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Maturity isn't a quality that alternative musicians generally aspire to, but it's just the right word to describe the overriding feel of Victoria Williams' latest album, Musings of a Creekdipper. The mood resonates with the knowledge that life is finite but precious; it allows Williams to appreciate the tiny things but also take the time to look for bigger meanings. This double-edged sword is a familiar one for the singer-songwriter. In 1992, just when Williams had snagged the plum spot opening for Neil Young on a nationwide tour, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Her musician friends, including Soul Asylum, organized Sweet Relief, a benefit album that helped Williams pay her medical bills. It also led to an organization that raises money for musicians without health insurance or retirement benefits, and it exposed a whole new crowd to her music. That her illness helped make her famous is just the kind of twist of fate that Williams can appreciate, but she doesn't want to be known for having MS. From a Toronto, Canada, hotel room she says, in her wispy, sunny voice, that this record for her is "kind of like moving on." She's more appreciative of what she has--and what she could lose. Her consciousness that our bodies can, and eventually will, fail us gives Creekdipper a new seriousness, but it's not sadness. Williams has managed to find the silver lining of chronic illness: It allows you the time to see what you have. She's chosen a Nat "King" Cole standard, "Nature Boy," to tell what she calls the biggest lesson of the record: "The greatest thing is just to love and be loved." Williams' illness has allowed her to focus her own life, which has meant giving up city things and moving three hours outside of Los Angeles to Joshua Tree, where she lives in a fixer-upper with her musician husband, former Jayhawks member Mark Olson, and three dogs. It's been four years since her last studio record, and although Williams' health problems haven't helped, she says the real reason is, "I've been consumed with this shack." But the "shack" has had a tremendous influence. "There is a desert influence on this record," she says. "The whole vibe I wanted was to feel this restfulness we have out there. We don't even have a teevee," she adds, drawing out the final word like it's foreign. But all this good old country sweetness could get awfully sickening if it weren't so clear that Williams is willing to take off the rose-colored glasses at times. All her singing, baby girlish as it is, comes laced with the weariness of the world that makes it so hard to stop and admire nature. On the opening cut, "Periwinkle Sky," she sings, "The clouds pile up on the periwinkle sky/The water's soft and brown," but later asks, "I wonder if I'll go away to the busyness of town." Accompanying herself on banjo, dulcimer, piano and guitar, Williams is helped out by friends, including her husband and Prince's former bandmates Wendy and Lisa (Melvoin and Coleman). The record is carefully constructed to balance the sugar with the salt. "The Rainmaker" twists the nursery rhyme with the butcher and the baker to impress how difficult the task of the rainmaker is. The song "Kashmir's Corn" begins like a story with a spoken "Here's what happened," then goes into a country ditty about lying on a couch on a porch and seeing a horse and some rabbits. It's impossible not to listen with one half-open ear, like a kid falling asleep to a parent's soothing bedtime tale. "Train Song" is one of the strongest. It's a powerful eulogy for the old railroads with their cabooses, good food and functional windows. But in typical Williams fashion, she ends it with a plea for some clever soul to build a solar train. This is the only song accompanied by printed lyrics. In the liner notes, Williams writes that she did this "to get the solar-powered train idea out clearly. My hope for all of you is that you do the job no one else can do--that is to be you!" Which seems to be what she's learned so far in her 38 years. "I want to do what I can do," Williams says. "I'm so much into the make-do world--make do with what we have. You really have to choose what to divert your attention to." Preserving and sharing small moments in life through her music is what she's working on. "Preserving all these traditions, it's so important," she says. "If all the machines fail, we'd have to relearn by trial and error." Then she laughs and adds, "But, well, that's what they did before." |
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