An interview with Lucinda Williams (1988)

This interview dates to around 1988. Lucinda’s eponymous album came out on Rough Trade and she was about to embark on a lengthy tour.

This interview dates to around 1988. Lucinda’s eponymous album came out on Rough Trade and she was about to embark on a lengthy tour. Peter chatted to her by phone 3 weeks before she would appear in Philadelphia. He was the support act. 

You're not only being interviewed by a journalist but you're also being interviewed by a musician, one who's opening for you at Dobbs. 

Oh really? Yeah. Wow great! Great I'm looking forward to that.

So when did you get into music? I know you had two earlier albums out on Folkways?

I started playing guitar and stuff like in 1965 and you know I just decided that's what I wanted to do pretty much after that.

Were you influenced by the music that was going on then the folk scene and stuff like that?

Yeah, all the folk and blues. I started out singing folk songs like traditional folk songs, and then I got into all the contemporary folk artists, folk rock and then rock and it was kind of a transgression thing I guess and then country.

Right was that in Texas? 

No, I started playing guitar 1965 in Baton Rouge. I was born in Lake Charles and then so most of my creative years were spent in Baton Rouge in New Orleans and then later in Austin, Houston. I spent about 10 years there.

Where are you based out of now?

I live in LA, I moved here from Austin about five years ago.

When did you start doing your own songs?

Well, I was always kind of dabbling in writing songs. Pretty much after I first started playing and all like when I started performing when I was about 16, 17 I started playing out, you know and coffee houses and I started listening more to other people. That general support group of listening to other people's songs and trading off material the sort of thing that happens when you’re performing live and so between that and listening to records at home, that's all I did. I had no other interest. That was it. I just played my guitar and sang songs and learned songs off records.

Your music seems to be what's real. I mean, I want to tell you, I love your album. I really love it, you know, I think it's one of the best records I've heard in years. One, I’m a real country fan, I have a feeling we're coming from a very similar place in what we listen to. I hate categories but do you consider yourself a country artist or a songwriter who has country influences and blues influences?

No, I consider myself more like a folk, folk-rock. I don't know, it's hard to say one interviewer said it was not quite country. I can’t really consider myself a country artist. As far as I'm concerned country is George Jones and Tammy Wynette and Buck Owens Buckle. I'm certainly not country by those standards. But now the term has grown and changed so much it really doesn't even really matter.

Right well, in some of the articles I’ve read, I've seen you quote un-quote  lumped in with so many other people from Texas, like Nancy Griffith who is also kind of folky and Lyle Lovett and people like that.