Back In The Saddle

She's one of America's most loved songwriters and has been since she released her self-titled third album in 1991. It was around this time that Williams made her first visit to Australia. “I first started going down there, I think it was in the late-eighties, right after that Rough Trade album came out – the self-titled one,” Lucinda Williams recalls from her Los Angeles home. “I came down a couple of times just acoustic with just me and my guitar player Gurf Morlix. I think I went over there maybe three times.”

And then, nothing. Not until 2009 anyway, when she finally made her return to Australian soil. “Unfortunately I got a bad case of fear of flying,” she says with a nervous laugh. “So, you know… But I'm okay now though. I had to get over that, I had to face my fears. I've got to be able to go to Australia and New Zealand and Europe – but that was the reason why there was a big gap.”

Sensing we're fishing for a clue as to what we can expect from the setlist, Williams reveals we might be in for a special treat. “We try to cover as many different songs from different albums, but right now I'm real excited because I have some new songs,” she says. “I'll be able to play some of those maybe when we come out. That's always fun when there's new stuff and it's fresh; you can see what the audience reaction is like.”

Last year she released Blessed, another powerful record that showed her knack for relating to people and situations in simple but unique ways had not at all dulled. She said, around the time of the album's release, that she had a bevy of songs to choose from, even if she was scared of writer's block.

“It seems like I'm writing more when I sit down to write,” she says. “I have a different kind of process, my mind is always working and I'm always coming up with ideas. I write notes and lines down and everything. Then I get to this point, I sit down and get all that stuff out – that's what I'm doing right now. It's kind of hard to figure out how I do what I do, it's hard to explain. I don't sit down and write every day. You don't see me sitting down with my guitar, but I'm still writing.”

Her stunning 1998 record Car Wheels On A Gravel Road was almost six years in the making and her perfectionism alienated her from the aforementioned Morlix and co-producer Steve Earle. Williams hasn't taken as long to make a record since and by the sounds of things, she's got people around to make sure she's keeping active.

“Tom [Overby, Williams' husband] was getting worried. He says, 'You're supposed to be writing! That's what you do!' And I say, 'Don't worry about it, I will. I just have my own way of doing things.' I used to worry about it because I thought I was going through a long dry spell. Then I started seeing a pattern where I wouldn't finish anything new, then I'd sit down and write nonstop for ten days and come up with all these songs.

“I was talking about it one time to my therapist; she said it's called working on a J Curve. I told Tom, 'See! I finished three new songs yesterday! I told you!' He was always on my back – 'You've got to keep writing! You're on your computer all day!' But I have six new songs right now and I have a couple more that I wrote before, when I was writing the songs for Blessed. So I'm still good and Tom's happy so everything's good.”