Anyone who counts the old Delta Blues hero Robert Johnson (“The man who sold his soul to the devil”) among his idols is bound to be making a deal with the devil as well. In the case of Lucinda Williams, this could be shown by the fact that while such a diabolical contract has given her a powerful country voice and an outstanding songwriting gift that has earned her two Grammys – for Mary Chapin Carter’s “Passionate Kisses” and that of album “Car wheels on a gravel road”, which was declared X-Rated by many US radio stations, as well as a number of fans among colleagues from Tom Petty to Emmylou Harris (“It’s the best that country music at least claims to be.”)
On the other hand, the devil repeatedly threw a stick between her legs, which led to widespread public success quite late. Since 1998, however, she has been a star of the Americana scene worldwide, and her blues-folk-country-rock is becoming more and more angry, as most recently in 2020 her reckoning with Trump and everything else on “Good souls better angels”. The devil put the angry angel out of action with a stroke at the end of 2020 – briefly, because that first enraged Williams, who was 70 in January, and then on her toes. She reported back with a tour and with “Lu’s Jukebox”. That’s six homage albums, each with their interpretation of Bob Dylan and the. recorded live in Nashville Rolling Stones: “It’s just that demon life got me in its sway.”
Lucinda Williams, Fri., Jan. 13, Munich, Technikum