Fans, readers hang on Williams' every word

By Chrissie Dickinson
Special to the Chicago Tribune
Published July 23, 2006

Since the early '90s, singer-songwriter Dar Williams has been one of America's most critically lauded folk singers. With the release of her second young-adult novel, she now includes "author" on her resume.
So how does an activist folkie known  for backing progressive causes get into the children's book game?
It all started a couple years ago when Scholastic Press  approached the folk-pop diva about writing a young-adult novel. Impressed by her perceptive lyrics in her self-penned song  "When I Was a Boy," the publishing house thought she'd be a natural. Scholastic Press was also no small potatoes. "They  said, 'We're huge, we're the Harry Potter people,'" recalls Williams with a laugh during an interview at the Kopi cafe during a recent Chicago concert stop. "They said, `We hear something in your music when you write about kids.'"
Williams hesitated briefly, but her indecision didn't last long. "I had a good friend who said, `If Scholastic invites you to
meet with them, you go,'" she says. The result of that meeting was "Amalee,"
Williams' well-received 2004 young-adult novel that introduced the 11-year-old protagonist of the title. The folk singer-cum-author is now back with more adventures of her fictional heroine when Scholastic releases the sequel, "Lights, Camera, Amalee," Tuesday.
When Scholastic Press initially approached Williams, they gave her latitude in choosing her subject matter. The publishing house carried a number of titles aimed at children and teenagers that covered various subjects, including such edgy topics as drug use and anorexia. Though Williams took the assignment on, she decided to leave the heavy-duty subjects to the experts.

Not her style
"The idea of [my main character Amalee] having her first sexual experience, or any kind of kissing or anything with a boy,  that's not me," Williams observes. "Let Judy Blume do it. Let someone with a master's degree in social work do it. But not  little old me."
Instead, Williams focused her first book on young Amalee grappling with her father's sudden illness, and the interior  changes the girl experiences as her father's unique circle of friends come into her life. In the new follow-up, "Lights, Camera, Amalee," the title character inherits a large bottle of coins from her estranged grandmother, a gift that spurs a new adventure, new connections and an unexpected link to the lost mother she never knew.
Like her best songs, Williams' prose conveys larger truths with subtle strokes. Her writing style is clear and the plot moves swiftly. Most striking of all, she believably conveys the voice of an adolescent girl.It's a strong reminder that Williams is one versatile artist. Forthright and funny, she's also one of America's most literate singer-songwriters flying under major corporate radar. Across numerous releases on the Razor & Tie record label, and countless live performances across the
country and in  Europe, Williams has built an adoring audience that hangs on her every word.
Meg Griffin, format manager for Sirius Satellite Radio, points out that although Williams enjoys a devoted Baby Boomer fan base, she connects just
as strongly with younger generations, especially college women and girls.
"When Dar comes on and the right amount of young women are out there, there's an unmistakable screeching in the audience, a la Beatles' screeching," says Griffin. "They just adore her, in the way that a lot of them adore Ani DiFranco. There's a real integrity to these women, and brains."
Williams and DiFranco not only share a similar audience. They collaborated on a striking duet of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb," a track featured on Williams' current CD, "My Better Self." "I always joke that Ani DiFranco brought the scream back to acoustic music," Williams says. "She brought that kind of intensity and cool factor back to sitting down and listening to lyrics."
Like DiFranco and the long-running duo Indigo Girls, Williams has been equally well-known among fans for her dedication to progressive environmental and social causes. She attracts an audience that tunes in to National Public Radio, not Rush Limbaugh.
"I get the exiles, and I get the kids of the exiles," Williams says. "And I get the college kids and college women who are doing really interesting things with their lives. And I hope that it doesn't become a purely exile group. In the '90s I felt their  presence more in the mainstream. But I think we live in a very polarizing time right now, and there's a Karl Rove around every corner to make fun of you for having a brain."

Many opportunities
Before she became a singer-songwriter in earnest, Williams dreamed of being both a playwright and working in opera. But  after she landed in Boston in the early '90s after college graduation, she shelved both those dreams and made her way into the city's thriving neo-folk scene. It was good timing for the aspiring singer-songwriter, who found plenty of opportunities to develop her chops in public.
"I went to a song circle every night, I went to the open mics on Sundays and Thursdays, I did tip-jar gigs opening for friends," she recalls. "I loved the people. I loved that whole commune aspect."
Williams is clear-eyed in her assessment of those early days. Although the Boston scene was nurturing in many respects, it wasn't all warm fuzzies. Along with sincere encouragement, she also heard every criticism in the book, from "get a new guitar" to "quit."
"It wasn't like Dr. Seuss's Whoville, where we were all in the circle," she laughs. "We loved, we hated, we competed. And then out of that sort of soup came real art, real moments that just stopped your breath, where you realized that somebody  was really finding themselves. I think I came along exactly when [singer-songwriter] Ellis Paul was just becoming more established. And he was just writing one beautiful song after another for our ears only at the Naked City Coffeehouse."
Ambitious and looking to find her own muse, Williams left Boston and moved to Northampton, Mass. She also went  through a painful breakup when her Boston-based folk-singer boyfriend dumped her for another woman. Those events gave Williams lyrical grist for a major artistic breakthrough.
Soaking up the solitude of Northampton and scraping by on a part-time job, she sat on her futon playing guitar and wrote the songs that would become her first CD in 1993.
The planets aligned when she returned to Boston to play the Folk Alliance, an annual industry showcase. Expecting to run into her ex-boyfriend, Williams braced herself for a lousy time. Instead, by the end of the weekend she'd landed a new manager and was booked to play the Newport Folk Festival opening for the Indigo Girls. She soon signed with Razor & Tie, and has been with them ever since.
Now living in upstate New York, Williams is married and the mother of a small son. Both in her books and her music, she retains the main quality that has kept her among the leading lights of contemporary folk.
"Dar makes you think," says Griffin. "It goes back to her honesty. She doesn't ever try to be something that she's not. She really understands the human condition."