Danny Clinch
Over 40 years in music, Lucinda Williams has earned the reputation of a scrappy roots-rock poet, more than willing to voice what’s on her mind—but she’s always looked inward for subjects to snarl at.
That changes with Good Souls, Better Angels, her first album of what she describes as “protest” songs. Reuniting with producer Ray Kennedy more than 20 years after their landmark Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, the artist turned to current events for inspiration and her childhood for a sound, steeping the album in hard-edged Delta blues and dissecting the daily news like a Vietnam-era Bob Dylan.
“There are times when really horrible things are happening—like the coronavirus—but at the same time it brings us together. I’m writing to release something, hoping when other people hear it it’ll be that way for them, too.”
Lucinda Williams
Danny Clinch
Age: 67
Idea for the Album: “Usually I get into a mode and I’m just working on songs, not thinking about what the next album is going to be. But basically, ever since Trump got into the White House, the general vibe has been one of frustration, anger, all of the above. So that started coming out in a lot of my songs. There was that, but also I’ve always loved protest songs, from back in the ’60s when we were in Vietnam and the great songs Bob Dylan was writing. I grew up around those and always wanted to be able to write stuff like that, but I’ve found it to be quite challenging. It’s a lot easier for me to write a song about unrequited love than it is a topical song.”
A Love for the Blues: “[I’ve loved it] ever since I discovered the Delta Blues—like Robert Johnson, that hard-edge stuff. Before that I was listening to country blues like Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin’ Hopkins, but then when I got introduced to the music of Robert Johnson, it was like, ‘Wow, this is a whole different level.’ The imagery, I love the poetry of the blues. They use the devil a lot, and I just love the metaphors and all that, there’s a certain mystery behind it. … It’s kinda been underneath everything I do.”
An Obvious Reference: “I mean, [‘Man Without a Soul’] could be about Trump, or it could be about Mitch McConnell, it’s kind of a fill-in-the-blanks sort of thing. Sorry to sound bitter, but this is the worst president this country has ever known. These are unprecedented times, and unprecedented times call for unprecedented actions. You have to be willing to speak out and not be afraid of the consequences, and ‘Man Without a Soul’ reminded me of that line back in Neil Young’s [1976 track ‘Campaigner’]: ‘Even Richard Nixon has got soul.’ I’m not sure what he meant, and I was always curious about it.”
Reacting to the 24-Hour News: “I was just thinking about the fact that there is so much bad news. It’s not specifically about social media or the TV, so I put in the context that this could be at any time, even before all that. It’s kind of like an old blues song that could have been written in the Depression era, and there was definitely some of Bob Dylan’s work rubbing off on me—there’s a weird sense of humor in there. It’s like, ‘Bad news in my refrigerator. Woke up this morning with blues in my coffee, blues on the floor,’ that kind of thing. It’s good to have that from time to time; you’ve gotta inject humor into things to balance them out.”
Pouring Emotion Into It: “Every time I sing [‘Big Black Train’] it makes me cry almost, and other people have told me that. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something haunting about it. It’s so hard to verbalize music because it’s such an ethereal thing. But I’ve found a way to tap into something, apparently, that a lot of people relate to. These are tough times we’re living in.