Lucinda Williams
“My dad, as a poet, always told me to never censor myself – that’s one of his cardinal rules of creative writing,” says multiple-Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams. “That became my motto which I’ve stuck by all these years.” Miller Williams’ advice clearly is born out on Lucinda’s powerful eighteenth studio album, the provocative World’s Gone Wrong. “I felt a sense of urgency in making this record,” she adds.
Filled with gut-wrenching topical songs, the album’s ten tracks were written and recorded in a blast of collaborative creativity as Lucinda and her cowriters – primarily husband/manager/co-producer Tom Overby and guitarist Doug Pettibone – grappled with events transpiring during the spring of 2025. A whole other album had been in the works, but that “urgency” to address our current cataclysmic situation motivated Lucinda and company to cut World’s Gone Wrong in direct response. “Music is a powerful weapon,” she points out. “I want this record to make people aware, wake them up. I like to push people’s buttons.”
Lucinda, Pettibone, and Overby returned to co-producer Ray Kennedy’s Room & Board Studio in Nashville to cut the tracks with her newly configured band: guitarist Marc Ford (Black Crowes), drummer Brady Blade (Emmylou Harris), and her longtime bassist David Sutton. On the gripping title track, they’re joined by guest vocalist Brittney Spencer and keyboardist Rob Burger on Hammond B3. Its title inspired by the 1931 Mississippi Sheiks song (repurposed by Dylan in ‘93), the lyrics give voice to the lives of baffled everyday Americans: a nurse and a car salesman “workin’ long hours” and “lookin’ for comfort in a song.”
Throughout the album, Lucinda is at her most direct, not mincing words via those distinctive, one-of-a-kind vocals. The ominous “Something’s Gotta Give” (also featuring Spencer) is punctuated by Pettibone’s and Ford’s fiery two-guitar interplay – a clarion call that “evil has come to play/you can feel it everywhere.” On the country-blues “Lowlife,”
Mickey Raphael’s dulcet harmonica livens up this ode to a juke joint where weary souls find relief. Lucinda and her band played the song onstage with Raphael during Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Fest, and “audiences really responded to that one,” Lucinda recalls. After their August 2 tour stop in Saratoga Springs, they reconvened with Raphael at New York’s iconic Electric Lady Studio to cut the vibrant track.
The blues-rockin’ “Sing Unburied Sing,” inspired by Jesmyn Ward’s 2017 award-winning novel of a haunted South, offers soaring background vocals by Maureen Murphy and Siobhan Kennedy. A gutbucket blues, “Black Tears” features Reese Wynan’s Hammond B3 accenting a down-and-dirty dual guitar attack. Accompanied by a serpentine slide guitar, “Punchline” eviscerates “false gods and deceivers/playin’ on our deepest fears”
and “people being taught to hate.” Personifying the voice of liberty itself, in “Freedom Speaks” Lucinda reminds us that “apathy will blind you,” urging us to “stand up and fight.” The punk-blues “How Much Did You Get for Your Soul?” is a sequel of sorts to the piercing “Man Without a Soul,” from Lucinda’s critically acclaimed Good Souls Better Angels (2020). Backed by Murphy’s churchy vocals, Lucinda paraphrases biblical scripture, delivering a bit of fire-and-brimstone that’s sorely needed.
The sole cover song on the album, Bob Marley’s formidable “So Much Trouble in the World,” features the inimitable vocals of national treasure Mavis Staples. “It’s the first time I’ve cut a Bob Marley song,” says Lucinda, who’s released a series of albums of songs by the Fab Four (2024’s Lucinda Williams Sings the Beatles from Abbey Road) and Tom Petty (2020’s Runnin’ Down the Dream), as well as blues and country classics. “I was self-conscious about it at first, because the song is so great and it had already been recorded the best it’s ever going to be. But then when Mavis Staples came in to do vocals….” Together, they nailed it.
The hymnlike “We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around,” featuring Norah Jones on piano and harmonies, is a heartbreaking closer, yet there is an aspirational quality too. “Norah’s voice lifts the song up,” says Lucinda. “Her part is subtle, kind of quiet, but it adds a whole level of something to the song.” That “something” permeates the entirety of World’s Gone Wrong, giving courage to listeners who are – as the title track says – “lookin’ for comfort in a song.”
And that’s what Lucinda fans have come to depend on over the past 45 years – since her sophomore effort comprised of originals, Happy Woman Blues, in 1980. With a back catalog of remarkable albums, including 1998’s game-changing Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, three Grammy awards and countless accolades, including Time Magazine naming her America’s Best Songwriter in 2001, Williams is one of our most revered artists, beloved for her singular vocals and extraordinary songs. And in these troubling times, we need the light she shines on World’s Gone Wrong more than ever before.
About Bo Ramsey:
Sometimes the music chooses an artist. It can arrive in the form of a sound heard in the middle of silence, or maybe a certain guitar is ready to share its secrets. Either way, the spirit world is involved and there is no way to stop it.
Bo Ramsey is used to an outside world invading his inner world with deep messages and mesmerizing songs. As it came time for Ramsey to record again, an idea that had been hanging around would not be denied: an instrumental album. Of course, it has to be a little more convoluted than that. “We have a big kitchen in our house, and I’m always playing guitar in there,” Ramsey says. “There always seems to be two or three amps in there too. One day last fall I was on the road and swung into a guitar store in the Twin Cities and on a stand sitting on top of an amplifier was an old Harmony electric guitar. Just yelling on me.”
That Harmony “yelling” was the birth of Bo Ramsey’s irresistible new album WILDWOOD CALLING. The musician, who was born and raised in Burlington, Iowa, and has lived in Iowa City the past few decades, has carved out a unique career for 40 years. And it shows not one sign of slowing down. He has been involved in enough high-profile and low-down endeavors to have become somewhat of a legend, but a legend who still hides from the spotlights and leans away from stardom. Maybe that’s because Ramsey has mystifyingly maintained a devotion to the music side of the music business, and lets everything else fall by the side. Naturally, an all-instrumental album was just a matter of time.
After buying the Harmony guitar, a series of inspirations began to land. First were some musical ideas that got recorded on Ramsey’s phone, and then a band of like-minded musicians began to converge, and get mixed and matched. Finally drummer JT Bates and bassist Marty Christensen found themselves together in Bo Ramsey’s kitchen with engineer Adam Krinsky. Of course, it had to be in the kitchen because that’s where the idea was born and that’s where it had to come to life. Still, the emotional side of the music had to emerge before “the keepers” started being recorded. That is exactly what happened in the two days the players were together in that Iowa kitchen. With Alex Ramsey chiming in on three tracks by way of Minnesota, adding lush living-room piano and perfectly hushed basement keyboards.
It only takes a few seconds of listening to realize something completely off the grid has been captured on WILDWOOD CALLING. Maybe that’s because there’s as much silence as there is sound. Musical guru Miles Davis once famously said that it is “what isn’t played” that is really at the heart of so much timeless music, and that is the secret to Ramsey’s new opus. It is a sound that could probably only hail from the vast heartland of America, a place that hasn’t been completely cluttered with buildings, cars and people. There is so much breathing room on these songs that it feels just like a new life has just been born.
For those who might recognize Bo Ramsey by his association with artists like Lucinda Williams, Greg Brown, Kevin Gordon, Pieta Brown, Charlie Parr and others, his new music is the perfect introduction to someone who always listens and plays with his own sonic vision in full motion . So not surprisingly, the list of Ramsey’s accolades is long: including Grammy-Award Winning Guitar Player, 2 Time Grammy Nominated Producer, Iowa Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and Iowa Blues Hall of Famer. And if there were other Iowa halls of fame he would no doubt be in them too. But above all, Ramsey is a proud card-carrying member of his own hall of fame, which is the one where he chases the sounds in his head and his heart. He is always looking for a way to wrestle them into a recording so he can share that love of music with friends and strangers alike. WILDWOOD CALLING is an album for the ages, and the perfect calling card for anyone with an interest in hearing the past, the present and the future rolled into one. Long may Bo Ramsey run.