After recently releasing her first concert album, “Live @ The Fillmore,” Lucinda Williams says the double-disc set opens more doors than it closes.
“There’s a pretty good selection of stuff but I would have had to put out a box set in order to really get everything,” Williams tells Billboard.com. “So, we we’re talking [about how] we’ll just have to put out another live album at some point and try to keep it going, like have Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.” One of the songs she feels is egregiously missing from the release is the title track to her 1998 disc “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.”
As far as the decision to release the live Lost Highway record, which was recorded in San Francisco over three nights in early 2004, the singer/songwriter says her current backing band — Doug Pettibone (guitars), Taras Prodaniuk (bass), Jim Christie (drums) — was just too good not to capture on tape.
Oddly enough, Williams didn’t want the pressure associated with making a live album so she asked her management not to tell her which shows were being recorded with a mobile unit. While this means there won’t be any video accompanying “Fillmore,” Williams’ 1998 Austin City Limits performance was recently released as a DVD by New West Records.
Notorious for taking her time between album releases, Williams says she has two dozen songs already written and recorded in a rough mix state for her next studio project, which is tentatively titled “Knowing” and may be released in early 2006.
“I guess I just had a good spell of writing,” Williams says. “But I’m not sure how I’m going to do it because I have a lot of country stuff and I have some blues/gospel things and pop and rock. It’s just all mixed up. And now, we’ve been out playing them on the road live and they’re going over really well.”
Among the songs expected to get stage time during Williams’ upcoming six-week tour North American tour are the old school jazz-flavored, Nina Simone-style “Where Is My Love?,” the edgy “Come on” and the pop/rock track “Real Love.”
Williams said she also has a traditional country duet track, “Jailhouse Tears,” which is decidedly in the George Jones-meets-Loretta Lynn motif; she suggested Hank Williams III or Jack White as the type of singer needed to pull off the song.
For now, she’ll finish her tour and then decide which of the 24 songs will make it onto her next Lost Highway album. In addition, Williams hasn’t ruled out releasing a second album from this batch of material. She admits, “It’s a good problem to have to sit down and decide what’s going to be on the record.”
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