IIt’s been a banner year for Lucinda Williams — not only has the country legend released her first album since suffering a heart attack in 2020, Heartfelt Tales from the Rock’n’Roll Heart, she’s also released her first memoir, Glorious Dawn Don’t tell anyone the secrets I told you.
Later, she said, she tried to write the opposite of “the sugar-coated book you get at Walgreens”. On that front, she succeeds: Williams takes an unflinching look at her childhood, with an absentee mother whose mental health issues stemmed from her own childhood abuse, and a father whose poetry and worldview she lionised, but who later almost married the young lady enough to be his sister.
She also tells of a long road she had to take as a singer playing folk songs spending her time in bars across the country and even with the support of the US Embassy in Mexico. It wasn’t until her 1988 self-titled album that Williams had her breakout moment—and not thanks to the country establishment, but to British punk label Rough Trade.
It began a run of unmatched records, beginning with 1998’s classic Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, in which Williams looked back at his traveling childhood and the impact it had on him. Williams’ stories live on in her songs, though the memoir adds plenty of new color — from the impostor syndrome that prevented her from attending a Grammy when Passionate Kiss was nominated in 1994 to how one of her songs somehow ended up in a porn movie. Came and she complicated relationship with Ryan Adams.
You can ask Williams about any of those – and collaborating with Bruce Springsteen, Patti Scialfa and Jessie Malin on her new album – and more, when she sits down for The Guardian’s reader interview. Post your question in the comments by May 30 at noon BST,
