Lucina Williams talks about Petty’s friendship and touring

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Shortly after Lucinda Williams released her breakthrough album, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” Tom Petty invited her and her band to open for the Heartbreakers’ 1999 summer tour.

Williams and Petty admired each other’s work for years, and the friendship between Petty, Williams and Heartbreaker guitarist Mike Campbell blossomed as the bands traveled across the United States, Williams says.

“I’ve always felt a musical and spiritual connection to Tom Petty and his boys,” she says from her home in Nashville, Tennessee, days before heading out on tour with Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs. “They were all very kind to me.

“Tom himself came out one night and introduced me to his audience,” Williams continues. “Because he knew what it was like to open up for a famous rock star. Nobody knew who I was yet, and so his audience sat there with their arms crossed, waiting for me to finish and for him to leave.

“Then one night he saw it happening, so he came out and followed me on stage,” she says. “He walked up to the microphone and said, ‘Now I want you to listen to the next artist; pay attention because she’s really good.”

“It just blew my mind, but it gives you an idea of ​​the kind of person he was.”

Eighteen years later, Williams opened three 2017 shows at the Hollywood Bowl that, following Petty’s unexpected death a week later, would be the last shows he and the Heartbreakers ever played.

“But I kept in touch with the Petty guys, the crew, the band and everyone,” she says. “Mike Campbell always had a band called The Dirty Knobs, and he recorded some stuff on his own (for the 2024 release Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits). I went to his house in Los Angeles and sang this song.

“And I don’t know, one thing led to another and there was some talk about us doing some shows together,” Williams says.

In the interview, edited for length and clarity, Williams talks about his plans with Campbell to tour together, his 2023 album Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart, and writing his 2023 memoir Don’t Tell Nobody About Secrets which I told.” You” and much more.

That story about Tom Petty going out with you is so sweet.

I know it just warmed my heart.

So, will you and Mike be performing your individual sets as well as some songs together?

We’re going to collaborate a little bit, yeah. We do our own thing and then record some songs together. This should be really fun. I mean, I love his acting and he’s really good in his own right.

I have a feeling that I’ve already seen him somewhere visiting you.

Maybe there was something when we opened for them at the Hollywood Bowl. I’m embarrassed to admit that I can’t remember.

I thought it might have been when you did those five album shows at the El Rey.

Yes, every evening we had a special guest. This sounds more likely. (Campbell joined Williams in 2007 on the night she played “Car Wheels” in its entirety.)

“Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart” feels like a looser rock n roll record, perhaps a little lighter than 2020’s “Good Souls Better Angels,” which was quite intense.

Well, I think because, like you said, some of the other albums had some pretty dark, intense songs because there was some dark, intense stuff going on in the country at the time. Because of a certain president. There were elections, and then a pandemic. Lots of things to come back from. That’s what permeated the air.

And I had a stroke (in 2020) and a tornado hit my home in Nashville. We ended up with songs (on the last album) like “New York Comeback” and “Rock n Roll Heart” about surviving and staying strong and staying true to yourself.

There was a feeling of, “Okay, we need to get through this.” Many people have had to do this for various reasons. You know, it was almost apocalyptic: the tornado, my stroke, the pandemic, the death of Tom Petty. That’s what the album came from.

How did the stroke affect the writing and recording of new songs? I know you had to relearn how to play guitar.

I’m still working on it. This was the main big problem – the inability to play. This affected the situation in the studio. When I get to the studio, I sit and play and sing and the band follows me. Because I have a certain playing style that suits me, especially if I’m writing a song. I just like the pace, the feel and the atmosphere.

I can sing, but someone else will have to play acoustic rhythm guitar, and I’m not going to do that. So that was a huge hurdle to overcome.

The song “Let’s Get the Band Back Together” reminds me of how important it was for you to be part of a band, whether it was the L.A. band in the late ’80s and early ’90s or the bands later in Austin and Nashville.

This is very important, yes. You know, when I first started, I didn’t have a group. It was just me, my guitar and my voice. Everything changed when I started working with the group. It’s a completely different thing than being a solo artist.

What did you get from being in the group?

The songwriting starts to be a little different because you have a band that represents it. You can take advantage of this. And maybe the songs can be more like rock songs because you have a band and you have drums and bass that shape everything, as opposed to a singer-songwriter vibe.

You had some fun collaborators on the last album, including Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa. How did this happen?

(Long time friend and collaborator) Jesse Malin was really instrumental in bringing Bruce and his wife Patti on board. He practically knows every person in New York, so Jesse said, “Let me see if I can reach him,” and of course he did.

Bruce said, “Yeah, I’ll do something.” (Springsteen and Scialfa sing on “New York Comeback” and “Rock n Roll Heart”). They went into the studio where they are now in New Jersey and recorded some vocals. They really cared about it and took their time to get the sound right and everything.

And then we got a wonderful letter from Patti describing how much they loved the songs and how no one else was writing songs like that. It was very nice to hear this from her.

“Rock n Roll Heart” in particular sounds like a song Bruce would love.

So yeah, this song, one of the ideas for it came from something Tom (husband Tom Overby) read in an interview with Bruce Springsteen, who described this feeling when he was a certain age and discovered rock and roll. . There was a quote from him in that interview where he said, “Rock and roll reached out and pulled me out,” something like that.

So this song has the same line that Bruce said. He said rock and roll reached out and kind of pulled him out of the house and he left. That’s how it all started. And this inspired the creation of the song.

I recently read your memoir, which beautifully combines personal stories with stories about the creation of all the music you’ve written.

Yes, there is some of that, if you dig into everything that struck me about this guy and the other guys.

This is also quite interesting.

I was worried about too much of it there.

I suspect most readers enjoyed this glimpse into your personal life. But what was it like putting all this personal material, including your mother’s mental illness, into a book last year?

I talked about this a little before going on stage. My book was sort of a natural progression of the stories I told on stage in many of the songs. And I wanted to talk about my mother’s mental illness because discussing mental illness has always been taboo. I decided to start discussing this because it is no different than me saying that my mother suffered from cancer or diabetes or anything else.

You lived in Los Angeles, and I know that you and Tom once bought a house here. Do you still have it?

We do. We met there and bought a house there. So it’s still in my heart. I love Los Angeles. I still have a soft spot in my heart for Los Angeles.

There is a clear Southern influence in your writing and music, as you are originally from that country. You’ve spent a lot of time in Southern California. How has this influenced your music?

It’s definitely there. You know, there was a Southern California sound and some of the artists that came out of that were probably more from the ’70s, I think I’ve always liked. Bands like the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Eagles. I love that sound, that mix of country and rock. Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne and all that.

In the book you write about how much you love touring and performing live. Is it still as enjoyable as before?

I mean, yeah, I love getting on stage and singing, especially when the songs are good and the band is really cool. And the audience listens, and it’s all there. There’s nothing better when everything works together. It’s just a great feeling.