Delicate Downpour: A conversation with Dar Williams
Conducted by Tim Pulice
Inside Borders magazine
April 2003
Born in Mount Kisco, New York, and raised not far from New York City, Dar
Williams took a somewhat winding, atypical road to a career in music.
After earning a bachelor of arts degree from Wesleyan University, double-majoring
in religion and theater, Williams moved to Boston, becoming stage manager
for the famed, now defunt Opera Company of Boston. But eventually,
she turned her attention to her own performance skills, taking advantage
of open-mike opportunities at clubs to develop a lush vocal style that's
been compared to Joni Mitchell's.
Following up her acclaimed 2000 release, The Green World-inspired by the
landscapes near her former home in Massachusetts-and the magnetic concert
recording, Out There Live, the politically active singer-songwriter explores
fresh ground, literally and figuratively, on her sixth full-length solo album,
The Beauty of the Rain (Razor & Tie). Inspired by her recent relocation
to the Big Apple and her new marriage, the recording features such high-profile
guests as Alison Krauss, Bela Fleck, and John Medeski. As Williams
says on her website, "We took our time and built a real atmosphere of intimacy
which we think comes through on the record."
*Talk about the impact of living in New York City.
Dar Williams: You have to accept this
very different pace. Suddenly, I realized that I've really been enjoying
the faster pace of New York. Everybody's on their way someplace: people
talking fast, eating fast, working fast. I grew up just outside of
New York City and my family was actually pretty slowed down compared to that.
We had a big garden so there was respect for slow-growing things.
*I've read that the song "The World's Not Falling Apart" from your new
album took a long time to complete. Why was that the case?
DW: Frankly, all of my songs take a long
time. [Laughing.] This one became really complicated, because
I feel like I have three personalities at work. One says, "Go back
to the land; live in the hills." Another says, "Work with the system but work hard." I
have a song called "Play the Greed" [featured on the various artists compilation
Hempilation 2] which basically says: buy hemp, buy organic, do all those
things, and then corporations will look like you because they're greedy and
they just want to sell things to you.
So if you show them who you are, they will start wearing hemp themselves,
putting hemp seats in BMWs. Then there's this third part of me that
says, "We don't have to see this as an us/them kind of world." To me,
that's why the song took so long, because you have to sort through all these
things.
*In this increasingly tense political climate, is it difficult to maintain a positive attitude personally and with your music?
DW: In some ways it's always been this
bad. I've been told that this is the last gasp of the truly far right.
It makes me feel like 1984 came about 20 years later. [Laughing.] I
stand with my mouth open. [Professor-author] Howard Zinn said something really
fabulous, that the counterculture is here to stay. After Vietnam, the
counterculture of people asking eloquent questions arrived and stayed.
I don't have to wander far to find other people who feel the way I do.
The guy who works at the garage where I keep my car in the city rants and
raves about salt on the street-all sorts of neighborhood concerns-but then
he'll go into a political diatribe, discourse and criticism about all the
issues that are very close to the surface these days.
*Are you hopeful about the future of music, especially in light of how many schools have cut their music and arts programs?
DW: Well, alternative energy is sort
of my latest activist outpost, but I would say music in the schools is going
to be my next thing. Actually, I have a name for it, "I Pledge a Genius to
the Flag," because music programs create geniuses. Music makes you
smarter, and prodigies will die like withering plants if they don't get a
chance to find that outlet early on. I think it's a bad sign about
our country that, during a time of prosperity, we're cutting music and arts
programs. We're not a strong country if we're not strong culturally.
Hopefully, that will change.
Thanks to Jen Telischak for the transcription