Lucinda Williams Song Quotations

We just did a few takes of a song and just picked the best one. It was real organic and genuine.

Above all, the listener should be able to understand the poem or the song, not be forced to unravel a complicated, self-indulgent puzzle. Offer your art up to the whole world, not just an elite few.

I can speak for most songwriters - those breakup love songs are so easy to write, as far as the inspiration and all that.

Some of their best songs don't have bridges and choruses. So that made me think I should trust my instincts. My songs were okay, I figured. I didn't need to change anything.

Sometimes I dream song ideas. I write a song in my dream, the melody and everything. But then sometimes I can't remember them. I think later on, I probably do.

I don't keep a journal anymore. I did when I was a teenager, but now because I write about it all in my songs, that's what I'm really doing.

When I started out playing guitar and singing, I was about twelve, going on thirteen. The role models for me back then were the folk singers. They all had these high, really nice voices and ranges, like Judy Collins and Joan Baez, and then later, of course, Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt. I decided early on that I was going to learn how to write songs really, really well, because I didn't want to have to compete as a singer. I didn't feel that it was my strong point.

I started writing songs, I guess, when I was about 13 or 14, but I didn't know if they were good enough yet or anything.

I love Emmylou Harris's version of my song, 'Sweet Old World.' Her intonation is great.

It's easier to write songs when you're single.

I write the songs, go in and record them, then I listen to everything and decide how it all fits together.

Believe it or not, people went so far as to suggest that I might not be able to write songs anymore because now I am married. I tried to explain again that there are other things to write about besides boy meets girl, girl meets boy, boy breaks up with girl, girl is sad.

Of course, Im older now. Im in a different place in my life than when I wrote the songs for Car Wheels or Essence or whatever. Different things were going on.

I feel a lot more comfortable being me these days. I'm constantly told that my work is good. A lot of fans and a lot of other artists say my songs and albums mean a lot to them. Isn't that what's important?

I usually have an idea of how I want a song to sound, but I don't always know how to get there

Of course, I'm older now. I'm in a different place in my life than when I wrote the songs for 'Car Wheels' or 'Essence' or whatever. Different things were going on.

We've done about a half-dozen of these shows together over the years, and from the first time, it seemed special. It felt comfortable to me, because I was used to sitting around with dad and some of his writer cronies in the living room, playing songs and him reading a couple of poems. I have fond memories of those evenings when we'd be sitting around and I would be asked to play. I might play a Hank Williams song or something like that, and he'd talk about the time he met Hank Williams.

I mean, whose songs don't focus on tragedy and loss?

I guess you could write a good song if your heart hadn't been broken, but I don't know of anyone whose heart hasn't been broken.

The old jazz singers or old blues singers, you always just saw them kind of sitting down and singing. They weren't worried as much about their voice sounding perfect. They would make the song kind of fit their voice.

There's this process that comes about in writing a song where you just stop and see where it can go. Generally, a song will stay with the same idea. I might be thinking about a particular person, for instance. Then it will kind of go from there. And maybe by the end of the song, it will become something more universal.

My approach to recording and all that is pretty organic. It just has to do with all the songs I wrote; go in and record them.

I have a folder of scraps and pieces of paper with stuff, ideas for songs from the last 25 years; just little things, maybe early songs that I finished, but didn't think they were good enough.