Without intending any disrespect to any prior bands or musicians that have played with her, this is the best band she’s ever had. They have achieved a rare level of rapport that on any given night can be very special --and that rapport allows every night to take on its own feel. This band that could play the same setlist on two consecutive nights (which we rarely do) and they might feel very different -and of course the audience can make a huge difference.

That’s not to say there are wholesale changes every night -sometimes it can be very subtle. It might be a tempo that needs to be sped up or slowed down or it might mean an acoustic guitar instead of an electric or a lap steel instead of a slide guitar-- Marc and Doug have carte blanche to play their solos however they want from night to night. Before her stroke Lucinda would set the tempo with her guitar and now she still somewhat set the tempo with how she’s singing the song but if you ask her she will say that she’s following the band and if you ask the band they will say they follow her. And needless to say, there’s always discussion about any mistakes that might have been made. Last night for instance there was a song that felt just a little bit slow and another one that had the capo put on the wrong fret and there was no time to switch it so they just played thru it. Overall though, Lu was much happier about the first night in Seattle. I think a big part of it was getting past the first show jitters.

When I sat down on the bus this afternoon to write this I had a completely different idea of what I was going write about and the got off on a tangent so I’m going to shift gears and go in a different direction and see if I can bring it around full circle.

Much later last night several of us were on the bus hanging out with a friend who was out in the audience during the showing who said she had a really great thing happen. Sitting next to her was an 11 year old boy who was there with his father. Apparently they were mostly there to see Bob. As Lu was playing the 11 year old became very excited about how much he was loving Lu and the band, who he had never seen before. In between sets she asked the boy if he could be at any show anywhere else in the world who and where would it be? He quickly replied “TONIGHT!!!”.

So now on the bus she tells this story to Lu which she just loved. What Lu said in response will tell you a lot about Lu. She said “I get a lot of people telling me that someone very famous is a big fan of mine and I’ m always incredibly flattered when I hear that, but when I hear stories about kids that love the show or a song, it just means everything to me”. I don’t know if it’s because of how she grew up, having to play a parent role to her two younger siblings, other it’s because she doesn’t have any kids of her own, but she has a very deep love and sensitivity for them. As her career went on Lu was constantly on the road playing to keep the bills paid. When success came later in life she just never felt she was with someone who she wanted to have kids with, as well as feeling that she couldn’t really stop touring long enough to have a child. By the time she started to have some success and could afford the time off to raise a child it was too late in life to start having have them. She has shed some tears over the thought that she had to make some very tough choices and it never worked out for her to have kids. I don’t know if it’s a subconscious thing but I’ve always thought it was interesting that she referred to her songs as her babies. Several years ago we discovered that a business manager had severely mismanaged our finances and after a couple of very painful years of trying to find a way out of a big complicated hole, the only way out was to sell her catalog of songs.

I will never forget the day that I got the call that the sale had finally gone through. We had just gotten off a plane for a lay over and the call came. We both knew the day was coming soon. I gently grabbed her by the arm and walked her over to an empty gate and we sat down. “What’s wrong?, what is it ?” she asked. She could read me well and back then every time that she could tell that I was about to give her bad news she worried that it was about her father. When I told her that the sale had gone through, she looked at me as the tears ran down her face and said “my babies, my babies are gone”.

I have to give a ton of credit to the Dylan staff and crew. They have been incredibly great and made this one very easy and that allowed the aforementioned excitement to take over.

Lucinda is very often nervous before she goes onstage but it’s what she calls a good kind of nervous but until she gets out there in front of the mike and something just clicks with her. She almost becomes a different person, except that she’s very much the real Lu at the same time. There’s no “act” or artifice with her and never has been-it’s just not in her makeup. Yesterday the good nervous was definitely heightened, understandably so -playing with her lifetime hero doesn’t happen every day.

It probably didn’t really show to the naked eye of the audience but those of us who are always around her could see it. After the show she was very worried that it did show to the audience, but we all convinced her that she did great and even if it did show, it’s a real thing—a human thing. So that’s it, the hard one is now in the books and there was a lot of upbeat energy after the show. After all the weeks of anticipation, we’re off— on to 2 nights at the St. Michelle Winery in Woodinvile (Seattle) and it’s only upward from here.

Some of you may have already heard this story but it really explains everything about this day and where it all began.

It was 1965 and Lucinda was 12 years old. One of her father’s students came over to their house to meet with him and he brought the newly released Bob Dylan record, Highway 61 Revisited. He was demonstrably going on about the importance of this record. While he went in to sit with Lucinda’s father for some counseling Lucinda picked up the record and began to look at it and was instantly mesmerized by the cover. To this day she tells the story about how instantly taken she was with this tall lanky guy with long curly sitting there in the Triumph t-shirt and jeans did to her. Smitten is the word she uses. In that moment the urge to find out more about that record overtook her and just like that, sparked her own rule breaking nature. That was because she was told not to mess with the stereo, but she just had to hear what her father’s student was making such a big ruckus about, so the stereo rule went right out the window.

She took the record out of the sleeve and put it on the turntable and began to listen. She was immediately pulled into something that she had never heard before. “What was this??” Whatever it was completely spoke to her. She proceeded to play the entire record and flipped it over and started it again. (Apparently the student needed a lot of counseling). She could not believe what she was hearing and although she had no idea what he was singing about but she knew it was the most amazing thing she had ever heard. She knew right away that she wanted to do THAT and immediately talked her father into buying her a guitar.

From the minute the needle dropped on that record, nothing would ever be the same again. You will see by the end of the this sentence why it’s pertinent, but Lucinda is a follower of numerology and here she is now, on tour with the person that changed the course of her life 61 years ago. And she didn’t even get grounded for messing with the stereo.

As is well known, after Lu’s stroke she hasn’t been able to play the guitar good enough to write a full song but she can play a little and sing the melody and then tell Doug Pettibone what she wants so he can flesh them out. We’ve definitely been keeping Doug busy but we’ve had a lot of fun working on songs around the kitchen table and it’s really been a great way to get things done. Yeah I know it’s a cliche but we had a big lemon so that’s how we’re making the lemonade. And we hope Doug’s family remembers him.

Instead of going into the gory details of what we have left to do I’m going to share the work sheet that we kept so we remained somewhat organized. And yeah you’l get a sneak preview of some of the new song titles but not everything on here will make the record but as you can see we’ve been busy little beavers.

Spirits were high heading home which was a very good thing because we have to hit the ground running almost from the minute we land. The reason for that is that we have an album to finish and a lot of work to get it all done. More on that in the next few days. And I refuse to use the phrase ‘no rest for the wicked’ because while it may be true it is just used way too much. There’s not a lot of alternatives but one that comes to mind is to paraphrase a Warren Zevon song and say ‘we’ll sleep when we’re dead’.

I don’t know what took us so damn long to get back to Stockholm. We’ll try not to let that happen again. It was the perfect way to end our quick jaunt thru Denmark and Sweden. Looking forward to sticking around Stockholm for a couple days.

Ok first the good news -Gothenburg is an amazing place-beautiful and historic -just a great vibe. Now that we have that out of the way….. the best way to put it is that we haven’t had a show like this in.…well, we’ve never had a show quite like this. It was right out of Spinal Tap. (For some reason I flash back to the scene in the original Spinal Tap where they play a puppet show). We were under the impression that this was a festival. It was billed as the West Coast Country Festival @Scandinavium. The name Scandinavium alone sounds like a horror movie about some mental institution where really bad things happened to a lot of blond Scandinavians named Gundersen and Svendson who had been injured in ski accidents. Well it turned out that the Scandinavium was a large arena which probably held close to 20,000 people and the West Country “Festival” was made up of mostly local and regional country bands, although there was a Nashville country singer songwriter whose name I can’t remember that had finished as we entered the arena. Right away we knew something was very wrong. -as in where was everybody? The non-festval had apparently been going on all day as Lucinda was scheduled to start very late. Whatever following the local bands had was greatly over estimated, and I mean Greatly. Even at peak time there couldn’t have been many people there because I noticed the main floor had very few empty beer cups scattered about. However many there were, they were long gone except for maybe 300 stragglers (or cleaning staff?)—don’t forget this was a 20,000 seat arena. Someone clearly didn’t quite understand the (lack of) drawing power of the earlier acts and one of the young girl volunteers backstage had very embarrassingly said as much. It reminded me of the legendary Bob Uecker line “missed it by that much” as he held is fingers about an inch apart. Lu and the band powered thru as if the place was full and we all kind of laughed about it later. It was one of those things you want to forget but never quite will.

A sold out night in Stockholm up next. It will be better.

On to Gothenburg.

Randers 5:8:25

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Copenhagen show day

After everything checked out our tour manager Travis came and got me and took me back to the hotel. When I walked into the same hotel lobby where I had fallen, several of our guys were about to head to the gig to set up and soundcheck etc. They all looked at me as if I was a ghost. In the words of Harry S. Truman, “rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated”. Went up and took a nap in a much needed normal non-hospital bed. On this day that was my preparation for the show that night. And something about the show felt…different. Lucinda was greeted by a very enthusiastic audience and that completely set the tone for what felt like a very special night.

The long flight from Seattle to Copenhagen via Helsinki was uneventful. It’s always funny to me when someone says a flight was uneventful—does that mean the flight landed? Unfortunately once we got to the hotel in Copenhagen things were not so uneventful as Mr. Inside Job had a bit of a health issue. I went down to the bar to have a glass of wine with a couple of the guys from our band and crew. After they called it a night I got into a conversation with a fellow American traveller for a few minutes and then decided to head up to the room. The next thing I remember was waking up on the hotel lobby floor and several people were above me. It seems I had blacked out and face planted and the ambulance had been called and the people above me were emergency workers and our tour manager Travis and another of team, John who has EMT training. After trying to convince everyone that I didn’t need to go to the hospital, I was unanimously overruled and loaded onto a stretcher and put in the ambulance.

I somehow managed to get a couple hours of sleep before waking up in the early morning with all of the requisite wires and tubes connected to various body parts. Now nearly full awake I realized that I was a bit of a mess. I had a what felt like a small hill of a nob on my forehead as well as a very large black eye and broken front big tooth. There were various other nicks and dents too minor to mention.

The nurse and doctor came in and explained that I had passed out (which I was pretty aware of by now) and it was a heart issue but my actual heart was in good shape. Apparently the problem was with the electrical system -it had basically shut down causing my blackout. After several questions they explained that I was basically not going to be allowed to leave the hospital unless I had a pacemaker put in. I found out quickly that there was no negotiation. They asked what I was doing in Denmark and I explained that I just arrived there and that I was part of a music tour that was just starting. I asked them how long it would take to get the pacemaker put in and they said the actual procedure only took about an hour or hour and a half but that it might 3 or 4 days before they could do it. Uh oh. I quickly let them know that that would be a big problem because the show in Copenhagen was the next night and the bus was leaving after the show heading to Randers, Denmark and I needed to be on it. Somehow later that afternoon they managed to get me in and get the procedure done. After it was over and I was back in the room they said it went well and that they wanted to observe me for a few hours and then I may be able to leave. I decided to stay the night and get out the next morning.

As someone who doesn’t often sleep on planes, it often becomes a time for uninterrupted rumination, which I quite enjoy. I’m typing this on the plane and this time the thoughts are filled with some trepidation. Many friends have reached out in recent days knowing we are heading to Europe, they have asked about the growing feeling of anti-Americanism around the world. So as we are making our way over the top of your globe I have been giving a lot of thought to that topic. And being completely honest we have seen ticket sales fall off quite a bit in the last couple weeks and that is very concerning as they started off selling briskly. And I mention this in the context that it is increasingly hard to take a band to Europe with the hope of simply breaking even. It is now nearly impossible to get enough financial guarantees to do a three week tour as we used to do. Promoters are being very careful, understandably so, and without going down a rabbit hole Brexit as played a part in it also. It exactly why we are doing 4 shows in May and 9 more at the end of June. We tried to get more but it wasn’t to be, so we are left with breaking even being the best case scenario for both these runs. You may be asking “well then why do it?” In a recent interview for a Danish newspaper the interviewer asked that exact question. He said “Lucinda, when so many of your peers never ever come to Europe anymore, why do come over almost every year?” The answer is one part simple and one part more complicated. The simple part is we like to go over there and Lucinda does have great fans there and we feel that we are continuing to grow our audience there. The more complicated part is that as physical record sales have fallen off a cliff we have to rely more on touring and other avenues to keep the lights on. As a result we feel that we need to keep expanding the places we can go tour even if in the short term we aren’t making any money in those places. Even if it is a bit of a grind to do it, we believe there is a future there and the fans that do come out prove it to us.

The point I want to make is that most US artists will be affected by all the “uncertainty" if they haven’t already seen it. Ticket sales for live music are declining in the US because of the multi-faceted fears of what is currenty happening under the misguided leadership of the person who shall remain nameless. We will most likely be very careful with Lucinda’s tour plans for later in the year even though we will have a new record coming out to support. In any event we are about to jump on a plane to Europe in a couple days and we have our fingers crossed about the possibility of any anti-American emotions.

It’s nice when an idea comes along at the right time. For instance when you have an idea to do a behind the scenes diary of a year in the life of the music artist you work with. I did actually begin to have the idea around the beginning of the year, which would have been the ideal time to start it. But that didn’t happen. As someone in the Lucinda Williams camp who wears a lot of hats I guess I couldn’t fit one more on at that time. So for the purposes of this journal please call me Mr. Inside Job and consider this the introduction and initial dispatch of the “Diary of a Year with Lucindal” and hopefully I can stick with it on a regular enough basis to be worth your while. The goal will be to grow this into a place where you will have a so called look behind the curtains of how eveything works, or just as often doesn’t. Once we get up and running we hope to add some things you won’t have access to anywhere else, like new music previews, advance show announcements and who knows what else. I should also mention that we will try to keep this from becoming just another hype site, but excuse us if we occasionally get excited and wander over into that territory. In the meantime we hope you will travel with us this year and also laugh and cry with us as it all happens.

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So here we go.

We'll begin by going back to the end of last year. 2024 ended with the feeling that it was the closing of a chapter. Now where that chapter began I’m not quite sure but for the purpose of this exercise let’s say the end of 2022, which was at the end of a difficult (but ultimately rewarding) phase that included a tornado glancing her house, then of course covid. It was capped off by Lucinda’s stroke in November 2020.

2021 moved thru her miraculous recovery and getting right back out on the road as well finishing up the Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart record by then end of 2022. So the next phase began in 2023 and brought the release of that record as well as her New York Times best selling book and great tours in the US and Europe. Many shows of that tour were what we called the “book shows” which included a multi-media presentation of her life thru her songs. They were somewhat similar to the Springsteen On Broadway shows, except we did them with her band and her show included photos and videos from her life. 2024 included another great tour in Europe including a memorable show in Belfast where the audience sang her Happy Birthday, as well as a beautiful show in Amsterdam at the legendary Paradiso Theater. Which brings us back around to where this all began at then of 2024. It was a great but tumultuous year with unexpected losses of some close friends. It was also a time of transition with her band as two new members came on board; guitarist Marc Ford in January and drummer Brady Blade in June. Between touring and recording the year flew by. The highlight of 2024 had to be recording Volume 7 of her Lu’s Jukebox series at Abbey Road in London -Lucinda would be the first artist enter that hallowed studio and record Beatles songs. It was an incredible experience otherwise documented in the liner notes included with the record. As we neared the end of 24 we had planned to take a little time off from the road and finish up the next record which we were getting excited about given that we were recording with the new band. But of course that plan was thrown out the window with invitations to separate tribute shows for Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Joan herself reached out to Lucinda so how do you think of saying no to either one of those. Simply put, you don’t. So much for an easy beginning to 2025.

So what have we been up to so far in the first four months of this year:

1) Nearly finished Lucinda’s next record, which we’ll call Record #1. You’ll see why I refer to it that way a little bit further down this list.

2) Jan 24, Played at Bob Dylan 50th Anniversary of Blood On The Tracks show in Tulsa. Lu performed Idiot Wind. Of course she had to pick a 10 minute Dylan opus to sing. The girl does like a challenge. She also did Not Dark Yet as her non-BOTT song. A great weekend but for some reason still didn’t make it to the Bob Dylan museum. With rehearsals etc there just wasn’t quite enough time in the day.

3) Feb 8, played a big Joan Baez tribute show in San Francisco. Lu performed the songs Joe Hill and Forever Young--she just can’t get away from the Dylan songs.

4) Returned home to more recording of Record #1.

5) Flew to Miami and spent 5 nights on the Outlaw Country Cruise. People always ask -a cruise?? Is that fun. We haven’t missed one in 10 years so yeah I guess you could say we like them, which we very much do.

6) Played an incredibly fun and rewarding run of four shows at the tiny Chickie Wah Wah’s in New Orleans. We filmed and recorded the shows and debuted a couple brand new songs.

7) In the course of finishing up Record #1, we started looking at a separate group of songs we had recorded, several of which were, let’s say, more timely to what is happening in the world. After bouncing the idea off Lucinda's inner circle of people it seemed like that quickly became something we had to do. Even though we were about 90% done with Record #1 we completely shifted gears and went to work on Record #2, which at the beginning of April was about 70% done. In the last month we have written and recorded a few more songs for it and are rushing to get it done by the endow May for an October release. If it goes to plan (does anything?) it will be a Lucinda record unlike any other.

8) This post weekend we flew to Seattle to perform a fundraiser for. And of course that routed perfectly on the way to Copenhagen to start a brief tour in Copenhagen, Randers, Gothenburg and Stockholm. Well not exactly. But it turns out it’s not as bad as it seems because we will actually fly over the top the top of the globe and it will only take 9 hours vs. 14. But naturally we can’t have a travel day without a little drama. We have a layover in Helsinki and it seems that Finnair is about to go on strike. Today. I joked that I hoped that the pilots didn’t go on strike while we were in the air. But assuming we actually do make it to Helsinki, who knows what will happen. In the words of our travel agent “let’s just get you to Europe and go from there”. Okay got it.

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