In the real world, human emotions are complex, making them difficult to truly convey in the music world. That’s never been much of a problem for Lucinda Williams, who can do that with ease, drawing you in to her tales of woe, joy and mostly, the endless combinations of feelings that fall in-between.
But this multiple Grammy-winning singer-songwriter had recently had the experience of watching her father, the noted poet Miller Williams, spiral toward his demise agonizing to watch, as any grown child of a parent caught in the grips of Alzheimer’s can confirm. Miller’s ordeal ended with his death at the beginning of 2015 but his daughter’s anguish bubbles up on The Ghosts of Highway 20 (as well as the loss of her father-in-law Calvin Overby just a couple of months before). With Lucinda there’s no sugar-coating it but her rare eloquence, a sort of master poet in her own right, enables her to rise to the troubled occasion.
Ghosts like Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone (2014) before it is a mammoth two-disc span of new material, but there’s also six less songs, meaning the songs are stretching out well past the length any radio station in Nashville would probably care to play them. As Williams asserted full creative control of her record making since that prior album by launching her own Highway 20 Records label, she probably couldn’t care less about that, either.
All her albums are personal but Ghosts is likely her most personal yet: every song feels at least somewhat autobiographical, and that’s not too far from the truth. Thoughts about mortality takes center stage, as song titles like “Death Came,” “Door of Heaven” and “If My Love Could Kill” make abundantly clear.
Williams surrounds herself with basically the same personnel who helped her make her last record: Greg Leisz (guitar), David Sutton (bass) and Butch Norton (drums) form the nucleus of her backing band, while Leisz once again produces along with Overby and Williams. But while Americana/jazz guitar giant Bill Frisell had only appeared on one track from Bone, he played on all but two cuts for Ghosts, and that proved to be the biggest distinction, sonic-wise, of this album. His long association with Leisz pays off beautifully when Frisell’s glistening guitar on one channel weaves symbiotically with Leisz on the other channel. It first graces the ears on “Dust”, a song Lucinda crafted from her father’s downbeat poetry, but the guitars balance out her wearied vocal. As they do on the slowly smoldering “House On Earth” and the countrified soul-jazz “I Know All About It.”
Frisell is even allowed an extended jam without a foil on the long closer “Faith & Grace,” a twelve minute one chord groove where Williams collects herself from the grief that beset her and puts her trust in a “little more faith and grace to help me run this race.” The fragmented articulation he weaves throughout the song as Williams eases into preacher mode digs deep into his bag of tricks to deliver a mood that tells the story as much as the lyrics do.
Williams throws a little sunshine our way for the welcoming country ballad “Place In My Heart,” buoyed by gorgeous guitars. The straight-up gospel blues of “Doors of Heaven” is an occasion to let the six-string wonder duo to stretch out together after she’s done singing. And Leisz with Val McCallum bring the sting for “Ghosts of Highway 20,” an ode to a life spent on a stretch of highway that spans across northern Louisiana. Williams strips down Bruce Springsteen’s blue collar hymn “Factory” into a desolate, lonely chorale; a shimmering but slightly acerbic guitar from Frisell in front of a barely-heard rhythm section playing Righteous Brothers backbeat.
So sure, the guitars have become a somewhat bigger draw on this record than they have before, but Williams’ captivating narratives and exposed-heart pleas — as well as her ability to deliver the lines with unforced conviction — will always be the reason to listen to her before anything else. “Louisiana Story” is a first person account of growing up in the Bayou State, full of vivid details and then the story turns to her mother, raised and then scorned by her strict, traveling preacher father. However, more songs deal head-on with the loss of Williams’ father: “Death Came,” “Bitter Memory” and “If There’s A Heaven,” explicitly dedicated to Miller, is Williams making sense of that loss. But no where does she does so more powerfully than on “If My Love Can Kill,” a quietly delivered curse on the wanton destruction of Alzheimer’s:
If my love could kill/I would kill this/Slayer of wonder, slayer of words/Murderer of poets, murderers of songs
One of the best living confessional singer-songwriters thriving today has had a lot of confessin’ to do lately, and as a seasoned pro, Lucinda Williams knew just how to go about doing it. Sure, The Ghosts of Highway 20 is largely about Williams. But we all know pain, perseverance and hope and once again she excels at making hers relatable to ours, like few others can.
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