Q & A
Lucinda Williams: “I consider myself an activist”
The title makes it pretty clear, but what was the impetus for this new album?
A lot of crazy stuff’s been going on in America with this current president. Insanity, chaos and confusion. There was a period of time recently when he had just gotten into office and it seemed like every day there was some weird thing he’d done or said and it was just pervasive. I was getting so frustrated with the state of things that I started writing about it to help process it, because that’s what songwriting is good for.
How has your songwriting process changed since you had a stroke?
It’s affected it to some degree as obviously I’m not on the guitar working a melody out. I can make enough of a chord to get a note in my head and create the rest of it. I’ll invite [guitarist] Doug Pettibone over to sit with me and I’ll sing the melody I have in my head, and he’ll play it and we sort it out that way.