We were quite close to Lucinda Williams for a while. About ten feet for the duration of her concert at the last-but-one Cambridge Folk Festival before the pandemic in August 2018. This is because Maz is very nippy when it comes to pushing through a crowd to the front. It was a terrific gig (despite a profoundly pissed/off guy on the bus back into Cambridge haranguing everybody it wasn't) but we probably feel closest of all to Lucinda when joining in on her albums (Car Wheels On A Gravel Road; World Without Tears etc) on vocals and dashboard percussion on our way back from the Duck at Stanner in the car.
All The Way To Jackson. Lucinda's original interpretation cleverly hints that maybe she's protesting too much about not missing him. We've gone for a simpler 'yay I'm free of that schmuck' version.
Lake Charles. This elegy reminds us of an old stager we knew at folk clubs, now sadly passed away. We sing it in loving memory of him. We thought about singing 'He had a reason to get back to King's Lynn' but didn't. It might not stop us singing the famous Cash-Carter duet 'as I'm Going To Thrapston.'
Concrete and Barbed Wire. Lucinda's signature take on the self-imprisoning barriers men erect in their relationships with women, much more effective than stone walls (which, as the Cavalier Prisoner of Civil War Richard Lovelace affirmed to his beloved Althea 'do not a prison make'.)
