'He's acting like a five-year-old': Lucinda Williams on her new album, and the trouble with Trump
Lucinda Williams plays in Dublin on Monday. Picture: Danny Clinch
Three-time Grammy winner Lucinda Williams sounded taken aback the last time we spoke, the line crackling from her Nashville home. She had unwittingly upset a number of Trump supporters with the tune, with its reference to a "man without truth, greed, envy" jabbing at the US president.
If anything, Williams has only pushed harder since. Her forthcoming album is even grittier, rawer and more direct in its confrontation with what has been happening in her homeland.
“When these songs were being written, there was chaos going on around us every day,” Williams explains. “It was in your face, the TV, the newspaper, you couldn’t escape it. I had to get the point across. That’s my way of dealing with it.”
While Nashville is a progressive, left-leaning city, it is situated within Tennessee’s broader conservatism. Rather than getting lost in online outrage, Williams prefers talking to people face-to-face about Trump.
“Out on the street, I’d say, ‘Have you seen the latest crazy and ridiculous thing he’s done or said?’” she says.
Everybody was frustrated. You could walk up to a perfect stranger and say, ‘Did you hear what Trump said today?’ and he’d roll his eyes or say, ‘Well, I didn’t vote for him.’
She adds that “old America” still exists but is often overlooked. “There are people right here, in this city, who don’t have enough food to eat. I don’t think people see that."
deals with ordinary working-class lives lived under pressure. The album is almost like a concept record, delivering a straight-talking portrait of life for those who are struggling in modern-day America.
The tune draws on the Gospel of Matthew. “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” It also evokes the Southern mythology of Robert Johnson bargaining with the devil at the crossroads. Scripture and folklore blur into something that feels unmistakably of the moment.
“I’ve never been through anything like this in my lifetime,” Williams admits. “Where the president of the country is acting like a five-year-old. It’s bizarre, uncanny, strange. A man in that position should be refined, intelligent, and choose his words carefully. He should be sophisticated. He’s none of those things, and it keeps getting worse.”
Williams grew up moving through different versions of the American South. Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, near the Texas state line and the oil towns beyond, she later lived in Mississippi, steeped in blues, soul and the roots of rock’n'roll.
She also settled for a time in Arkansas, a quieter borderland shaped as much by literature and poetry as by song. The lives she encountered then and now fuel her music. “I was an academic kid,” she explains. “My father taught at university, and we lived in college towns. His father was a Methodist preacher, and those ideas and philosophies were passed down. A lot of my heroes were people like Woody Guthrie, artists who sang about what was around them.
“From a young age, I had this global view of the world. My father probably handed that down. There was a lot of travelling when I was a kid. I understood early on that it isn’t just about me and my Bible. There are different kinds of people, different places.”
That sense of America has always placed Williams outside strict genre boundaries and cut adrift from more conservative country circles. The music of the Civil Rights movement, rooted in gospel and folk traditions, was an early influence she revisits here.
She speaks with a warm Southern drawl when discussing the redemptive "We’ve Come Too Far To Turn Around", featuring Norah Jones on piano and harmony vocals. “That song was inspired by when I first started playing guitar and singing,” Williams reflects. “The Staple Singers' version of We Shall Overcome, back then, at any protest or march, you would hear that song. It was something people knew they could sing together.”
Mavis Staples, 86, joins her elsewhere for a version of Bob Marley’s “I’m happy to say she’s a friend,” Williams adds. “We’ve done several shows and talked backstage. Her musical history is amazing".
In 1988, Williams signed to the independent London-based Rough Trade Records, most famous for being home to The Smiths during their heyday. “It was very liberating,” she says of being with the respected indie label.
“I always fought that boundary thing and the industry putting you in a certain pigeonhole. It was a pain in the ass when I first started. But Rough Trade, being a UK label, maybe had more of a European attitude. They just said, ‘We love your voice and your songs; would you like to make a record?’”
It was during November 2020 that Williams suffered a stroke affecting the left side of her body. She continued working through recovery, releasing her memoir Don’t Tell Anyone the Secrets I Told You before returning to the stage the following August supporting Jason Isbell. On Zoom, she looks well, her speech and voice were unaffected.
“It’s just my stubbornness, I guess,” she laughs.
I think it’s a Welsh thing. I realised I couldn’t play guitar, it was too painful, but I hope that will dissipate. I couldn’t walk without falling down at first, and I still have trouble. But I can sing, and people have said I sound better than before.
Her instinctive guitar sound, rooted in feel rather than flash, sits in a lineage that runs through Keith Richards as much as it does country and blues. On the new record it is captured by former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford, who brings something of Richards’ clipped grit and swagger while always serving the song. He is joined by long-term collaborator Doug Pettibone. Together, they give a distinctive Neil Young flavour.
“They were saying it reminded them of Crazy Horse,” Williams recalls. “When I was starting out, that was my ideal band.”
After the killing of Renee Good, shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis, Young called on the public to "rise up" peacefully. Bruce Springsteen belongs to the same conversation. He described Williams as “a brave songwriter,” and his appearance on her previous album, , underlined a mutual admiration. Jason Isbell, the Alabama-born songwriter who also plays Dublin later this year, has cited Williams as a key influence and remains a vocal critic of Trump, recently describing his presidency as an example of a “post-Christian America.”
“He is a great songwriter,” Williams adds. “Not every writer is on his level. He has reached the pinnacle as an artist and presents his songs really well. He writes about everyday things. In one song, he writes about a frying pan [ ]. It’s very Southern. I do that too, and I can really identify with what he is writing about. I think a lot of people can.”
Williams will perform in Dublin on her 73rd birthday, just before travelling to Glasgow for a sold-out appearance at the Celtic Connections festival. “The people, the culture and of course the music are important to me. I started out playing traditional folk songs from Ireland and Scotland. I’m also a quarter Welsh, and Williams is a Welsh name, which I only found out later.”
She smiles at the idea of a shared toast with the audience. When I suggest a Hurricane, like the song, she laughs: "You wouldn’t want one of those, maybe a whiskey.” In dangerous times, communion with others feels more important than ever. A raised glass, a song carried across the room, and the reminder that music still binds people together when little else does.
- is released on Friday, January 23. Lucinda Williams will perform at the Olympia, Dublin, on Monday, January 26; and Belfast's Mandella Hall the following night
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