Dar Williams' 'Slow Beauty'
from Neumu
By Brian Orloff
Friday, April 4, 2003

Dar Williams loves words. She loves stories. A self-described "word nerd," Williams is fascinated with syntactical beauty. And as a singer/songwriter, Williams employs her grammatical affinities in her profound, and always poetic, folk songs. But she relishes the details, and for this reason excels at storytelling. Perhaps it's just the trope of an experienced folksinger, but Williams is as masterful a storyteller as musician.

Her stories speak of life's passages, of sea changes, but also of consistency. She sings of her own experiences, and she tells others' tales, too. On the phone, Williams exuded charm and warm intelligence as she regaled me with stories of her childhood, of the writing and recording process for her latest album, the lovely, lush The Beauty of the Rain (Razor & Tie), and her feelings about the current political climate.

Part of Williams' charm is her sense of humor. "I don't know if I consider myself to be a funny person," she said, speaking from home in New York City. "But there's a certain way that one appreciates the way people speak, where you don't want to make fun of them but you really do notice some of the very funny, subtle details of their life. I grew up with three sisters and I ended up befriending a lot of people who just enjoy details of the way people talk to each other, the way they sort of garner status."

Williams immediately launched into storyteller mode, recalling a particularly funny moment from her childhood. "We had a neighbor who was 4, and he had something in this little fist," she said, laughing a bit in anticipation. "And we said, 'Whatcha got there?'" Williams then adopts an innocent, incredulous tone as she alters her persona, now portraying the little boy. "He said, 'You won't believe what I found.' He opened up his hand and there was a little toad well into rigor mortis, and he sort of flicked it around and said 'He's sleeping right now.'

"There was a writer who said 'Humor is people being outrageous and taking themselves seriously.' So there's a way that you can respectfully notice that, that can be extremely funny — feel very much what life is about. Really feel like the sinews and the blood. So I have an irrepressible love of sharing those things."

Williams' career — spanning more than 10 years since the release of her debut, 1993's The Honesty Room (later reissued on Razor & Tie, her current record label) — has allowed her to dabble in many aspects of the performing arts. After graduating from Wesleyan University, Williams decided to pursue a career as a folksinger, but soon moved to Boston in 1990. There she began directing theatre and performing some opera. But after deciding to hit the coffeehouse circuit, Williams relocated to Northampton, Mass., where she began to steadily amass a loyal audience.

Williams is known for her honest and witty songs, her soprano voice, and, now, for her skill as a band leader. Since the release of 2000's The Green World, Williams has engaged in more orchestrated, delicately arranged songs, and has attracted more mainstream attention.

Rehearsing her excellent six-piece band last month in Chicago for a taping of PBS' nationally syndicated show "SoundStage," Williams sought to break free from the putative sterility of a filmed TV concert by sharing humorous stories of her young nephew and bantering back and forth with her audience. Seeing Dar Williams in a live setting is usually quite risible. Her onstage patter, an amalgam of philosophical and personal musings, is typically as memorable as her performance.

Though humor graces her set, it never undercuts Williams' sincerity. In fact, the same nephew she teases about is later the poignant subject of her song "The One Who Knows," which, Williams said, "is basically a song from a parent to a child and so that, again, is about how solid some relationships are."

Though The Beauty of the Rain was written after Williams' recent marriage — a considerable life change — she says that the "big life events" such as marriage, for instance, are never directly reflected in her songs, and that the album's themes regard stability more than change. "[The songs are] actually more about conversations that happen within stable relationships," she said. "I mean, even 'Closer to Me' is saying, 'You know, you're getting depressed and you've got to leave in order to come back — and you should probably do that.' I think it's less about change and more about staying put."

But Williams moved around, adopting a quasi-nomadic path while writing the album; she made a journey from Massachusetts to home in New York. The album's rich textures — accented by dreamy acoustic guitar and muted brass, even the occasional banjo — narrate the transitory journey on which she embarked. Her most atmospheric record, The Beauty of the Rain is also Williams' most deftly orchestrated, though at times it feels as if it's her most spartan. With a generally anodyne vibe, the album begs for an introspective communion between Williams and her listeners. Along the journey, Williams says she came to appreciate her environment and understand its multifaceted beauty.

"I would say that there's something I call quick beauty and something I call slow beauty. Slow beauty is the way your environment... the way it slowly affects you and turns the wheel of who you are," she said. Then there is quick beauty which is the stuff that just freaks you out and turns your head. If you look at it like lightning — there's heat lightning that you see on the horizon and it generally diffuses the air with a certain electricity, highlights certain landscapes. And then there's a bolt of lightning which just comes out. It's very traumatic. It's right in front of you. It can kill you.... So, I think overall environment is what I would call slow beauty. It's a beauty that affects you over a long period of time, whereas cities can be about stuff that snaps you around really fast."

Now settling for a busier environment, one with more stimuli, Williams finds herself always engaged while touring. In light of the world's current political climate, it is almost inevitable that, as a folk singer, Williams will address the war on her upcoming tour, which launches April 9 in Concord, N.H. Williams said that her mission is to uphold the edifying powers of art.

"To say that the concert should be a distraction isn't... we only want it to be a distraction — or I should speak for myself — insofar as I want to create a small, microcosm of civilization, of subjects that are delved, appreciated, frozen in time, living things: music, culture, dialogue," said Williams. "That's the best of the civilization — enlightened discourse of some kind. That's what music is always doing, or what a concert is always about. It's about just people being together — with a big 'B.' So, if anything, I think we want to be a traveling civilization with some of those hot spots of what the best of civilization [is] — whether it be flowers, colors, celebration, or, yeah, a few jokes about John Ashcroft or whoever deserves it."

Like other socially minded artists, Williams, too, feels responsible for upholding her convictions, something she feels is justified after certain comments issued by government officials. "I really feel like when our president, the President of the United States, called Kim Jong Il a pigmy, that it was kind of open season in terms of what to say about our president. We have to start representing ourselves better than our president represents us. And I think we've been hamfisted in the way we've come into this war. It has been clunky, dangerous and I think we do have a responsibility to remind ourselves that we are so much more than that. Sometimes that entails criticizing the administration. Sometimes it's trying to provide a better model."

Williams said she applauds the musicians who have spoken out thus far, such as Thurston Moore and his free Protest Records Web site where music fans can log on and download free protest music and art. Williams says that protest, philanthropy and performance are all interconnected. "If I write a song like that, then it would be great to put it out over the airwaves. And there are some things that one does that feel like they're for the people. They are not for profit," she said. "They are just for the bouncing atoms, the communication of it. So it would be great if I wrote something to submit it, and to submit it for free. Believe me, it's so tempting to make a buck off of so many things as you get older, that when you realize that you don't want to make a buck off of something, and you really do want to do something because it's a labor of love, it just feels great.... I'm all about doing as much as I can for free. It's very good to do stuff like that, because it lets you know that you still have your heart. You have a heart as well as a mortgage," she said, laughing.

"So, that's great, I think that's fabulous. It's about democracy and I think that's awesome."

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