For our Season 2 premiere episode, I'm thrilled to bring you Lucinda Williams’ Mixtape Memoir. Born in 1953 in Lake Charles, Louisiana to the poet and literature professor, Miller Williams, and a pianist mother, Lucille Day, Lucinda was surrounded in a world passionately engaged with both words and music, as well as progressive politics, so it’s no wonder that as a child she flourished as a budding musician. Eventually, she would become one of the most treasured American songwriters of our time.

We’ll hear how her early childhood was steeped in the country, blues, folk and jazz records her dad would play in the house, and what led to picking up her first guitar by the time she was 12, while a vibrant, history-making decade of music was unfolding in the Sixties. I point out what a tremendous foundation of music she had, and Lucinda humbly says, that was everyone’s musical foundation at that time. But Lucinda Williams is hardly everyone, and her singular talent and gift for songcraft was already taking shape. Her parents divorce saw Lucinda going to New Orleans to visit her mom, while frequent university job transfers for her dad resulted in her family moving a dozen times before she turned eighteen. Music and books became the one constant in Lucinda's life.

We’ll hear how by her mid-twenties, Lucinda found her way to recording and releasing her debut album on Folkways called Ramblin’ On My Mind in 1979, followed by her first album of originals in 1980, Happy Woman Blues, which just marked its fortieth anniversary in 2020. For Lucinda, her breakthrough came at age 35 with the Rough Trade release of her 1988 self-titled third album, which bore the song “Passionate Kisses” - famously covered and made a radio hit by Mary Chapin Carpenter, and earned Lucinda her first Grammy in 1994. Since then, Lucinda has won two more Grammy’s, including one for the critically hailed masterpiece Car Wheels On A Gravel Road.

She has fifteen studio albums and fifteen Grammy’s nominations to her name, including two for her latest - the amazing 2020 album Good Souls Better Angels, and now has her own independent label, Highway 20 Records. Lucinda Williams continues to write songs like no one else can: equal parts tender and tough, compassionate and cutting, sexy and raw, always honest, and always on her own terms. Listen in as together we create Lucinda Williams’ Mixtape Memoir. 

Credits:

Host/creator/creative director - Carmel Holt @carmelholt @sheroesmixtape @sheroesradio
Engineer/Mixing/Mastering - Brendan Baker from Phenomephon
Studio engineer for Lucinda Williams - Kyle Ryan at Wardenclyffe South, Nashville @thekyleryan
Theme music - Lucius @ilovelucius
Cover art - Merle Cooper @m.c.cooper
Art direction - @carmelholt 
Guest: Lucinda Williams @lucinda_williams
Label: Thirty Tigers / @thirtytigers