Not long after Lucinda Williams released her breakthrough album, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” Tom Petty invited her and her band to open shows on the Heartbreakers‘ 1999 summer tour.
Williams and Petty had admired each other’s works for years, and a friendship between Petty, Williams and Heartbreaker guitarist Mike Campbel blossomed as the bands trekked across the United States, Williams says.
“I just always felt connected musically and spiritually with Tom Petty and his guys,” she says from her home in Nashville, a few days before embarking on a co-headlining tour with Mike Campbell & the Dirty Knobs. “They were all really good to me.
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“Tom himself went out one night and introduced me to his audience,” Williams continues. “Because he knew what it was like to open up for a big-name rock star. Nobody knew who I was yet, and so his audience would be sitting there with their arms crossed, like, you know, waiting for me to finish and for him to come out.
“And so one night, he saw that happening, so he went out, followed me out on stage,” she says. “He went up to the mic and said, ‘Now I want you to listen to this next artist; pay attention because she’s really good.’
“It just blew my mind, but that gives you an idea of the kind of person he was.”
Eighteen years later, Williams opened three 2017 shows at the Hollywood Bowl, which after Petty’s unexpected death a week later, would be the final shows he and the Heartbreakers ever played.
“But I stayed in touch with the Petty guys, the crew and the band and everybody,” she says. “Mike Campbell always had his band, the Dirty Knobs, and he was recording some stuff on his own (for the 2024 release “Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits”). I went over to his house in L.A. and sang on this one song.
“And I don’t know, one thing led to another, and there was just kind of bubbling about like we should do some shows together,” Williams says.
Lucinda Williams and Mike Campbell & the Dirty Knobs come to the Bellwether in Los Angeles on Friday, Sept. 27 and to the Sound in Del Mar on Sunday, Sept. 29. Both are also part of Life Is A Carnival, an all-star tribute to the late Robbie Robertson, at the Kia Forum on Oct. 17.
In an interview edited for length and clarity, Williams talks about her plans with Campbell for their co-headlining tour, her 2023 album “Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart,” writing the 2023 memoir “Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You,” and more.
Q: That story about Tom Petty coming out with you is so sweet.
A: I know, it just warmed my heart.
Q: So you and Mike will do your individual sets, but some songs together, too?
A: We’re going to collaborate a little bit, yeah. Do some of our own stuff and then do some songs together. It should be really fun. I mean, I love his playing, and he’s really good in his own right.
Q: I feel like I’ve seen him guest with you before somewhere.
A: There might have been something when we opened for them at the Hollywood Bowl. I’m embarrassed to say I can’t remember.
Q: I was thinking it might have been when you did those five album shows at the El Rey.
A: Yeah, we’d have a special guest come out each night. That sounds more probable. [Campbell joined Williams in 2007 on the night she played ‘Car Wheels’ in full.]
Q: ‘Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart’ feels like a looser rock and roll record, maybe a bit lighter than 2020’s ‘Good Souls Better Angels,’ which was kind of intense.
A: Well, I think because, like you said, some of the other albums had some pretty dark, intense songs on them, because there was dark, intense stuff going on in the country at that time. Because of a certain president. There was that, the election, and then the pandemic. A lot of stuff to come back from. That was what was permeating the air.
And I had my stroke (in 2020) and a tornado hit my house in Nashville. So we ended up with songs (on the last album) like ‘New York Comeback’ and ‘Rock n Roll Heart,’ like just about surviving and staying strong, and staying true to yourself.
There was a sense of, ‘OK, we got to get through this.’ A lot of people were having to do that for different reasons. It was almost apocalyptic, you know: the tornado, my stroke, the pandemic, Tom Petty’s death. So that’s kind of what the album came out of.
Q: How did the stroke affect writing and recording the new songs? I know you had to relearn your guitar.
A: I’m still working on that. That was the main big issue, not being able to play. That affected things in the studio. The process when I go in the studio would be I would sit and play and sing, and the band would follow me. Because I have a certain way I play, which fits, especially if I’m writing the song. Like just the tempo and the feel and the vibe is coming for me.
I can sing, but somebody else is going to have to play acoustic rhythm guitar, which isn’t going to be like I’m going to do it. So that was a huge hurdle to try to get over.
Q: The song ‘Let’s Get the Band Back Together’ reminds me of how important being part of a band has been to you, whether it was your L.A. band in the late ’80s and early ’90s, or bands later in Austin and Nashville.
A: It’s very important, yeah. You know, when I first started out, I didn’t have a band. It was just me and my guitar and voice. Everything changed when I started working with a band. It’s such a totally different thing than being a solo artist.
Q: What are the things you’ve gotten out of being part of a band?
A: The songwriting starts being a little different because you have a band to present it through. You can take advantage of that. And maybe the songs might come out like rock songs more, because you do have that band, you’ve got drums and bass, which shapes everything, as opposed to the singer-songwriter vibe.
Q: You had some fun collaborators on the last album, including Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa. How’d that happen?
A: [Longtime friend and collaborator] Jesse Malin was really instrumental in getting Bruce and his wife Patti involved. He pretty much knows every single person in New York City, so Jesse was like, ‘Let me see if I can get ahold of him,’ and sure enough he did.
Bruce was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do something on it.’ [Springsteen and Scialfa sing on ‘New York Comeback’ and “Rock n Roll Heart’] They went into the studio where they are, in New Jersey, and put down some vocal stuff. They really cared about it and took their time doing to get the right sound and all that.
And then we got this wonderful email from Patti, describing how much they loved the songs, and nobody’s writing songs like this anymore. That was really nice to hear from her.
Q: ‘Rock n Roll Heart,’ in particular, sounds like a song Bruce would love.
A: So yeah, that song, one of the ideas for that was from something that Tom [husband Tom Overby] had read in an interview with Bruce Springsteen, who had described the feeling when he was a certain age and had discovered rock and roll. There was a quote from him in this interview where he said, ‘Rock and roll reached down and pulled me out,’ something like that.
So that song has the same line in it that Bruce has said. He said rock and roll reached out and kind of yanked him out of his house, and there he went. That was how it all started. And so that inspired the song.
Q: I recently read your memoir, which has a nice mix of personal stories and stories about making all the music you’ve done.
A: Yeah, there’s some of that in there, after you dig through all of the me being smitten by this guy and the other guys.
Q: That’s pretty interesting, too.
A: I was worried about too much of that in there.
Q: I suspect most readers enjoyed that glimpse into your private life. What was it like, though, putting all of that personal material, including your mother’s mental illness, out there in the book last year?
A: I talked about it a little bit before on stage. My book was kind of a natural progression, it felt, from the stories I would tell on stage behind a lot of the songs. And I wanted to talk about my mother’s mental illness because it’s always been taboo, in a way, to discuss mental illness. I decided I was going to start discussing it because it’s no different than saying my mother suffered from cancer or diabetes or something.
Q: You lived in Los Angeles, and I know you and Tom bought a house here at one point. Do you still have it?
A: We do. That’s where we met and we bought our house there. So it’s still in my heart. I love L.A. There is still a soft spot in my heart for Los Angeles.
Q: Your writing and music have obvious Southern influences from your origins there. You’ve spent a lot of time in Southern California. How has it influenced your music?
A: It’s definitely there. There was a Southern California sound, you know, and some of the artists that came out of that, probably more in the ’70s, I guess, I always loved. Bands like the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Eagles. I love that sound, that kind of blend of country and rock. Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, and all that stuff.
Q: You write in the book how much you love to tour and play live. Is it still as enjoyable as it ever was?
A: I mean, yeah, I love getting on stage and singing, especially when the songs are good and the band’s really pumping away. And the audience is listening, and all those things are in place. There’s nothing like it when it’s all working together. It’s just a great feeling.
