In The Deep End With Lucinda Williams

It seems like Lucinda Williams needs music as much as the world needs her songs now… still. A beloved lyricist whose sound has too often been oversimplified as “too country for rock and too rock for country,” Williams is one of roots music’s patron saints of storytelling.

Now in her fifth decade of making music, Williams has released 17 studio albums (not including her “Lu’s Jukebox” cover series). And of course, she's been a No Depression cover artist three times, in July-August 1998, May-June 2001, and January-February 2007.

But Williams’ insatiability for songwriting and performing is as much a theme on her sharp new record, World’s Gone Wrong, as is grief and rage at the state of the world. Despite her stroke in 2020 and arduous recovery period, Williams has been consistently writing and touring. She’s been exploring new ways of co-creating, especially with her husband (and manager) Tom Overby and an impressive roster of up-and-coming roots musicians.

So now as “evil has come to play,” as she describes in “Something’s Gotta Give,” Williams returns with keen observations and cutting criticisms. The 10-track album is not only politically poignant, but musically explorative: Three songs are longer than five-and-a-half minutes (an eternity in a world of attention-grabbing doomscrolling). Williams tries her hand at reggae with the Bob Marley cover of “So Much Trouble In The World” (featuring Mavis Staples) and returns to the deep Delta blues of her youth in “Black Tears.” Brittney Spencer and Maureen Murphy provide killer high harmonies to Williams’ strong, yet gravelly voice on the key tracks like “Something’s Gotta Give,” “How Much Did You Get For Your Soul,” and “Freedom Speaks.”

For as direct as Williams can be on World’s Gone Wrong, she’s still a master of subtleties and keen feelings. She offers shoutouts to musical legends like Robert Johnson on “How Much Did You Get For Your Soul”), as well as Slim Harpo and Dr. John on “Low Life.” But as the daughter of poet Miller Williams who also wrote her own book, Don't Tell Anyone the Secrets I Told You: A Memoir in 2023 (ND review), she also offers more subtle homages to Langston Hughes on “Black Tears” and Jesmyn Ward’s 2017 National Book Award winner Sing Unburied Sing in a song of the same title (which features backing vocals by Siobhan Kennedy).

Rehearsing in a Nashville studio for a livestream, Williams sat down with No Depression for this In The Deep End series. Questions start easier then get progressively…deeper. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Is it true you were already deep into making a different record when the songs that became World Gone Wrong sprung forth? Where did that pivot come from?

When that songwriting period was happening, there was weird stuff in the news every single day — either on TV or in the newspaper — and it was all just mind boggling. You know. Everyone was frustrated. Nobody knew what to do. Everybody was just angry and frustrated and just fed up with it all. It just got to the point where I felt like I've got to channel this somehow, just to sort of help me process it. So that's when those songs started coming out, those kinds of topical songs.