Lucinda Williams’ Adapts Father’s Poem For Song – Watch!
MOJO has the video premiere of Dust, which adapts the words of poet Miller Williams – plus get our new issue, out now, for an interview with the singer-songwriter.
LUCINDA WILLIAMS HAS a new album, The Ghosts Of Highway 20, and MOJO has the premiere of her latest video.
Below you can watch the short film for the song Dust, while our new issue (June 2016 / #271) boasts a full interview with the singer.
“Dust comes from a poem that my father wrote,” she tells MOJO. “That's a pretty big part of the song. I'm very proud of it. My husband, Tom, suggested that it would make a pretty good song and I felt kind of nervous about it.”
Miller Williams was an acclaimed American poet and translator who recited lines from his Of History And Hope at the second presidential inauguration of fellow Arkansas native Bill Clinton in 1997. So his daughter was understandably apprehensive about adjusting the poem so that it would fit with her music.
“If you read it as a poem, it's very short in thought and you just can't throw music on behind it,” she explains. “You have to come up with an arrangement using those lyrics so you create a refrain. I also changed the line ‘Even your thoughts are dry’ to ‘Even your thoughts are dust’. It just fit better in the context of the song. I liked the image and sound of the word dust.”
Watch the video for Dust now, plus get a copy of the new MOJO for the full Q&A with Lucinda Williams including her thoughts on Bob Dylan, her new record, getting married onstage and more.