by Chad Campbell, senior producer
We talked with Lucinda Williams in her New Orleans hotel suite during the 2011 Jazz and Heritage Festival. She was the first of many guests we spoke with over those few days, our third trip to the region in a 12 month span. This time, I made a conscious effort to NOT make the interviews about New Orleans, or even mention that’s where they were recorded. But Lucinda does have a personal connection to the city – her mother’s family is from New Orleans and that’s where Lucinda got her first regular job as a musician. Her father, Miller Williams, is a poet and worked as a literature professor at universities all over the South. He helped give Lucinda a love for the written word which has served her well. Her greatest critical and commercial success came from the 1998 CD Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (which is truly exceptional) now her latest album is called Blessed. A couple of the love songs on the CD were inspired by the new man in her life. Two years ago, Lucinda married her manager, Tom Overby, on-stage in the middle of a concert at First Avenue in Minneapolis. Here’s a sampling of the fan-shot video of the ceremony.
Her dad reads a poem written for and finished by a seven-year-old Lucinda Williams.
Then to a different fan’s cell phone camera for the vows…
And here’s part of the concert’s encore … after the wedding.
Lucinda Williams is on tour through mid-August. Click here for dates and locations.