A year after selling out La Cigale, Lucinda Williams returned to Paris to sing her stories again, this time from the red-curtained stage of Le Trianon. The venue may be a few cobblestone turns away from last year’s, but the emotional geography was unchanged: songs born of sorrow and stubbornness, performed with the defiant intimacy of someone who long ago decided to tell the truth, and nothing but.
Williams has never been one for polish. Her blues-tinged, ragged music, rooted in Americana’s deeper soil, carries the weight of road dust and unresolved ache. Albums like Car Wheels on a Gravel Road have entered the canon not because they aimed for greatness, but because they simply told the truth. Her latest, Stories from a Rock N Roll Heart, continues that tradition with undiminished candor.
On stage, Williams is something else altogether. A presence carved from resilience. Her voice, more weathered now, bears the toll and gift of time: the rasp more pronounced, the phrasing more deliberate, the edges no longer smoothed. If the pitch wavers, the spirit never does. Every word sounds earned. Every syllable has known damage and kept going anyway.
Five years have passed since the stroke that altered the mechanics of her body, but not the essence. She walks carefully now, speaks with visible effort. There are moments when the body seems to betray her... but never the music. That, she delivers with unflinching dignity. Her gaze still cuts through the footlights. Her humor, dry, dark, and unexpected, still surfaces between songs: tales of jukeboxes, nights with Townes Van Zandt, the correct pronunciation of Copenhagen or croque-monsieur... The pauses are longer, but the spark remains.
And then there are those songs. Observations. Confessions. They've been covered by the likes of Emmylou Harris or Willie Nelson, but Williams remains her own truest interpreter. She also gave space to others’ songs, offering a striking rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” drawn from her latest Lu’s Jukebox collection, Lucinda Williams Sings the Beatles from Abbey Road. and closed the night with a rollicking version of Neil Young's "Rockin In A Free World."
Her band framed her voice with care and muscle. David Sutton’s bass and Richard Causon's keys provided warmth and depth; Brady Blade, ever tasteful, kept the rhythm gently urgent; while Doug Pettibone and Marc Ford wove guitars into something equal parts fire and melancholy.
And even beyond the music, the performance was something of a reckoning. A reckoning with time, with the limitations of the body, with the endurance of the voice. Joy, heartbreak, defiance, weariness, grace... all passed through her, all found shape in songs and stories, from a rock n roll heart indeed.
