah, it was his idea to try the AC/DC cover, and stick that on at the end, ’cause he thought we needed another really good rock song—kind of like book ends.

Paste: Well, you’ve said before that you’re “at your best as a song-writer when you’re kind of feeling sad or depressed.” Have you surprised yourself writing these more upbeat, uplifting songs, and they’re turning out good?
Williams: No, I think that quote got taken out of context. I think what I was trying to say was—whatever the pain that I’ve been going through will provide material for a song. But when I sit down, when I want to write, I tend to need to be in a state of well-being, where I’m feeling like I can focus, and I’ve got the time to sit down and apply myself. But not when I’m actually in that state of morose anxiety or whatever. I’m not going to sit down and write when I’m like that. I might have ideas in mind, and I’m always writing, in terms of getting ideas and things popping into my head. I might be sitting talking with someone, and I might go “Hey, that’s a cool line!” And I’ll write it down and I’ll save everything. I just keep all this stuff in a folder, ’cause I’m not real disciplined, as a writer. I just kind of go with the flow of it. When I’m in a certain kind of mood, I might just work on a piece of something that pops into my head or I might go get my folder and look at some notes that I’ve written down, because usually I have about three or four things that I’m working on at once. But I have to be in a certain state in my head and have the privacy I need to absolutely sit down and apply myself.

But we’re always going to have personal suffering. That’s never going to go away. When your mother dies, you’re going to have personal suffering. When your father dies, if a close friend dies, your dog dies, your house burns down—we can’t control all of these things. So just because you meet the right person in your life and you buy a house and settle down, that doesn’t mean that your suffering is going to go away. So, there’s always going to be plenty of suffering around to draw on, to write about. Not to mention the state of the world around us. I mean, you know, if you can’t write a happy love song, then write a protest song, you know? I’m never going to quit writing, no matter whether I’m sad, depressed, anxious, happy, whatever. Because really the songs come from a different place anyway. I mean, somebody sitting there fat and comfortable, so what? They’re fat and comfortable. Does that mean the person can’t write a good song? I don’t know. It’s up to that person. Certain artists will put out a couple of good albums and then everybody says, “Oh, they haven’t put a good album out since that one.” And “What happened?” And then somebody will say, “Oh, I guess they got too comfortable.” You get too comfortable so you can’t write anymore?’ I mean, come on. Look at Bruce Springsteen, he’s still writing great songs. And Elvis Costello, you know?

Paste: How did the Elvis Costello duet come about? Whose idea was that?
Williams: That’s a good question because we were talking about trying to get him in to do it. We had some other ideas for some other people, but a lot of it just had to do with the logistics with people’s schedules. We were thinking about Jim Lauderdale. He was my first choice because I was thinking I wanted somebody with a more country kind of voice. But then Tom was saying, “Let’s do something different, that would be kind of more unexpected.” So he came up with the idea of possibly David Johansen, from the New York Dolls. Or maybe Steve Earl or John Doe or Tom Waits. Elvis’ name was on there, at the top of the list, and as it turned out Elvis was in town, working on his last album. He was just in town for a couple of days doing some work, and he was going to be flying out the next day. And then we caught him. He was overjoyed to be able to do it, ’cause he had heard the song before when I had done it live. He’s jumped on stage with me and sang with me before, and I’ve sang on one of his albums, so we’ve stayed in touch. It was a Saturday night, and he was going to be available at midnight. So we just, we went in, set up a couple of mics and cut the vocals, then he left the next day and it came out great. He loved it, so I’m really happy that he’s on there. His voice comes out and really makes a statement.

Paste: You said that you’ve been writing a lot and that you’re anxious to get back in the studio. And I’m sure you’ve got to give it some time and get on the road…
Williams: Yeah, we’ve got a big tour coming up, starting at the end of this month. Basically it goes through most of November. And then we’re taking three months off.

Paste: Any plans on doing anything with the protest songs? Any campaign-type shows?
Williams: I want to do some stuff like that if I can. I’m really concerned about this upcoming election, really, really, actually terrified, you know. The possibility of McCain and Palin—God! It’s so unreal.

Perfectionism has its place, and it's hard to argue with the results when it comes to the music Lucinda Williams has created in the years that typically elapse between each of her albums. But there's a raw energy on "Little Honey" -- which arrives this week, a little more than a year after 2007's "West" -- that's as refreshing as it is palpable. The rock swagger, the playful sexuality, the late-night alienation and bluesy introspection all make a convincing case that she should have been a Rolling Stone in whatever musical universe Mick and Keith are one guy, and that guy is a woman.

There's no less gravel on the road she travels here, but there are pit stops where happiness, or at least the potential for it, offers welcome relief and release from life's endless string of heartbreaks. "Real Love" gets the album cranking with a gritty celebration of that moment when love goes soul deep. "Honey Bee" is a frisky rock scorcher, while "Tears of Joy" is in a league with Buck Owens' "Together Again" as one of the saddest-sounding songs ever to welcome the blessings of love.


She hasn't lost her knowledge of what can, and too often does, go wrong. Her countrified duet with Elvis Costello on the deliciously downward spiraling "Jailhouse Tears" lets Costello's unlovable loser try out all his best excuses for his wicked ways on Williams, who, in the best Loretta Lynn tradition, isn't having any of it. And "Rarity" is a dirge-like ode to a musician who's been sullied by machinations of the music business.


The cumulative message is that it's all part of the territory. Rock 'n' roll is a dirty job, but thankfully someone as perceptive as Williams has elected to do it.

While assured of her status as a great American singer, Lucinda Williams has never been most people's idea of an easy one--someone whose music you'd trot out at a wedding, say, or any other event where keening is frowned on. Williams isn't po-faced; she's so tough that misery, mostly in the form of doomed men and rotten luck, never stands a chance. It's just that in the Williams songbook, misery never seems to stop coming around, which is why the first track on her ninth album, Little Honey, is such a shock. It's called "Real Love," and it's not about losing real love or a tortured glimpse of real love but about finding it once and for all.

Williams is too sophisticated to song-write her own bio, but she's also too shrewd to ignore it, and her engagement to manager Tom Overby (who co-produced Little Honey) seems to have inspired a challenge: say something new about love and happiness. Lyric-sheet readers may wonder if she's up to it. Her usual evocations and minimalist stanzas are replaced by lines like "You're drinking in a bar in Amsterdam/ I'm thinking baby far out, be my man," proof that love and goofiness are but a beer apart.

But the glory of Little Honey is less its poetry than its ability to sustain happiness as a mood. There is Williams' glorious voice, of course--cracking in the verses and lubricating the choruses of "Tears of Joy"; drolly channeling Tammy Wynette to Elvis Costello's George Jones on "Jailhouse Tears"--but the critical decision was to make this a guitar-dominated album. It's not just that it's the warmest instrument in rock, country and blues (Williams' favorite playgrounds) but that Doug Pettibone is the best unknown guitarist in all three. On song after song, Pettibone's six-string acts as Williams' adoring foil, flirting with her between the lyrics on "Circles and Xs," replying with great gusts of seduction on "Knowing." On the album-ending AC/DC cover, they just roll around and laugh. It's exactly the kind of thing you'd play at a wedding.

Country rocker Lucinda Williams, well-known for her moody introspection, has said she's ''in a different phase of my life, so there are more happy moments'' on Little Honey, her ninth album. Truth is, she sounds downright giddy much of the time.

Real Love, the first single, is a gleefully jagged romp, its crisp Stones-y guitars slicing underneath Williams' sloppy yet on-target vocals: 'Thing about you so far -- you squeeze my peaches/And you send me postcards of girls on beaches/You're drinkin' in a bar in Amsterdam/I'm thinkin' ''Baby, far out -- be my man'/It's a real love.'' On the all-out rocker Honey Bee, when Williams growls, ''Now I got your sweetness all up in my hair,'' it sounds joyful and free, not lewd.

Williams' trailer-park purr holds up well against Elvis Costello's distinctive nasal slur on the playful he-said, she-said banter of Jailhouse Tears. He says, ''I just went to the corner to get a six-pack.'' She spits back, ''You're a drunk, you're a stoner/You never came back.'' He pleads, ''I used to be a user -- now I'm out of stuff,'' and she snarls, ``You're a three-time loser/You're all f- - - - - up.''

Of course, all great country records have to have at least a few weepers. On the lazily paced Circles and X's, Williams laments, ''Nothing left to be sorry for, but I still sit and sob.'' Tears of Joy adds a sharp storyteller's touch to straight-up, whiskey-swayin' blues: 'In my own little world since I was 16/Little Miss Playgirl makin' the scene/Then you took this girl/And you made her your queen/That's why I'm cryin' tears of joy.'' Williams' tears turn to pain, though, when she follows the title of the maudlin If Wishes Were Horses with ``I have a ranch -- come on and give me another chance.''

The sobering Little Rock Star offers a different perspective on the sad saga of drug-addled British rocker Pete Doherty, who has become a favorite tabloid target: ''Your lovely eyes, they close like petals/Your sweet surprise could win you medals/You strut your stuff and you fan your peacock feathers.'' Williams comes across like a weary mother who's seen it all before: ``Hey little rock star, why don't you see? This is not all that it's cracked up to be.''

But Little Honey certainly is. Plenty of singer-songwriters are perfectly capable of matching up clever lyrics and pleasant melodies. Williams writes prize-winning short stories and puts them to music. Insanely good music.

Pod Picks: Jailhouse Tears, Real Love, Honey Bee.

This isn’t supposed to happen. Women in the world of popular music are’t supposed to hang around in the public eye well into their 50s. If rock ’n’ roll, as the old saw goes, is a young man’s game, then pop in general is definitely the provision of hot, young and sexy things who are willing to shake it in public, and then go away to do their growing up in private.

Your Paul McCartneys, Tom Pettys and Bruce Springsteens get a pass to hang around forever, as long as they continue to do good work. Not too many women are offered the same opportunity.

Today, however, two of the coolest women in rock release new albums. Both are in their late 50s. Both have found continued sustenance and grace in the seemingly bottomless bounty of guitar-based rock ’n’ roll. And as a result, both are dropping some of the strongest music of their 30-year careers.

Interestingly, both Lucinda Williams’ "Little Honey" and Chrissie Hynde & the Pretenders "Break Up the Concrete" suggest a new archetype for the aging female pop musician. Call it the "anti- Madonna."

There are no nips, no tucks, no wrinkle- defying age-cream in evidence on these bold new records, just as photos of the two women prove them to be both confident in themselves and comfortable with where they are in life. Hynde and Williams remain irreverent, ragged- but-right in their writing and performance, punkish in their attitudes and authentic in a way that avoids being self-conscious, or trying too hard.

Williams and Hynde are still relevant after all of this time because they refuse to be anything other than what they are. As they both look 60 in the eye — Williams is 55, Hynde 57 — that means they aren’t trying to act or look young. In the youth-worshipping world of popular music, this is pretty close to revolutionary. It’s also pretty sexy.

Out of the darkness

With "Little Honey," Lucinda Wiliams offers an about-face from the nigh-on-maudlin, introspective, downbeat songs that comprised her 2007 release "West." That album dealt in death, depression, heartbreak that won’t quit and the general disintegration that comes with aging — particularly if you’ve lived the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle for any significant stretch of time.

"Little Honey" wipes the slate clean, returning us to the boozy good times of albums like "Essence" and "Car Wheels On A Gravel Road," both of which balanced the beautiful sloppiness of the Rolling Stones with stately, country-based tear-jerkers, without ever becoming too weighed down by either.

That’s not to say that this new album isn’t poignant or reflective — the heart-rending, whiskey-and-cigarettes country ballad is still what Williams does best, and "Little Honey" has one of her finest in "If Wishes Were Horses."

Still, this new album is, on balance, an upbeat, guitar-soaked, rockin’ Saturday night album, much more than a "Sunday morning coming down" collection. And that’s exactly what we needed from Williams right now

Sassy, spirited, and defiant, Williams and her killer band — featuring the gorgeously gritty guitars of Doug Pettibone and Chet Lyster — come out of their corner swinging with "Real Love," a greasy country-fried rocker whose chorus is pushed toward the heavens by the guest harmony vocals of Susannah Hoffs and Matthew Sweet. "Circles and X’s" is a familiar Williams country-waltz with plenty of the lyrical imagery the songwriter is renowned for. ("You turn around to wave goodbye, you look at me and linger/The morning hears you sigh, and sunlight reflects off the silver on your finger," is a nice collection of images that fit the "country cheatin’ song" format, but breathe new life into it as well.)

"Little Rock Star" chastises a rock ’n’ roll enfant terrible with a death wish — Amy Winehouse, maybe? Again, Hoffs and Sweet offer heavenly harmony, and the guitars are big and bold. Elvis Costello shows up to duet on the hilarious, bawdy "white trash" send-up "Jailhouse Tears," which is a joke, certainly, but one that arrives right when it should, to keep the air from getting too thick.

That Williams can tackle AC/DC’s "It’s A Long Way To the Top" with absolute conviction, claiming some of the band’s tough-guy, boys’ club raunch for the fairer sex, is a testament to her winning blend of brains and bravado. Both continue to serve her well.

Pardon the warped analogy, but if last year’s West was Williams’ Blood on the Tracks, then Little Honey is her Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, a largely ebullient record unbound by anything other than the artist’s enthusiasm for life and, by extension, these terrific songs. (Her recent engagement to manager Tom Overby probably didn’t hurt either.) There are still traces of melancholy — If Wishes Were Horses is a wondrously shambolic lament — but Williams is clearly revitalized, having fashioned her most consistent, compelling disc in a decade.

Download this: If Wishes Were Horses

'Little Honey" is a fitting title for Lucinda Williams' ninth studio release. For a songwriter whose best work deals in pain, loss, suffering and anguish, "Little Honey" is a bracing blast of sweetness one does not expect from Lucinda.

That's the good news. The bad is the same – "Little Honey" is never cloying, never a confection, but don't you hate it when your favorite writers of heartbreak suddenly find themselves happy?

And Lu is, apparently, happy as a clam. She's downright euphoric about her new love (record exec, now Williams' producer, Tom Overby), her career and her life. Rotten luck for us.

From the opening track ("Real Love") to the end ("Plan to Marry"), Williams writes and sings about her joy of, at 55, a pending marriage (her first), and the love she finds in Overby.

Nearly every track is a variation on those themes, from "Knowing" (I didn't know what love meant before) to "Rarity" (You are a rarity / Your eyes say wisdom / Your skin says frailty / Your mouth says listen) to "Tears of Joy" (Now I have a real man, don't have to pretend / That's why I'm crying tears of joy).

Her voice is still cracked and parched, a moaning instrument that had fit snugly with her songs of regret, heartbreak and bitter loss. Where once she demanded and snarled to be given back her joy ("Joy" from 1998's "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road"), she's now thrilled to be in love ("Tears of Joy") and nothing is going to keep her down.

It's an unexpected place to find Williams, but throughout she maintains the gruff musical backing that reminds us of midcareer Rolling Stones, "Exile on Main Street" era. "Little Honey" is full of those kind of crunching guitar riffs and rockin' beats with a country heart.

She's backed again by her touring guitarist, Doug Pettibone, whose fills add that bracing rockiness to her lyrics. Guest players sit in, and even Elvis Costello (now, there's a surprise) comes in for a vocal call-and-response on "Jailhouse Tears."

The production, from Overby and Eric Liljestrand, is dense and dark, full of whirling organ and tambourine, with layers of guitars, acoustic and electric. It's hard-edged, and not a perfect fit for her cozy lyrics of happiness. But she combines that approach nicely on her cover of AC/DC's "Long Way to the Top," ending the album.

All that's fine, it's fun and we love Lucinda. But oddly enough, the best cut among the 13 tracks is something she wrote nearly 25 years ago, the rejected lover on "Circles and X's" (I'm just at the end of my rope / And you're just tuggin at my heart).

You've got to love the pain.

3 Stars out of 4

DOWNLOAD THIS: "Circles and X's"

Like most folks, Lucinda Williams is happiest when she’s … how to put this delicately … gettin’ some.

She’s spent most of her career mourning men who have wronged her, her bad luck with men and various ways men have let her down. Not that she hasn’t gotten a wealth of excellent material out of it, but let’s not kid ourselves. There’s a point at which you have to wonder just how bad her taste in men is and whether she’s ever going to snap out of it. Add death to that, as in last year’s "West," and you wonder if she’s ever going to be happy.

No more, apparently. In a stable relationship with manager Tom Overby, Williams is suddenly producing the highest-octane music of her career. "Little Honey," out Tuesday cranks out rocker after rocker, including an album closing cover of AC/DC’s "It’s a Long Way to the Top." Gone is most of the moping, replaced with love and lust. Lots of lust. "You squeeze my peaches" she belts on "Real Love," a decent song that I nevertheless wished was a cover of the Mary J. Blige classic of the same name. "Now I got your sweetness/ all up in my hair" she howls on "Honey Bee" — um, thanks for that, Lu.

She calms down a bit on "Plan to Marry," which makes a case for love "when leaders can’t be trusted/ Heroes have let us down." Elvis Costello moans along on "Jailhouse Blues." "Well Well Well" is a leftover from ‘92, while "Circles and X’s" and "Wishes Were Horses" date from the 1980s, when Williams’ slow-burn country-folk was defining what became alt-country.

Especially for a gal who made her bones on being all literary ‘n’ all, her lyrics can scan as lazy by half: see also "Honey bee, I swear/ we make quite a pair" and "You tried to steal my truck but/ that’s not what this is about." Ouch.

The epic "Little Rock Star" cautions the Amy Winehouses and Pete Dohertys of the pop world that their death wish is showing. But most of the time the deaths she’s singing about are the little French kind and that’s a lot more fun.

3/4 Stars
Recommended: "Wishes Were Horses," "Little Rock Star"

The roots-rock queen of heartbreak has finally found her sweet spot. On Little Honey, the ninth studio album from Lucinda Williams, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter counterbalances tales of bitter love with songs of newfound bliss.

The former approach is her forte, but the latter isn't very convincing. That doesn't mean that the happy tunes, partly inspired by her romance with her manager-fiance Tom Overby, are a bust. They're just not as affecting or as nuanced as her melancholic cuts, making Little Honey uneven. The flow of the 13-song set isn't as smooth as other Williams' albums, namely Car Wheels on a Gravel Road or last year's wounded West.

Part of the reason the upbeat songs feel somewhat forced is Williams' voice. It's not particularly flexible or versatile.

The album opens with the driving "Real Love," a standout "happy song." But most of the credit goes to the hot rhythm section. Williams ventures into familiar territory on the cry-in-your-beer ballad "Circles and X's," written more than 20 years ago.

On the dissonant "Little Rock Star," Williams bemoans the perils of fame. The song was reportedly inspired by the lives of Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty, but it feels shapeless. That's followed by the humorous, tongue-in-cheek "Honey Bee," perhaps the best rocker on the album. Williams sounds, a little sassy and raunchy.

But the sentiment turns sharp and bitter again on "Jailhouse Tears," a trashy soap operalike duet with Elvis Costello. As Little Honey crawls to a close, Williams never regains the momentum found midway. She's may not always be at the top of her game here. But whether she's down in the dumps or up in the clouds, Williams still manages to stand head and shoulders above most modern pop singer-songwriters.


*** (3 Stars out of 4)

Download these: "Circles and X's," "Honey Bee," "If Wishes Were Horses" and "Well Well Well"

Throw on Lucinda Williams’ new album, Little Honey, and the first thing you hear is the disheveled jumble of a false start. As her band, Buick 6, anxiously waits to kick into the debauched swagger that the opening song is built upon, they all simultaneously jump the gun. Guitars and drums race off in different directions, the timing is all off, and the whole thing collapses under its own anticipation. Realizing their error, they all stop, collect themselves, and launch back into the song, titled "Real Love". This time Buick 6 get it right, and you realize that what initially sounded like a mess is a glorious mess, the kind the Replacements or the Stones might drunkenly stumble into before laying down a bad-ass groove.

And that, to be sure, is a great thing. When Williams lets loose and lets it rock, it’s a glorious, glorious thing. Think, for example, of "Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings" from World Without Tears, a song that would sound perfectly at home on Exile on Main Street. The same holds true for "Real Love", what with its 4/4 beat, rusted twang, and downright nasty riffage? Yeah, it’s nice. Thirty seconds into Williams’ new album, everything feels right with the universe –- and then she opens her mouth. "I found the love I’ve been looking for," she sings, "It’s a real love."

First things first: Little Honey, Lucinda Williams' ninth studio album, out October 14 from Lost Highway, isn't a career-maker. She's already got a career, thank you very much, among the most celebrated in Americana, and she carved out an iconic spot in music - and burrowed her way into our hearts - more than a decade ago. The record is, however, a career-definer, simultaneously a recapper and recontextualizer of all the things that make her special and that continue to hold our attention even during the creative fallow periods that artists must inevitably weather. (There's a reason we call folks like Williams "artists" and your Mariah Careys of the world "entertainers"; in the former's works we see reflected our own humanity, our weaknesses and strengths, our joys and tragedies, while in the latter we project whatever ephemeral, escapist notions that happen to cross our minds on any particular week.)

From the album's opening track, the surging, angular, almost punk-feeling riff-rocker "Real Love"; through several blues compositions, including the soulful/sensual "Tears Of Joy," country-honker "Well Well Well" and the swampy, slide/harp-fueled "Heavy Blues"; to an out-of-the-blue AC/DC cover, "It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n' Roll)" so outrageous and so perfect that should Brian Johnson ever fall ill, Angus Young knows who he can call if he needs a last minute sub: Little Honey never falters. It's exquisitely sequenced and paced to give it a compelling sense of flow, and it's performed with an almost swaggering level of confidence (primarily just Williams and her backing band Buick 6: guitar whiz Doug Pettibone, bassist David Sutton, drummer Butch Norton and guitarist/keyboardist Chet Lyster, plus keyboardist Rob Burger and guest vocalists Matthew Sweet, Susanna Hoffs, Jim Lauderdale, Tim Easton Charlie Louvin and Elvis Costello - the latter on a bring-down-the house George & Tammy/Conway & Loretta-styled duet, "Jailhouse Tears"). That confidence extends to Williams' vocals, too. As a singer, even on her weaker material she rarely disappoints, but here she seems positively fired up by the opportunity to simply kick out the jams and let her signature raspy purr/drawl follow the music's insistent groove.

‘Twas not always the case in recent years. After 1998's Car Wheels On A Gravel Road and 2001's Essence, both brilliant, Williams, it seemed, could do no wrong, and for 2003's World Without Tears nary a critic stood up to call it what it was: lazy and ragged, adrift in half-formed arrangements and tossed-off vocals, including some of clumsiest white-girl rapping this side of Deborah Harry. That was followed in 2005 by a stopgap concert album, Live @ the Fillmore, which despite reprising much of her classic material, seemed to unfold in slow motion, as if through a Quaalude haze; it didn't pick up any steam until Disc 2, by which point the listener, too, had been lulled.

Then came last year's West, and initially Williams seems back on message, purring and growling lustily against a backdrop of noirish blooze and sensual, folk-pop. The album smoldered, from the strings-laden, sex + pain = religion "Unsuffer Me" to a moody meditation on life titled "What If." But with "smolder" the operative term - there was nary an uptempo rocker to be found - it never really caught fire and was best taken in small three-song blocs, lest your eyelids droop over the course of 70 minutes. Glossy on the surface, unnecessarily fussy, Hal Wilner production-wise, underneath, West ultimately succumbed to an overdose of torpor. As I wrote at the time: Lucinda, set an alarm clock next time you go into the studio.

She did just that for Little Honey. Welcome back, Luce.

***

So - Little Honey tour opener, September 25, Asheville, NC, the Orange Peel, named earlier this year by Rolling Stone as one of the top five music clubs in America. This was to kick off a 27-city run that concludes in mid-November with a two-night Fillmore stand in San Francisco. Parked on the side street next to the club were three massive tour buses, each hauling an equally humongous trailer housing, presumably, the gear a rock band needs to mount an effective auditorium/theater tour. Point of fact, the Asheville show was initially slated for the larger, more formal Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, which has a seating capacity of about 2500, but at the last minute slow ticket sales prompted a move of the show to the considerably more intimate Orange Peel (cap.: 942). Earlier in the week it had also been announced that the Knoxville show scheduled for the following evening at the 1545-seater Tennessee Theatre had been moved to the Bijou (cap.: 750). Lost Highway politely declined to disclose actual ticket counts but did concede that the situation was disappointing. Offered a spokesman at the label, "Let's just say, we would've liked the numbers to be a bit higher."

One presumes that neither label nor promoters needs to worry once the early word on this tour gets out.

A lesser artist might have bitched and moaned about the situation; the change from large auditorium to midsized club undoubtedly forced some compromises in the staging and lighting, and there were indeed a few glitches, primarily involving the above-stage screen projections (a good bit of that gear being transported in the aforementioned trailers probably went unused this evening, too). Instead, Williams took the challenge as an opportunity to seek out the silver lining. Let's face it, no artist wants to be looking out at a venue that's only about half-full, so the move from Thomas Wolfe to the Orange Peel turned out to be a smart one, with the crowd getting an unexpected up-close-and-personal show and Williams benefiting from a unique brand of feedback immediacy that just isn't possible when performing in front of a seated audience that's separated from the stage by a large gap or orchestra pit.

A nearly 2 ½ hour show ensued, and by the end the packed venue had been reduced to aching feet, sore palms, hoarse throats, and ear-to-ear grins. Williams herself seemed positively thrilled at the response, chatting with the audience, dancing with the band members, and soaking in the proverbial tight-but-loose vibe that can be the hallmark of a great concert.

The opening act was... drumroll please... Buick 6. Not to be confused with the British electric blues band Buick 6, but rather the L.A.-based, electric blues band Buick 6, a/k/a Williams' backing band: Pettibone, Lyster, Sutton and Norton. The quartet plowed through a rousing set comprising mostly instrumentals, the players frequently swapping places and demonstrating an effortless virtuosity that made it eminently clear this was no mere garden variety support-the-star ensemble. When Pettibone strapped on a harmonica rack and used harp lines to sub for the vocals in a cover of Led Zep's "Black Dog" the crowd emitted whoops of delight, and the blazing closing number, Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl," pushed things over the edge to leave the room fully primed for the headliner.

Following a short break the band was right back up there, smiling broadly at Williams as she walked onstage attired in a gauzy, see-through white blouse partially opened to reveal a naughty black pushup bra. Positioned just to the left of her microphone was a music stand bearing pages of lyrics, and throughout the show Williams made no effort to hide the fact that she had to consult the sheets for certain songs, at one point even drawing attention to the stand when she quipped, "I can't afford those teleprompters!"

She needn't have apologized; such was the sheer viscerality and seductive grace of her performance. Williams and her band opened with the same song that opens Little Honey, "Real Love," duly setting the pace for a high-energy show that peaked several times yet managed to reach a higher level at each successive crest. Much of the first part spotlighted the new album: "Tears Of Joy," a slow, sexy waltz-time blues with desire-drenched lyrics letting Williams play the role of honky-tonk queen; "Jailhouse Tears," the Costello duet, guitarist Pettibone subbing for E.C. as the singers swapped lyric one-liners and laid the groundwork for the song's eventual arrival at countrypolitan-classic status; "If Wishes Were Horses," stately like a Tom Petty southern accent and luminous with brushed drums, acoustic guitar and Lyster's piano ("C'mon and give me one more chance," pleaded Williams, her voice crackling with emotion); "Little Rock Star," an atmospheric, U2-esque waltz-anthem highlighted by Pettibone's soaring, arpeggiated licks.

Positioned above the stage on both the left and right sides were the venue's video screens upon which were projected liquid light-styled psychedelics. This was all well and good, but cameras also superimposed images of the band members on the screens, and whether intentional or not, the fact that the musicians were never fully in focus resulted in a kind of amateurishly blurry, dawn-of-rock-videos effect better suited for a VH1-Classic flashback segment than a 2008 concert. Perhaps it will be more convincing on larger screens later in the tour. At one point the guy standing to my left pointed at the screens and laughed in my ear, "It's Don Kirshner's Rock Concert!"

But that was the only technical hitch, and only a couple of times did Williams and the band even seem to hesitate when going into the next song (one reckons that they opted for a more fluid setlist when it became clear that many of the usual staging and lighting cues wouldn't be utilized). Fans who wanted their dose of Vintage Lucinda - recall that Little Honey was still almost three weeks away from release, and local radio was only just now beginning to preview songs from it - were rewarded by plenty of the good ‘uns. Early in the show there was the always-gorgeous "Steal Your Love," from Essence. That album's equally timeless "Out Of Touch" proved a mid-set high point, sonically an uplifting cross between Petty's "Refugee" and Springsteen" "Promised Land" and lyrically a meditation upon the psychic ties that can bind us together and the emotional forces that can pull us apart. "I think this is appropriate for the times," Williams said by way of intro, and with one succinct statement she brilliantly pulled the lens back to transform an intensely personal song into one with contemporary universal resonance. Essence's title track also sent a collective shudder of delight through the room as Buick 6 rolled the slinkysexycool tune's hoodoo down and Williams dripped feral desire in that indelible pumice-scraped voice of hers: "I am waiting..." she moaned, over and over.

Other highlights included bruising, rocking, howling versions of "Changed the Locks" (from Fillmore), "Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings" (World Without Tears) and "Joy" (Car Wheels), jokingly intro'd as "a great Bettye LaVette song" (the soul singer famously covered the Williams composition on her 2005 album "I've Got My Own Hell To Raise"). The latter was dirty blooze/roots rock at it finest, eventually turning into a Pettibone-Lyster-Williams three-guitar jam session; when Pettibone served up his second Led Zep nod of the evening by ripping off metallic "Heartbreaker" riffs, Williams laughed and looked on delightedly.

Over two hours elapsed before the band finally left the stage, but they came back quickly for a four-song encore. The next to last number was prefaced by a brief political speech from Williams that was definitely pro-Obama but steered clear of preaching, the singer instead emphasizing how much is at stake this year and how important it is to get out to vote. Then, with the musicians easing into a slow, loping groove (it initially fooled some of us into thinking we were about to get "2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten"), they unveiled a note-perfect cover of "For What It's Worth," which is appropriate anytime but is especially relevant during an election period. Williams' voice was just as clear as it had been at the beginning of the show, and she sang the tune with such an uncommon conviction that the entire crowd sang along with her.

One last number and they were outta there: the AC/DC track which closes the album. An entire room full of people moved in time to the crunching rhythm, and as the song unfolded it seemed like Williams and her band had long ago taken its titular manifesto to heart:

Ridin' down the highway
Goin' to a show
Stop in all the byways
Playin' rock 'n' roll
Gettin' robbed
Gettin' stoned
Gettin' beat up
Broken boned
Gettin' had
Gettin' took
I tell you folks
It's harder than it looks...

Well, maybe it is harder than it looks from the outside looking in. Tonight, though, Williams made it look easy. "I love all that shoutin'!" she'd whooped at one point earlier in the evening, following a particularly raucous crowd response. And whether or not she realized she'd already won us over and stolen our hearts, the suggestion was that we'd stolen her heart as well. I'm betting that as an artist she was pleasantly surprised by the way the changed-venue events turned out. This evening, everybody was a winner.

Great art comes from tortured artists, or so goes the standard trope applied to sad sacks who write beautiful songs or paint compelling pictures.

It's just not true for Lucinda Williams, however. Her art suffered in direct proportion to her own suffering on most of the albums she has released this decade. Thankfully, the Louisiana-born singer and songwriter seems to have shaken her deepest blues on her latest.

"Little Honey" (Lost Highway) is easily Williams' least depressing album in years, which doesn't sound like much of a compliment until you consider that she sounds downright happy on some of these tunes for the first time in, well, maybe ever. And when she slips into a downcast mood, it's tempered by the wistful romanticism -- that radiant spark suggesting that one day everything will make sense -- that defines her best work.

She lost that spark for a while. If 2003's "World Without Tears" was tough on the heart, then Williams' 2007 follow-up "West" was her emotional nadir. The album deals with the death of her mother and a tumultuous break-up, and her grief overwhelms her considerable gifts as a songwriter.

In concert last year, though, she spoke in near-giddy tones about her fiancé, and her newfound happiness seems to have spilled over into the songs on "Little Honey."

Williams signals the change right from the start on "Real Love," a blistering rocker that celebrates her long-delayed romantic success with biting guitar and close harmony vocals from Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs.

Even when Williams cries here, it's out of happiness on the bluesy waltz "Tears of Joy." She sticks with blues of a sort on "Heaven Blues," a slow, almost spoken-word tune where she contrasts the paradise she expects to reach some day with the idea of creating her own version in the here and now.

When she's not extolling love, Williams is offering cautionary tales about the rock 'n' roll life -- "This is not all that it's cracked up to be," she warns on the gritty "Little Rock Star," a theme she reprises on "Rarity" and with her rootsy cover of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top" -- and swapping verses with Elvis Costello on "Jailhouse Tears." It's a country duet in classic form as he offers explanations and excuses while she writes him off as a loser.

This time, though, it's clear that Williams is singing in character -- after lifetime of losers and write-offs, "Little Honey" revels in finding true love at last.

Lucinda Williams isn't exactly sure what's going on, but she knows it's good.


Night after night, she's watching her fans go crazy for her latest songs, even though the album "Little Honey" (Lost Highway) doesn't hit stores until Tuesday.


"I remember when I was playing the songs from 'West' before the album came out and people would be shouting out 'Drunken Angel' or 'Passionate Kisses,' but I would insist on playing the new songs," Williams says, calling from her Los Angeles home. "I would have to clarify things onstage and say, 'I want to play these new songs. I know you have an emotional attachment to the more familiar material, but hopefully you'll have an emotional attachment to these songs.' But now. . . ."


She pauses a bit, like she's replaying the recent shows in her head, before adding, "Now, I'm coming out and starting with 'Real Love' and people go wild. By the time we get to 'Little Rock Star,' people just go nuts."

She wasn't kidding. At Williams' recent show at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden, when she and her band reached "Little Rock Star" in their set, fans began whooping, some taking breaks only to sing along. Although Williams has been hailed as "America's Best Songwriter" for the past decade since the release of her Grammy-winning "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" album and has seen her subsequent albums climb higher and higher on the charts, the prerelease enthusiasm for "Little Honey" is new. (Last week, preorders alone pushed it to No. 5 on Amazon.com's sales chart.)


"Usually, I have to wait until the record comes out to see a reaction because they have to hear them first, and then they respond more and more and more," Williams says. "This one seems, right off the bat, to be creating a sort of excitement that I haven't felt in a while, probably since 'Car Wheels.' Now that people have gotten used to me doing different things and stretching out, I've kind of come full circle. Maybe they just kind of understand me more now. Or maybe I've just gained enough confidence."


Something is definitely different with Williams these days.


The hair is a bit bigger. The stance is a bit wider. And the way she chokes the electric guitar, it looks like she might whip it around by the neck and smash it on the stage, a la Pete Townshend, if the mood suited her. Which it doesn't.



Her buzzword is happy


At her recent New York show, Williams is singing happy songs of rock and roll defiance, songs where she gets her due, and so do those who have wronged her. When she lets out a yowl to follow, "Oh, my little honeybee, I'm so glad you stung me," there's a touch of Courtney Love glee, but none of the desperation.


"She's in a different place in her life now - a happy place," says Rita Houston, music director for New York's WFUV / 90.7 FM. "Lucinda's in love, and she's still writing pretty good songs."


Houston says Williams' single "Real Love" has caught on at adult alternative radio stations and has given "Little Honey" more of a boost than the lead singles for Williams' past two albums. " 'Real Love' is getting her a lot of attention out of the gate," Houston says. "It's really upbeat, and to me, it feels like a late-'60s, early-'70s AM radio song, which is a really good match for her."



Horns of plenty


Williams goes for a broad palette of sounds - rock, blues, country, gospel, even a bit of metal on her cover of AC / DC's "Long Way to the Top" - for the new album. She uses horns for the first time, which add new sonic textures to the meditative "The Knowing" and the music-business pep talk "Rarity."


"I always wanted to [use horns], but I was a little afraid of it because I didn't want it to sound too slick," Williams says. "I've grown so much since the days when I used to worry about that."


A significant part of that growth comes from Williams' fiance, Tom Overby, who is also a co-producer on the album as well as her manager.


"Tom's one of those guys who has 15,000 CDs and all this vinyl, so he's always putting different stuff on," Williams says. "So I'll listen to stuff that I've never listened to before. It's so good to do that as an artist because it just opens up your world. It's made me a lot more global. The stuff I listen to now is so different from what I listened to when I first started in music. I listen to Latin music and Brazilian and some hip-hop kind of stuff, like Gotan Project and Thievery Corporation. I find it fascinating."


Her lyrics are more outward-looking as well.


One main topic is the music industry, which she tackles in "Little Rock Star" and "Rarity." "Both of them had little mini events that kicked off the writing of the song, but they became much bigger than about that one person," she says. "In the case of 'Rarity,' there's an artist named Mia Doi Todd, and I was just really impressed with her - how poetic her songs were, how sophisticated her writing was, the beauty of her voice. 'Little Rock Star' came from observing different people in the press. It's not about Amy Winehouse, but the situation she's in. Before her, it was Ryan Adams, then it was Pete Doherty, now it's Amy Winehouse. A while ago, it was Kurt Cobain. I'm always part of these songs, too, because I look at these situations from an empathetic point of view; otherwise, I wouldn't be able to write about it." Those songs, as well as the touching ballad "Plan to Marry," are more topical than usual for Williams, yet another departure to differentiate the new album.


"I've been looking for different subjects to write about," Williams says, laughing. "I'm not going to be writing about unrequited love for the rest of my life."

A false start kicks off Little Honey, Lucinda Williams' new album. They launch into "Real Love," then stop short, and we hear the song counted off again. It's a seemingly offhand moment, but it announces from the outset that you're listening to a real band playing in real time. And, among other things, Little Honey is Williams' love letter to her band, Buick 6, who is given their own "featuring" credit on the back cover.

They are quite a band. And their influence is felt as much emotionally as musically. For while Little Honey is filled with songs about settling down and squaring one's dreams to reality, it's also the friskiest album Williams has made in years.

It feels like a series of afterhours sessions where someone left the mic open, with Williams and the band just sitting in the studio, knocking the songs around. They're built around traditional blues, country or rock changes, but the songs don't sound retro. There's never the sense of looking back or imitation; what you hear is a group of musicians playing the music they love.

And Williams has given them a typically strong set of songs to play. "Real Love" charges though verses that declare love equally to a man and a guitar; the raucous, gleefully lusty "Honey Bee" verges on apian pornography, climaxing with the declaration of "now I have your honey/all over my tummy;" and in probably the most unexpected cover of the year (if not the decade), Williams and her band joyfully bash their way through AC/DC's "It's A Long Way To The Top."

The upbeat songs are unfettered and electric and even the ballads sound looser and more spontaneous. On her two previous studio albums, World Without Tears and West, Williams adopted a stiff, stilted manner that was all gravity and seriousness but allowed little light or air into the mix. It made the songs sound more like musical souvenirs from a poetry reading than fully formed song compositions. With one exception, that's happily not the case here.

The lyrics are as finely wrought as ever. In "Circles and X's"--the kind of song Williams excels at, a fiercely observed tale of a late-night, regretful breakup--each detail is given a emotional charge: "You manage to crack a smile/the sky is big and open/you stay for just a little while/the vows have all been broken." As she does throughout the album, Williams sings it beautifully, with a slight crack at the back of her throat, but instead of the dry accompaniment that marked West or World, the song swings, thanks to Butch Norton's drumming and the lively guitar work of Doug Pettibone and Chet Lyster. It's a resonant combination that's also heard in "Tears of Joy," a relaxed, bluesy confession/testimony to the power of love; "If Wishes Were Horses," which rides a beautiful, loping lament reminiscent of Neil Young circa After The Gold Rush. And "Little Rock Star" finds Williams in maternal mode, comforting and advising a self-destructive, if talented musician. It's the kind of song that in lesser hands could come off as maudlin, but Williams sings it with a weary tenderness. She empathizes ("You bend over backwards to make a statement... I can't say I blame you/for throwing the towel in") while gently reminding them of their talent ("Will you ever do the things you're afraid to do").

If much of Little Honey deals with the themes and styles that Williams has covered since her self-titled Rough Trade album in 1988, there's a confidence and swagger to the performances that hasn't been heard since the landmark Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. Butch Norton and Chet Lyster (both refugees from the Eels) bring a flinty sense of swing and rhythm to the songs, while Lyster and Williams' longtime guitarist Doug Pettibone tangle impressively on songs such as the greasy sermonette of "Well Well Well" and down home "Heaven Blues." Their exuberant playing (along with Williams' and Elvis Costello's game vocals) makes it possible to ignore the white trash clichés of Williams duet with Elvis Costello on "Jailhouse Blues."

The songs are also enlivened by little details. The slightly psychedelic backing vocals (provided by guests Matthew Sweet and Susannah Hoffs) on "Real Love;" the vibraphone that makes an appearance toward the end of "Tears of Joy;" the sighing horn section of "Knowing;" the various junkyard percussion that runs through "Heaven" keeps the basic sound from turning monotonous. The only song they can't save is "Rarity," a spare set of lyrics in the mode of Essence. They throw everything they've got at it-horns, keys, vibes, backing vocals, and Williams even adds a lovely crooned vocal-but it can't keep the song from sounding lumpy and lifeless.

At the other ends of the spectrum, Williams knocks the solo "Plans to Marry" out of the park. It comes closest to stating the album's theme: in a cold world without heroes or leaders, where "Violence is big business/and love is just a word," she asks "Why do we get married?" Her answer: "Love is our weapon/love is the lesson."

Someone once joked that Williams needed two heartbreaks to make a good record. With Little Honey she shows she is just as powerful and compelling in love.

On her latest album, Lucinda Williams chronicles 55 years' worth of love, loss and living in 13 rich songs.

Williams, long critically adored, has always been something of a loose cannon, and here her trademark desperate twang recklessly taps into a brutally heartfelt mix of blues, folk, honky-tonk and rock that makes for her best album since 1998's "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road."

The album opens with "Real Love," a scorching toe-tapper that sets the mood for the rest of the disc. This is music that's searing, honest and even, at times, emotionally awkward.

"If Wishes Were Horses" is a sweet, wistful plea to an old lover ("Come on and give me another chance"), while "Plan To Marry" is a mournful elegy to finding love within humanity's decay and ruin.

It's not all maudlin, however. Williams is joined by Elvis Costello on the rollicking, bawdy "Jailhouse Tears," and her growling, bluesy cover of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top" is invigorating, fearless and fun.

"You bend over backwards to make a statement," Williams sings on "Little Rock Star."

"Hang from the rafters and lick the pavement, split your lip and barely catch your breath."

Again, at long last, Williams has not only caught her breath but found her voice, as well.

I'm happy for Lucinda Williams, the perennially bummed country-soul siren who is engaged to her manager, record executive Tom Overby. But I'm happier for her music and her fans. That's because Williams, as divine as she can be when turning sorrow into song, had lately grown depressingly one-note in her discontent.

Not so here. Little Honey, her ninth studio album, has its share of longing. "If wishes were horses," she sings, "I'd have a ranch." But it's her most rocked-out set to date, and also her happiest. (Happier even than 1980's Happy Woman Blues.) And while contentedness is quite often the bane of a tortured creator's existence, it does Williams a world of good. It spurs her to vary the album's mood and tempo, and loosen up in heretofore unheard ways, on the likes of "Jailhouse Tears," a delicious country love-hate duet with Elvis Costello, as well as the raunchy title cut, and a cranked-up cover of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)."

THERE'S something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue on Lucinda Williams' latest album, "Little Honey," out Tuesday. There's even a song called "Plan to Marry" on the record.

Still, the Louisiana-born singer-songwriter says she and her boyfriend-manager Tom Overby are "too busy with our careers" to set a wedding date. But she says, "We've been given permission [by our families] to just go to Vegas."

What have they been busy with? Making music and a home.

Williams, a musical vagabond who moved between Austin, Nashville and New York earlier in her career, is more settled now. In March, she and Overby bought a 1950s house together in Studio City, near Los Angeles.

Sitting in the breakfast nook of the house with a cup of Café Du Monde chicory coffee from New Orleans, a relaxed Williams says by phone, "It's a really cool area. It's just over the hill from Hollywood, so it's real close to everything but has a lot of privacy." There's a pool, too - they had rented a place with one, she explains, "and we loved it and decided if we were going to spend so much money for a house, we were gonna have a pool."

Much of "Little Honey" comes from what didn't fit onto last year's "West" album. "We had too many songs," Williams, 55, explains. "I don't know why, I was on a roll and I'd go into the studio every day or every other day with a new song, and by the end of it we had about 25 tracks. Tom wanted to put out a double album.

"We started running out of budget, time and money, and labels sort of frown on putting out double CDs . . . but we knew by the end of 'West' that we had another album already."

Four of the 13 songs are new ones, added to the "West" extras. The loud, electric "Honey Bee," one of the newbies, is emblematic of the album's upbeat nature.

She dedicated the punk-inflected song to Overby, "about to turn 50," at her recent Madison Square Garden Theater show, belting out: "Oh, my little honey bee/I'm so glad you stung me . . . Honey bee, it's heaven/twenty-four seven." Even though she got the verses mixed up and stopped the song, Williams just kind of shrugged and was happy to start over.

Williams also includes a pair of songs she wrote years ago. "I was inspired by Laura Cantrell's version of my song 'Letters,' " she says. "I must have written that song 30 years ago . . . It made me rethink my early songs."

That got Williams poking through her archives, which she describes as a "black Western-leather" expandable case, "where I keep the scrap paper of every song I've worked on. When I'm writing, I'll take all that stuff out and go through it, looking for a line and maybe borrow something from another song - which my dad [poet Miller Williams] refers to as 'cannibalizing.' "

It was in the case that she "stumbled on" "If Wishes Were Horses" and the countryish "Circles and X's." Williams kicks out the jams on her borrowed tune, AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top," giving Overby, the album's co-producer, a "gold star" for picking it. "He thought it would be a good idea to do a cover of a song that was different than what I [usually] do," she says.

Other up-tempo numbers include album opener "Real Love" and "Well, Well, Well," an old-fashioned country western-rockabilly tune we'll dub Lucindabilly, with Charlie Louvin and Jim Lauderdale singing backup. Also on the country side, Williams duets with Elvis Costello on the George Jones/Tammy Wynette-ish "Jailhouse Tears."

The blue part of the equation comes from "Heaven Blues," a slow Delta blues song. But Williams is far from blue, judging from the high spirit and romantically contented nature of "Little Honey."

Lucinda Williams spent nearly all of last year's "West" in a deeply blue mood, trying to reconcile the loss of her mother and the end of a relationship.

She sounded inconsolable, and the record's biggest flaw was how much it drained you to listen, dragging you through valleys with precious few peaks.

"Little Honey," which comes out Tuesday, is the sound of a rejuvenated, energized Williams. How energized? She closes the record with a creditable version of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top," and actually sounds as if she's having fun translating Bon Scott's unnatural howl into a Louisiana drawl.

Like Williams' best records, "Sweet Old World" and "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," "Little Honey" balances her undisputed gift for sad with moments of tranquillity, flashes of anger and a dry, winking wit.

The music is equally dynamic, moving from the subtle drama of the excellent "Little Rock Star" to the dirty rock 'n' roll of "Honey Bee" to a send-up of classic country duets, "Jailhouse Tears," on which she teams with Elvis Costello.

Williams still owns melancholy, however, although some of the most sadly beautiful songs here are actually love letters to her fiancé, manager and producer, Tom Overby. "The Knowing" is the finest example, with a devastatingly intimate vocal and Southern soul vibe straight from 1966. Close behind is "Plan to Marry," a solo acoustic song in which she comes to terms with three decades of bad decisions, bad boys and bad relationships.

At her best, Williams inhabits a place in popular music where few others hang out. The rawness of her emotions combined with the nuances in her writing can be compelling when she's focused, and "Little Honey" is a passionate, clear-eyed statement.

Here, Williams’s voice, as cracked and worn as Grandpa’s wallet, finds it perfect pairing with bluesy rock. She’s a honky-tonk woman co-opting Jagger’s swagger on “Honey Bee”; both author and lead subject in the poetic “Knowing.” No one choreographs the messy dance of romance better.

Download Now: “Tears of Joy”

If you are a fan of Lucinda Williams' music, then you have likely become used to the artist's darker side, which has been readily on display in the music contained in her past couple of albums, including "West" and "World Without Tears." If the melancholy, brokenhearted Lucinda Williams is the one to which you have become accustomed, then prepare for a load of bluesy sunshine when you listen to her latest, "Little Honey." Apparently things have been looking up in Williams' life, and the good feelings come through in the music, beginning with the barnstorming "Real Love," and continuing with songs such as "Tears of Joy" and "Knowing." "Honey Bee" is particularly good, with Williams giddily singing praise to a new love, "Oh, my little honey bee/I'm so glad you stung me." The songs aren't all gumdrops and rainbows though, mostly because Williams' fans likely wouldn't accept a completely upbeat album. Serious songs such as "Little Rock Star," "If Wishes Were Horses" and "Heaven Blues" plunge the listener back into the heartbreaking stories that have populated past Williams recordings.

Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs sing backup on a few tracks, as does Elvis Costello on the hilarious "Jailhouse Tears." Charlie Louvin and Jim Lauderdale also drop by to lend a hand.

Williams shows she still knows how to have fun, as evidenced on the album's closer, an off the cuff version of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Want to Rock and Roll). (A-)

Download These: "Real Love," "Honey Bee," "Jailhouse Tears."

I loved Lucinda Williams' 2007 album West, but I was in the distinct minority among journalists who reviewed the album. My sense is this collective response, which featured some of the most vitriolic critiques leveled at Williams in her entire career, had much to do with the fact that the lush, ultra-mellow album represented the furthest imaginable pole from Williams' early work. And if there's one thing people don't like, it's when a good thing changes, even if those changes aren't necessarily bad.

Now, a decade after the critical zenith of her career (Car Wheels on a Gravel Road), Williams brings us Little Honey, due out October 14 on Lost Highway. The album is, by her own admission, a sharp swerve back to Car Wheels' rockier, rangier terrain. Williams traditionalists will likely be thrilled; what the album proves is that while you can take the girl out of the South (Williams lives in California now), you can't take the South out of the girl. I think all her naysayers needed was a little reminder of this, and, well, now they've got it.

Here's the catch, though: the tracks on Little Honey essentially amount to leftovers from other albums, most notably West. I first heard "Jailhouse Tears," "Knowing," and "Tears of Joy," for three, at a show Williams played in Chattanooga at least two years before West's release. These are strong tracks — stronger, to be sure, than many of West's — but they didn't fit tonally with that album. And now with the release of Little Honey, whose standouts include the epic "Little Rock Star" and the lovely "If Wishes Were Horses," we know there was method to Williams' supposed madness.

Part of what I hope comes from the assessment of Little Honey is a critical revisitation of West. Like Essence, Williams' Car Wheels follow-up that was met with mixed reviews, West seems to be aging well, at least on my stereo. If West and Little Honey were released as a long-awaited double disc, which they easily could have been (not since the beginning of her career three decades ago has the famously meticulous Williams released studio albums in back-to-back years), my sense is that critics would be hailing it as the high point of her career — higher, possibly, than Car Wheels.

Lucinda Williams will play the Showbox (at the Market) on November 13 & 14.

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Thanks to her Southern twang and onstage cowboy hat, Lucinda Williams has long been recognized as a country artist. But her most recent Grammy Award win, in 2001, was for best female rock vocal performance, and on her new album, Williams lets her rocker gal loose with authority.

"Little Honey," due October 14 via Lost Highway, is the follow-up to 2007's "West," which has sold 250,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Material for the new set began taking shape during the "West" sessions, but it didn't fit with that album's more melancholy vibe.

Williams also went back and poached from old, unfinished lyrics and finished what she'd started a long time ago. The origins of "Circles and X's" date back to 1985, while "Well Well Well" was plucked from the "Sweet Old World" sessions of 1991. The resulting album dabbles in a variety of rock styles, from the dirty blues sound of "Jailhouse Tears," on which Williams duets with Elvis Costello, and lead single "Real Love," an uptempo number heavy with solos.

There's also a cover of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" and guest appearances by Matthew Sweet and the Bangles' Susanna Hoffs. And for those seeking the more downtrodden moments of past work, "Wishes Were Horses" and "Rarity" should do nicely.

Williams is known for pouring her personal life into her music, but "Little Honey," she says, represents a different side of her.

"The narrative songs are more about me looking at another person or another situation rather than it being introspective," she says. "There's a feeling across the album of, 'Just lighten up.' Even though it has some older songs, overall the album says, 'I'm here, and I've not crawled down a hole. I'm here and I'm rocking out.'"

Williams road-tested many of the "Little Honey" tracks well before a release date was even announced. Opening up a show with three unfamiliar tunes is a risky move, but Williams says it has paid off. "I'm not just this one thing, and you see that when you see me play live," she says. "I love to do the ballad thing, but the audience wants to rock. People expect that now."

Williams is also sure to garner attention for a digital-only EP of protest songs, "Lu in 08," due October 28. On offer are four live tracks, three of which are covers: Bob Dylan's "Masters of War," Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" and the Thievery Corporation/Wayne Coyne collaboration "Marching the Hate Machines Into the Sun." The fourth cut is the Williams original "Bone of Contention," which originally was intended for inclusion on "Little Honey." "Bone" is being given away as a free MP3 to anyone who pre-orders "Little Honey" via Amazon.

Williams will be on tour in North America through mid-November.

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Honky-tonk women: On Little Honey, Lucinda Williams sounds almost optimistic. For once, unrequited love doesn’t dominate Williams’s unique mix of alt-country-gospel-folk rock, world-weary vocals, and bluesy wisdom (especially noteworthy: her knowing cover of AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top”).

There are artists who believe it is necessary for them to suffer for their art. There are artists who believe it is necessary for us to suffer for their art. And then there's Lucinda Williams.

Though Williams may well be the flagship artist of this whole alt-country (whatever that is) anti-genre, she has also drawn more creative inspiration from highly publicized turmoil than anyone else. Before Car Wheels On A Gravel Road earned renown as her masterpiece, it was notorious as the album that took her six years, three producers, two record labels and two managers to complete, while costing her the allegiance of the backing band that had become all but synonymous with her music.

Its predecessor, Sweet Old World, had taken almost as tortuous a path. Williams, plainly a restless spirit, has changed home bases – a round-robin itinerary of Los Angeles, Austin and Nashville – almost as often as she has changed boyfriends. Stability hasn't been her strong suit.

As a music journalist, I'm not particularly interested in gossip or an artist's personal life, except as it affects the art. And if Williams has suffered for her art, her art has obviously reaped the benefits, because few artists have generated more power from raw, naked emotions and self-lacerating confessionalism. Not only does she strike a nerve, she's a nervy artist who takes chances each time out.

Every album since Car Wheels has been a revelation, refusing to travel that same gravel road; every release is a surprise.

Her new disc Little Honey, due out October 14 on Lost Highway Records (she's currently touring in advance of the album's release), represents the biggest surprise to date, not because it's really, really good (which the best of it is), but because it's (gulp) really, really happy. It could have been titled Lu's In Love. The source of her romantic rapture is her fiance Tom Overby, a former record industry distribution exec who now serves as her manager and is the album's co-producer.

How does she love he? Let us count the ways.

She loves him with a schoolgirl's giddiness (the album-opening "Real Love"). She loves him soul deep ("Tears Of Joy"). She loves him with a sensual urgency ("Honey Bee": "Oh, my little honey bee/I'm so glad you stung me/Now I've got your honey/All over my tummy"). She loves him in the tranquility of a post-coital languor that could last forever ("Knowing"). And she loves him in a way that makes him all that's right in a world gone wrong ("Plan To Marry").

The music never allows the sentiments to sound sappy, with her killer band, featuring the lacerating guitar of Doug Pettitbone, augmented by background vocals (including the buoyant pop harmonies of Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs) as well as some sophisticated horn charts on a couple of cuts. Yet such an album plainly represents another big risk for Williams, a heart-on-her-sleeve effort when her heart is in such an uncommonly good place.

Because, face it, more great music has come from romantic strife than domestic bliss. Think Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks. Think Richard & Linda Thompson's Shoot Out The Lights. And then think about how hard it has been to take Paul McCartney seriously since "Silly Love Songs" (not to mention "My love does it good"), and how Vince Gill's career went south with Let's Make Sure We Kiss Goodbye, his musical mash-note to Amy Grant.

Little Honey follows West, which received the most polarized reviews of Williams' career, as New York producer Hal Willner fashioned arrangements that strayed from her signature musical roots and thus alienated many who would prefer that Williams stay in one musical place. Some thought it was her worst album; I thought it ranked with her best. It was certainly no dance party, with much of the material inspired by the death of her mother and a romantic breakup. Yet in the interviews promoting that release, Williams suggested she'd already moved to a different emotional place with new boyfriend Overby, who was credited as the executive producer of West.

Where that album was very much a produced effort, not an attempt to replicate the dynamic of Williams and band in live performance, Little Honey is more like audio verite, with false starts, laughs and asides punctuating the tracks.

Over thirteen cuts, Williams covers more musical bases than ever before, from the jukebox honky-tonk of "Circles And X's" (an older song that offers some change-of-pace heartbreak) to the psychedelic collage of "Heaven Blues" (which recycles her previous album's emasculating "Come On"). There's a jokey duet with Elvis Costello on "Jailhouse Tears", which allows them to say things to each other that George and Tammy never could on record.

There's also a sub-theme of sorts, expressed through three songs detailing different stages of an artist's career. The tender, majestic "Little Rock Star" (reportedly addressed to troubled British musician Pete Doherty) offers older-and-wiser advice to someone trapped in the rock 'n' roll bad-boy myth. On a rambunctious rendition of AC/DC's "It's A Long Way To The Top" that closes the album, Williams and band make the road warriors' anthem their own. In between is "Rarity", a moving tribute from a fan to an undersung artist who has never received the commercial success she deserves. "No hits on the radio/No one knows who you are," sings Williams. "No big deal with a video/So you're never gonna be a big star." Ultimately, it's a song about a music industry that tries to "seduce you with money and fuck your respect." If another songwriter had written this, we might suspect that the song is about Lucinda Williams.

Yet there's no question that "Tears Of Joy", the album's linchpin, is transparently autobiographical. It's one of the most moving performances she has ever recorded, a bluesy confession with a backing vocal chorus that splits the difference between girl-group and gospel choir. "I used to play games with my boyfriends," she sings. "Fashion and fame, hip little trends. Now I have a real man, don't have to pretend. And that's why I'm crying tears of joy."

You might wonder how this makes those other guys feel, the ones who apparently weren't "real men," but the song plainly provides catharsis for Williams, leaving no doubt that she can generate emotional power from joy as well as pain. Such a progression has been a long time coming. When I interviewed Williams after she'd moved back to Austin before the release of 1992's Sweet Old World, she told me something that has stuck with me:

"I'm trying to grow as a person, and the songs have to grow along with it," she explained. "You can't be running your whole life and keep suffering and think you have to be miserable to get grist for the mill. I've never really believed that, but I know a lot of songwriters who start getting too settled in and they lose that edge or something, so they sabotage the relationship and create all this chaos and then they have something to write about. I'm trying to grow beyond that."

Sixteen years later, maybe she has.

In case there was any doubt left, Lucinda Williams is now a rocker. Sure, she has built her considerable reputation as an alt-country pioneer and she did deliver the George-Jones-and-Tammy-Wynette styled country charmer “Jailhouse Tears” at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden. But the rest of her nearly two-hour concert was all about rock in its various forms.

From the opening Southern-fried current single “Real Love” to the final encore cover of AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top” (yes, you read that right), Williams was in fine form, backed by Buick 6, featuring the great guitarist Doug Pettibone. The mix for the evening was slightly off, with Williams’ vocals a little too loud. Depending on the artist, that issue could be anywhere from mildly annoying to completely catastrophic, but in this case, it worked to her advantage.

The little boost helped Williams’ vocals, which were as gorgeous and affecting as usual, stand up to their rockier environments, as Pettibone’s fiery guitar solos uncoiled in song after song. Whether it was the stunning “Little Rock Star,” a Phil Spector-inspired throwback that serves as one of the many highlights of her upcoming “Little Honey” album, to the Paul Westerberg-inspired “Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings,” Williams was charting new territory for herself and for female rockers.

The bash-it-out “Honey Bee,” the covers of Fats Domino’s “I Live My Life” and Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” the raucous version of “Changed the Locks” – they all showed why Williams is heading towards another landmark in her already-impressive career.

SETLIST: Real Love / Steal Your Love / Tears of Joy / People Talking / Jailhouse Tears / Car Wheels on a Gravel Road / Drunken Angel / Out of Touch / Little Rock Star / Essence / Come On / Changed the Locks / Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings / Honey Bee / Joy / Righteously // ENCORES: I Live My Life / For What It’s Worth / It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)

For the first time since 1998's Grammy-winning “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” Lucinda Williams balances her bluesy rock side with pain and heartbreak. It's her most cohesive and stylistically diverse record in years, with wild near-garage rockers, dirty blues, Stones-like soul, and aching folk.

She sounds as giddy as her weary Louisiana/Arkansas drawl will allow her to on the downright uplifting opener “Real Love,” which suggests the 55-year-old finally realized true love is found in music.

On the flip side, the blues-guitar-filled “Tears of Joy,” “Plan to Marry,” and “Rarity” feature the slow vein-opening intimacy and reflection fans expect. The duet “Jailhouse Tears” finds Williams and Elvis Costello making strange, distinctive vocal bedfellows.

“Little Honey” hits stores Oct. 14.

On her upcoming album "Little Honey," Lucinda Williams makes the case that becoming a musician does not exactly put you on the fast track to happiness.

In "Rarity," she mournfully tells the story of an ultratalented singer-songwriter who can't find her way in the music industry: "No hits on the radio/No one knows who you are/No big deal with a video/So you're never gonna be a star."

"Little Rock Star" was inspired by the self-destructive ways of too-much, too-soon stars like Amy Winehouse. "With all your talent, so much to gain/To toss it away like that would be such a shame," Williams sings.

And in a twangy cover of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)," Williams sounds like a wizened road warrior, sourly dispensing advice to young, wide-eyed musicians: "Gettin' had/Gettin' took/I tell you folks, it's harder than it looks/It's a long way to the top, if you wanna rock 'n' roll."

Yet Williams, 55, has beaten the odds, and created a fulfilling life as a musician.

A recording artist since the late '70s (though she didn't hit her stride until the late '80s), she's a hero to young roots-rock musicians, and one of the most universally respected songwriters of her generation. She has won three Grammys, and her songs have been covered by everyone from Mary Chapin Carpenter ("Passionate Kisses") and Emmylou Harris ("Sweet Old World") to Tom Petty ("Changed the Locks"). Elvis Costello guests on "Little Honey," dueting on the honky-tonk duet, "Jailhouse Tears."

Her fan base is large enough to allow her to play venues like the 5,600-capacity WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden. She will be there on Friday with her backing group Buick 6, who will also present an opening set.

Improbably, for a songwriter who has returned, again and again, to the subject of unfulfilling relationships, she is also at peace in her personal life. She has been engaged to marry her manager and co-producer, Tom Overby, since 2006. ("We just haven't found the time" to marry, she says.) There are quite a few upbeat love songs on "Little Honey" (due in stores Oct. 14), including "Real Love," which starts with the line, "I found the love I was looking for."

She doesn't have much use for the idea that personal contentment might take away her artistic edge.

"Things will never be TOO good," she says in her soft-southern drawl (she has spent most of her life in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Tennessee, though she is now based in Los Angeles). "No one person makes you 100 percent happy, 24 hours a day. Just because I'm in a settled-down, committed relationship doesn't mean that I'm not going to have my ups and downs, either personally or with what I witness in the world around me.

"Certainly, I'm extremely distressed about this current political situation, and the upcoming election, and the future of this country, and what's going on in the rest of the world. There are plenty of things to worry about, and get bummed out about."

"Little Honey" isn't her only new release. She will also put out, Oct. 28, a digital-only EP partially devoted to classic protest songs such as Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" and Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth."

"Plan To Marry," from "Little Honey," is a protest song of sorts, too, expressing a belief that love can be used as a "weapon" against war and corruption.

And "Rarity" is really a protest song, as well. Williams says she was inspired, in part, by following the career of singer/songwriter Mia Doi Todd, whose commercial success has never matched her critical acclaim. Todd did release a major-label album in 2002, but it didn't sell well, and she was dropped.

"It was just the whole classic scenario," says Williams. "I saw that and said, 'Well, here we go again with a brilliant artist who can't sell enough records to stay on a major label.' And they drop her, even though she's a great artist.

"I used that particular situation to make a point. I've certainly seen my share of personal ups and downs, and witnessed it with other artists. And I thought it was an interesting topic. I'm trying to spread out a bit and write about different things besides unrequited love -- boy meets girl, boy dumps girl. After a while you've got to find other stuff to write about."

After many years on the road, it also helps to find some new kinds of shows to present. Last year, Williams tried something different, mounting five-show series in New York and Los Angeles where she played one of her five most-revered albums in the first half of each show, then other songs (often with the help of guests, ranging from Steve Earle to Yo La Tengo) in the second half.

Like most veteran artists, Williams has some older songs that she plays a lot, some she plays occasionally, and some she virtually never plays.

"I was nervous about some of them, because I wasn't sure if I was going to remember how to do them," she says. "Some of them I hadn't played in so long, and some of them ... I would see them and think, 'This is not one of my greatest songs.'

"But it's a good exercise as a writer, because everybody likes different songs. It's not fair for me to say, 'Oh, that's not as good of a song' or something, because there's always going to be one person who says, 'That's my favorite song.' It's good to be able to go back and look at your early songs, and embrace them."

Coincidentally, Williams also revisits her songwriting past on "Little Honey," recording old but previously unreleased compositions such as "Circles and X's," "Well Well Well" and "If Wishes Were Horses."

She was inspired, in party, by Laura Cantrell, who found an old, unreleased Williams song ("Letters") on a demo tape, and recorded it for her own 2005 album, "Humming By the Flowered Vine."

"I was completely blown away when I saw that she had done that," says Williams. "I must have written that song 30 years ago; I never thought it would see the light of day. It's never even been published. But she found it and brought it to life, and it made me think, 'Maybe I should go back and revisit some of those songs I put away.'"

Sometimes, it also pays to revisit an old songwriting idea. Williams had been thinking about writing a song like "Little Rock Star" for a long time, for instance, but didn't make it happen until recently.

"There's always maybe a person, or a small event, or just something I read that will spark a song," says Williams. "Definitely the Amy Winehouse stories went into that. And then before that it was Ryan Adams, or Kurt Cobain -- just all of the tragedies and trials. And I remember being at the studio one day and there was a big story in Rolling Stone about Pete Doherty, and I was like, 'OK, this song has to come out now.'"

It's a pretty brutal song, with lines like "It's clear you have a death wish" and "You bend over backwards to make a statement/Hang from the rafters, and lick the pavement." Williams -- who has struggled with her own demons far from the prying eyes of the tabloids -- admits she wouldn't have written it unless she related to the lifestyle in some way.

"It's an empathetic look at that whole thing," she says. "Whenever I write a song, even if I'm observing someone else, I'm in it too. I have to be an empathetic bystander, or else I wouldn't be able to write about it."

Short of having one’s favorite guitar stolen, it is hard to imagine what greater misfortune could strike the country singer than falling happily, healthily and eternally in love. The lifeblood of the genre is that which drips from broken hearts; country is essentially music of consolation, not celebration.

Such, however, would appear to be the calamity that has struck Lucinda Williams at some point during the writing of this, the ninth studio album of a career which now stretched back three decades (the lucky fellow is her manager, Tom Overby, also credited as co-producer.) Several cuts on Little Honey are unabashedly thrilled, veritably gushing, bracingly naïve encomiums to the trueness of Cupid’s aim: coming from Williams, who has well earned a reputation as a provider of opposite soundtracks for romantic anguish, it’s almost as disorienting as discovering that the new Richard Curtis film is to be an adaptation of Oedipus Rex.

The tone is set, not unreasonably, by the opening track. “Real Love” is breathless, excited, verging on gauche (“You’re drinking in a bar in Amsterdam/I’m thinking baby far out, be my man”), an instant contrast with the bulk of Williams’ records, in which she has generally sounded bereft and self-reproachful. This punchy rocker also served the purpose of introducing the band she has corralled for “Little Honey”, a formidable lineup including longtime Eels collaborators Chet Lyster (guitars) and Butch Norton (drums), Doug Pettibone (guitars), Matthew Sweet (backing vocals) and Susanna Hoffs (backing vocals); other tracks on Little Honey are graced by Elvis Costello, Jim Lauderdale, and Charlie Louvin.

Fortunately, Williams knows enough to grasp two crucial considerations: that a little of other people’s unfettered happiness goes a very long way indeed, and that at any rate it’s not really what we pay her for. The rest of Little Honey either revisits Williams’ familiar palette of defeat and disappointment – or at least, when it doesn’t, reflects backwards from her presently elevated position over the testing, punishing ascent to the peak. The bluesy torch tunes, “Tears of Joy” and “The Knowing” both manage the neat trick of appreciating the present by mourning the difficulties of the past, and the gorgeous solo acoustic ballad “Plan To Marry” dares to revel in the idea of love as a bulwark against disappointments and disasters which have hither to informed a lot more of Williams’ writing. It’s telling that the only outright dud on the album is its least ambiguous track: “Honey Bee”, a lubricious pledge of devotion queasily comparable to overhearing cooing honeymooners in the next seat along the aircraft.

As ever where Williams is concerned, however, it’s all about the voice. That husky, sardonic rasp sounded heroically weatherbeaten when Williams first attained wide recognition with 1988’s “Passionate Kisses” (later an anodyne pop hit for Mary Chapin Carpenter), and has only acquired further depths since. It’s heard at its best here on “Well Well Well”, an old-school country blues pleasingly evocative of what might have resulted had Iris DeMent been born early enough to record at Sun Studios – the presence of the great Charlie Louvin on backing vocals contributes to the period vibe – and on “Jailhouse Tears”, a double-hander with Elvis Costello in which they play off each other winningly as an incarcerated felon and his long-suffering missus: it’s an heir to the rancorous dialogues of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, or Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, that also manages to suggest something of the tone of Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl on “Fairytale of New York”. The clear highlight, though conceivably of Williams’ career to date, and not just of Little Honey – is the exquisite “If Wishes Were Horses”. That this wonderfully lachrymose lament has, apparently, languished unrecorded for more than 20 years is an outrage ameliorated only by the quality of what Williams has committed to tape in that period.

Little Honey is a heartening and humble album, sufficiently smart and aware to beam expression of thanks for the journey as well as the destination. In context, the AC/DC cover which closes proceedings seems less like a tossed-off rehearsal-room tear-up than it otherwise might: as Williams has clearly learnt the hard way, rock’n’roll is not the only realm of endeavor in which it is a long way to the top.

PLUS…. Q&A with Lucinda Williams:

This is a more cheerful LP than you’re known for…

I was thinking that. Some of the songs were left over from [2007’s] West, but in the meantime I’d gotten inspired – I’d been out on the road, and I was in a different place emotionally.

You’ve used some stellar backing vocalists here…

I didn’t know Matthew Sweet or Susanna Hoffs, Tom [Overby, co-producer and fiancé] came up with the idea of Matthew, and Matthew brought Susanna. He did these amazing arrangements, and she sounded like an angel. Matthew is like the Brian Wilson of today – a genius.

Is it intimidating having someone like Charlie Louvin in the studio?

No. We took Charlie on tour with his band, and it was great. He’s 81, a total punk rocker, and funny as hell. He’s showing me how cool 81 can be.

And how does a country singer end up covering AC/DC?

That was Tom’s idea. He thought the album needed an out and out rocker, and I find those hard to write. I didn’t even know the song, but Tom got us to try it. I came in at the end of the day, when the band had been rehearsing it, and I was a little resistant, but I drank some wine and gave it a try. We end with it every night now, and people go nuts.

When Lucinda Williams finished her 2007 album West, she left the project with an unfamiliar feeling as a songwriter. One might call it security.

"When we got done with West, we knew we had another record ready," she says. "We knew we had enough songs for another record, and that was a good feeling. That's the first time that's ever happened."

Up to this point, it's been a Williams tradition to have just enough songs to make up a record. But these days, her output has been downright prolific. The rush of creativity has coincided with a period of newfound contentment in both her career and her personal life.

The singer/songwriter is happily married to Tom Overby, a former record executive who is now her manager and who co-produced Little Honey with Eric Liljestrand. As for her career, Williams is in solid shape. Her tours are doing well, despite the slow economy. She has a backing band, Buick 6, that she loves and thinks is getting better all the time. As a songwriter, she has found new doors opening for the kinds of topics she can cover in her songs. She feels freer than ever to explore whatever stylistic inspiration strikes her.

Over a career that now stretches back three decades, Williams has written darkly-hued songs about love, loss, and personal turmoil. But on the forthcoming album Little Honey (due next month), she has songs like "Honey Bee," "Tears of Joy," and "Real Love" that clearly relate to her romantic bliss.

"I feel like the songwriting possibilities are endless really, and I feel like I really kind of broke, kind of graduated, kind of am now in another phase where I can start to explore different subjects," Williams says.

In reality, Williams has gradually been busting through a number of creative barriers throughout this decade. She entered the new century coming off a 1998 album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, which had truly put Williams on the map as one of the best songwriters and singers in all of rock and country.

The disc was not only her most popular effort to date, but it earned her the first of her three Grammys, winning for contemporary folk album of the year.

The success of Car Wheels, though, left Williams wondering how she could make another album that would live up to it. She decided there was no point in worrying about how the next album would be viewed, and she treated her next one, 2001's Essence, as an opportunity to expand on the alternative country/rock she had established on earlier albums.

With Little Honey, Williams combines the fresh and familiar. She ventures into new stylistic territory with songs like "Rarity," an expansive, ambient ballad with lovely touches of horn, and "Little Rock Star," a sweet lament that boasts an ear-grabbing blend of power-pop guitar riffs and wooshing psychedelic effects.

But Williams also went back into her own archives and dusted off a pair of songs that dated back to the mid-1980s.

She says the new collection reminds her at some points of her self-titled 1988 album on Rough Trade Records (which included "Passionate Kisses," a song that Mary Chapin Carpenter later recorded and turned into a hit single, and "Changed the Locks," which was covered by Tom Petty).

"I feel like I've kind of come full circle," Williams says. "I started in this one place. I went in a big circle and now I'm back. I've come back home again. But at the same time, this album also offers up brand new material, like 'Little Rock Star,' so you can kind of see how far I've progressed as a songwriter."

Lucinda Williams' new album, "Little Honey," is a major departure from her previous album. Overall, it might be called a "feel-good" disc.

"It was time to feel good," says Williams with a laugh. "It was kinda, partly, coincidental. I don't ever sit down and say, 'OK, I'm going to make a feel-good album.' It just sort of moved in that direction."

Williams is definitely due.

Her last album, "West," was produced just after the end of a bad relationship and the death of Williams' mother.

"It was a double whammy," she says in a call from her home in California, which she shares with her fiancee and manager Tom Overby. "I had been in a relationship with a one-time drug abuser. He was sober when I met him and fell off the wagon and started using again and ended having to go to rehab. This was happening at the same time my mother died. I was out on the road and I couldn't be with her in the hospital, so I struggled with that guilt. Then having to deal with him and all that stuff. Then after I ended that relationship I was sort of in this void. That's when I went through this contemptuous little affair, which a lot of those songs were written about, so I was going through some difficult stuff. Then Tom and I got together and things began smoothing out. But I still had to get these songs out so I could move on."

Williams has made a career of writing songs that are deep and personal, whether writing about love, sex, remorse, grief or even happiness. The cult around her art began in 1988 with the release of her self-titled album (her third, overall), which included the song "Passionate Kisses." The song later became a hit for Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Williams' album became a valuable collector's item after going out of print shortly after its release. Williams' reputation continued to grow with the disc "Sweet Old World" (1992), and in 1998 her album "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" brought her commercial success as well.

Williams says she's never written a song that was so personal that she didn't want it to be heard.

"For me (the challenge is) how to craft the song in such a way that it doesn't sound too self-indulgent," she says. "I don't want people to feel too uncomfortable, but, for me, art is about self-expression first and foremost. It starts there. Then the craft comes into how to I get it from inside of myself to other people."

Williams says that many of the songs on "Little Honey" actually date from when she was recording "West," but they didn't fit on that darker disc. Three others are at least 20 years old.

"I listened to Laura Cantrell's album where she did this song of mine called 'Letters,' " says Williams. "That just blew my mind because she'd picked it up off of an old tape of demos I had. That song goes back 30, 35 years ago. I never thought it would see the light of day. So I thought, 'Maybe I ought to go back and look at some of these old songs and see if I can do something with them.' "

Overby suggested Williams cover the AC/DC song "Long Way to the Top," which closes the disc and has become a concert favorite.

While Williams may sometimes sound like an artist who needs to suffer to achieve her best work, she says she is most creative and prolific when she's happy. And she's very happy in her personal and professional relationship with Overby.

"We get to travel together and work together, and we're just one of those couples who can do that and it works out great."

LUCINDA WILLIAMS
With: Buick 6
Where: Bijou Theatre
When: 8 p.m. today
Tickets: $39.50; available at all Tickets Unlimited outlets, 865-656-4444.

"Riding down the highway / Going to a show / Stop in all the by-ways / Playing rock and roll / Getting robbed / Getting stoned / Getting beat up / Broken boned / Getting had / Getting took / I tell you folks / It's harder than it looks / It's a long way to the top / If you wanna rock and roll …"

Yes, those are the lyrics to the classic AC-DC hit, but Lucinda Williams fans might be surprised to hear the roots-rock singer's version on her forthcoming album "Little Honey."

"At first, I didn't dig it," Williams said, "but I gave it a shot and what do you know? It seems to have worked."

In actuality, everything seems to have worked when it comes to the Louisiana native's career.

She released her first album, "Ramblin," in 1978, and though it received little attention, Williams, who is known for taking her time in the studio, made her breakthrough in '88 with her self-titled release. Ten years after that, she released the critically and commercially acclaimed "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road."

Yet another 10 years and five albums later, "Essence," "World Without Tears," "Live at the Fillmore" and "West," the 55-year-old is releasing "Little Honey" in October.

"Whatever record I'm doing reflects my life," she said.

Her Web site describes the album as "an upbeat disc of bluesy rockers and contented love songs."

The 13-track disc, co-produced by Eric Liljestrand and Tom Overby, Williams' manager and fiance, is decidedly different than last year's "West." "Little Honey" is dedicated to her mother, who recently passed way.

Vanity Fair magazine praised "West" in a review: "Lucinda Williams has made the record of a lifetime: part Hank Williams, part Bob Dylan, part Keith Richards circa Exile on Main St."

Ironically, some of the material found on "Honey" was originally intended for "West."

The album features guests Matthew Sweet, Susanna Hoffs, Jim Lauderdale and Charlie Louvin as well as longtime friend Elvis Costello.

The album received early praise from Paste magazine, which listed the advance copy of "Jailhouse Tears," a duet with Costello, one of the five greatest country/rock duets of all time.

Williams is not afraid to share her opinion about political issues. A new song, "Bone of Contention," will be included in a soon-to-be released digital EP. Williams appears as number 22 in a list by Paste magazine of the 100 greatest songwriters of all time.

"I've found protest songs or topical songs to be the most challenging types of songs for me," Williams told Paste. "I find myself having a hard time not sounding either too in-your-face angry or too sugar-coated sappy, like 'OK, everybody get together.' It's just so hard to do.

"(Bone of Contention) is kind of written in a bluesy, almost like a ZZ-Top-ish or a Tony Jo White swampy bluesy thing," she said in the online magazine.

Beyond all the usual good stuff – gravelly blues guitars, distinctive vocals and a studious avoidance of cliché – Lucinda Williams’ ninth album finds her (mostly) playful and at peace. The joy of making music is her subject on “Real Love”. There are a few songs where the mod gets less sunny, but then that’s life, which is all that Williams aspires to cover.

Lucinda Williams has always been adept at painting landscapes of the soul, illuminating the spirit’s shadowy nooks and shimmering crannies -- but she’s never captured the sun breaking through the clouds as purely as on her new Lost Highway release, Little Honey. “I’m in a different phase of my life, so there are more happy moments on this album,” the singer-songwriter says of her ninth studio set. “ ‘Darkly introspective,’ is one phrase people have used to describe a lot of my songs. There are moody songs, but I’m looking outside myself a little bit more. These aren’t ‘boy meets girl, boy leaves girl, girl gets bummed out’ songs -- there’s a lot more than that going on.”

Williams wastes no time signaling that mood change, leading into Little Honey's opener, “Real Love” with a false start riff that's the six-string equivalent of a friendly wink – then sidling into the tune's hard-rocking vibe with a sensual slink that underscores the passion of finding exactly what that title indicates. The bluesy physicality of that tune is echoed in several of Little Honey's tracks, from the charmingly chugging “Honeybee” to the gorgeous melodies of “If Wishes Were Horses”.

“I’m stepping out and writing about things other than unrequited love. But because that’s not part of my experience anymore,” she explains, “doesn’t mean I’m going to stop being a songwriter. There are plenty of other important things to write about -- the state of the world, for one thing -- I don’t buy into the myth that because you get to a certain level of contentment, you have to throw in the towel.”

While Little Honey certainly has plenty to move the hips, Williams doesn't neglect her uncanny ability to do the same to the heart. The sparse delta delivery she affords “Heaven Blues” -- a keening consideration of what might await on the other side – hits home thanks to its arresting blend of hope and vexation, while the epic “Rarity” rides soft waves of brass (instrumentation never before heard on one of her discs).

“The one thing the songs have in common is directness,” she says. “The beauty of country and blues is their simplicity, it’s about getting things across in a really direct way. I’ve spent a while stretching out and going in different directions, which is my nature. But I feel that I can always embrace that original simplicity again -- that’s why I went back to record ‘Circles and Xs,’ which I actually wrote back in 1985.”

Over the course of a recording career that's now in its fourth decade, the Louisiana-born singer has navigated terrain as varied as the dust-bowl starkness of her 1978 debut Ramblin’ (recorded on the fly with a mere 250 dollar budget behind her) and the stately elegance of last year's West (which Vanity Fair called “the record of a lifetime”). Between those signposts, Lucinda Williams established a reputation as one of rock's most uncompromising and consistently fascinating writers and performers, earning kudos from artists as diverse as Mary-Chapin Carpenter (who helped win Williams a Grammy with her recording of “Passionate Kisses”) and Elvis Costello (who joins her for a duet on the Little Honey mini-drama “Jailhouse Tears”).

Williams learned the importance of professional integrity around the same time most kids are learning their ABCs, thanks in a large part to her award-winning poet father Miller Williams -- who invested her with a “culturally rich, but economically poor” upbringing where artistic expression was of primary importance. Later, she’d hone her vision playing hardscrabble clubs around her adopted home state of Texas, absorbing the influence of sources as varied as Bob Dylan and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

“I sometimes say I just started out singing folk songs acoustically by default,” she recalls. “Even when I was playing open mic nights by myself, I’d be sitting up on stage with my Martin guitar doing ‘Angel’ by Jimi Hendrix or ‘Politician’ by Cream alongside Robert Johnson and Memphis Minnie songs. It never occurred to me to pick just one style.”

She’s never settled for any sort of pigeonholing, entering the ‘90s with the slow-burning Sweet Old World -- a disc that, as much as any release, helped place the Americana movement at the forefront of listeners’ minds -- and cementing her own spot in the cultural lexicon with 1998’s rough-hewn masterpiece Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

The latter disc earned Williams her first Grammy as a performer, but rather than try to capture the same lightning in a bottle a second time, she stretched her boundaries on 2001’s Essence, an album rife with both cerebral interludes and soul-stirring stomps. In recent times, Williams has broadened her palette even further through frequent collaborations with kindred spirits -- acts as varied as The North Mississippi All-Stars and Flogging Molly -- who share her uncommon sense of non-revivalist traditionalism.

Little Honey continues that ongoing forward quest, mixing country, R & B and blues-rock elements with adventurous aplomb. The disc gets an added octane boost from the powerful chemistry between the musicians, primarily drawn from Williams’ latest road band (now collectively known as Buick 6) -- includes bassist David Sutton, Eels veterans Butch Norton and Chet Lyster as well as longtime collaborator Doug Pettibone.

Williams augments that core unit with a passel of like-minded folks spanning a huge chunk of the musical spectrum, from octogenarian singing legend Charlie Louvin to power-pop vets Susannah Hoffs and Matthew Sweet, the latter of whom helped arrange the Spector-tinged “Little Rock Star” -- applying studio skills that prompted Williams to dub him “this generation’s Brian Wilson.”

“I feel that this is the most eclectic record I’ve ever done, and I’ve always been known for being eclectic,” she says. “ For this album, I was comfortable just letting the songs flow, and not worried about being so serious and heavy and having to top myself -- and I think that shows.”

She needn’t have worried for a minute because, with Little Honey, Lucinda Williams has indeed topped herself again.

“Whatever record I’m doing reflects my life,” says Lucinda Williams with a smile, sitting in Los Angeles’ Village Recorder studios. And guessing from the sound of the singer-songwriter’s ninth album, Little Honey, an upbeat disc of bluesy rockers and contented love songs, Williams is feeling pretty good these days.

The sunny vibe clearly comes through in the rowdy arrangements of the 13 track set – co-produced by Eric Liljestrand and Williams’ manager-fiancé, Tom Overby – which brings the lively playing of guitar ace Doug Pettibone and her road band, the Buick 6, to the forefront.

Though Little Honey sounds strikingly different from 2007’s downcast West, the majority of the songs were originally written for that album. And some of the material goes back even further. The ballad “Circles and Xs” dates to 1985; “Well, Well, Well” is from the demos from 1992’s Sweet Old World and is revived here with bluegrass singers Jim Lauderdale and Charlie Louvin. Other guests include Elvis Costello, who plays the part of a drunken degenerate on “Jailhouse Tears”; and Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs add harmonies to the trippy, six-minute “Little Rock Star,” inspired by seeing Pete Doherty in Rolling Stone. “It’s an empathetic look at self-indulgent, little-brat rock stars,” she says, “He’s great, and you want to say, ‘Snap out of it!’”

To close the set, Williams covers AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll). “At first, I didn’t dig it,” she says. “But I gave it a shot. And what do you know? It seems to have worked!”

As part of her unprecedented five-night runs in Los Angeles & New York City,  Lucinda Williams announces that fans will be able to purchase CD copies of each performance and leave with it that same evening.

In July, the three-time Grammy Award winner, announced that she would be performing five of her eight critically-acclaimed albums [Lucinda Williams (1988), Sweet Old World (1990), Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (1998), Essence (2001) and World Without Tears (2003)] in their entirety, one album per night.  Following each album performance, Williams and her band will play a second set of material from her 2007 album West along with songs from throughout her career, plus some special surprises.

Now fans will have the opportunity to purchase the first set of each show (the full album performance live) on CD and take it home as they leave each venue. There will be a station in the lobby of each venue for fans to place an order and purchase a voucher before the performance. This will assist production in anticipating the number of CDs needed. In addition, those attending the following night’s performances will be able to purchase the first sets from each prior show in that city.

The performances are as follows:

El Rey Theater - Los Angeles, CA
9/5  - World Without Tears
9/6  - Essence
9/8  - Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
9/9  - Sweet Old World
9/10 - Lucinda Williams

Irving Plaza - New York, NY
9/29 - World Without Tears
9/30 - Essence

Town Hall - New York, NY
10/2 - Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
10/3 - Sweet Old World
10/4 - Lucinda Williams

As part of her unprecedented five-night runs in Los Angeles & New York City, Lucinda Williams announces that fans will be able to purchase CD copies of each performance and leave with it that same evening.

In July, the three-time Grammy Award winner, announced that she would be performing five of her eight critically-acclaimed albums [Lucinda Williams (1988), Sweet Old World (1990), Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (1998), Essence (2001) and World Without Tears (2003)] in their entirety, one album per night.  Following each album performance, Williams and her band will play a second set of material from her 2007 album West along with songs from throughout her career, plus some special surprises.

Now fans will have the opportunity to purchase the first set of each show (the full album performance live) on CD and take it home as they leave each venue. There will be a station in the lobby of each venue for fans to place an order and purchase a voucher before the performance. This will assist production in anticipating the number of CDs needed. In addition, those attending the following night’s performances will be able to purchase the first sets from each prior show in that city.

The performances are as follows:

El Rey Theater - Los Angeles, CA
9/5  - World Without Tears
9/6  - Essence
9/8  - Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
9/9  - Sweet Old World
9/10 - Lucinda Williams

Irving Plaza - New York, NY
9/29 - World Without Tears
9/30 - Essence

Town Hall - New York, NY
10/2 - Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
10/3 - Sweet Old World
10/4 - Lucinda Williams

Here it is, folks, straight from USA Today's Friday article:

Lately, it has become fashionable among musicians to play "residencies" — an extended series of dates at a small venue. Lucinda Williams is taking that concept one step further in September and October: She'll play five nights in Los Angeles and New York, re-creating five of her albums in their entirety.

Williams plays L.A.'s El Rey Theater Sept. 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10. In New York, she'll play two shows at Irving Plaza (Sept. 29 and 30) and three at Town Hall (Oct. 2, 3 and 4). She'll perform an album each night, starting with 2003's World Without Tears, segueing through 2001's Essence, 1998's Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and 1990's Sweet Old World, and concluding with her self-titled 1988 album. Afterward, she and her band will play a second set combining songs from 2007 album West and older material.

Tickets go on sale Saturday through Ticketmaster.

Here it is, folks, straight from USA Today's Friday article:

Lately, it has become fashionable among musicians to play "residencies" — an extended series of dates at a small venue. Lucinda Williams is taking that concept one step further in September and October: She'll play five nights in Los Angeles and New York, re-creating five of her albums in their entirety.

Williams plays L.A.'s El Rey Theater Sept. 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10. In New York, she'll play two shows at Irving Plaza (Sept. 29 and 30) and three at Town Hall (Oct. 2, 3 and 4). She'll perform an album each night, starting with 2003's World Without Tears, segueing through 2001's Essence, 1998's Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and 1990's Sweet Old World, and concluding with her self-titled 1988 album. Afterward, she and her band will play a second set combining songs from 2007 album West and older material.

Tickets go on sale Saturday through Ticketmaster.

NASHVILLE, TN – Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams has received three nominations for the 6th Annual Americana Honors & Awards. Williams was nominated for ARTIST OF THE YEAR, ALBUM OF THE YEAR (West) and SONG OF THE YEAR (“Are You Alright?”). The awards were announced at a press conference in Nashville on Tuesday held by the Americana Music Association.

Williams’ latest album West was released on February 13 by Lost Highway. West has been praised by such publications as Rolling Stone, People, Entertainment Weekly, No Depression, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times. Williams recently appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (June 4) and The Late Show with David Letterman in March.

NASHVILLE, TN – Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams has received three nominations for the 6th Annual Americana Honors & Awards. Williams was nominated for ARTIST OF THE YEAR, ALBUM OF THE YEAR (West) and SONG OF THE YEAR (“Are You Alright?”). The awards were announced at a press conference in Nashville on Tuesday held by the Americana Music Association.

Williams’ latest album West was released on February 13 by Lost Highway. West has been praised by such publications as Rolling Stone, People, Entertainment Weekly, No Depression, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times. Williams recently appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (June 4) and The Late Show with David Letterman in March.

Best 100 Albums of 2005:

37. Lucinda Williams Live @ The Fillmore

Best 100 Albums of 2005:

37. Lucinda Williams Live @ The Fillmore