How Lucinda Williams wrote her masterpiece: “That song came about in such a strange way”
The period of time that followed Sweet Old World was a strange one for Lucinda Williams. She held herself to a higher standard, wanting to make something completely fresh, even if it meant quite literally starting again.
As she reflected at the time, she was trying to “grow”, which meant doing the exact opposite of creating another Sweet Old World. As a result of this mindset, the follow-up, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, was scrapped after the initial sessions when Williams felt unhappy with how she sounded.
In fact, Car Wheels was, as Williams once called it, a complete “clusterfuck” during its creation, an interesting admission considering it went on to win a Grammy for ‘Best Contemporary Folk Album’ in 1909 and more broadly became one of her most celebrated projects. But during its creation process, several issues appeared that either stalled progress or disrupted the creative flow.
For instance, beyond navigating its roster of collaborative talent, including Steve Earle, Roy Bittan, Rick Rubin and Emmylou Harris, Car Wheels also went through a handful of producers, two labels, and an explosive fallout between Williams and producer Gurf Morlix, who, despite remaining on the project, only appeared afterwards as a guitarist.
However, the material itself was some of Williams’ most autobiographical yet, much of which revealed the parts of her life and mindset she hadn’t previously put on record. The title track, for instance, tells the story of a turbulent and uncertain childhood as she observes the murky world of adulthood with a “little bit of dirt mixed with tears”.
Much like the rest of the record, ‘Car Wheels’ paints a vivid self-portrait of Williams’ life and her earlier quest for stability, told through her familiar Southern drawl and Bob Dylan-esque, self-referential style. The atmosphere it creates is chaotic, capturing all those intimate touchpoints that instantly place you in the scene, like listening to Loretta in a house in Macon to the “low hum” of voices in the car.
While writing the song, Williams recalled to Uncut how it came to her in a “strange way”, almost in flashes, like a “stream of consciousness” where she would wake up, have an idea or a thought, and immediately note it down. In the end, she says, it was like a “photo album”, moving “between the past and the present”.
She also recalled how she hadn’t immediately known that it was about her own life until a conversation with her father made her think about it differently. She said that she didn’t know that she was the child in the song “on a conscious level” until after a show at the Bluebird Cafe when her father came up to her and apologised.
“He said, ‘That song you sang? You’re the child in the back seat looking out the window, a little bit of dirt mixed with tears,'” said Williams. “‘That’s you. And I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry’… When he said that, I was surprised… I knew on some level it was me, but I wasn’t fully aware of it.”
Although these moments are clear in the song, especially where she exposes the vulnerability she experienced during her childhood years, it’s clear why she’d miss those cross-references until years later. After all, when you’re as close to your own art as Williams is, those lines can easily blur, with reality and fiction blending into one.
