Dar Williams isn't just another chick with a guitar, a troubled past and an ax to grind. She is a smart songwriter with an emotive soprano, a luminary among artists being filed under the "contemporary folk" tag. Although her music is often fleshed out with enough muscle to easily be called rock, she is a folk artist by virtue of the fact that in addition to penning relationship-probing narratives, she is not afraid to occasionally allow her political views, especially on topics such as environmentalism, surface in her work. "I'm really interested in the health of the planet and I'm less interested in my personal health," cracks Williams. "I eat a lot of crap. I drink coffee. I eat meat. But, I'm really concerned about the planet." The self-effacing singer/songwriter refers to herself as a "social liberal." But, unlike others populating the neo-folk genre, Williams does not berate listeners with snobbish left-field musings. And she is by no means a male-bashing feminist, either. In fact, the recently married Williams is as likely to credit herself with causing a past relationship's demise as she is to cast the blame on the guy. Williams' appeal lies in her ability to imbue her work with a sense of humor and humility, regardless if the subject matter is religion (another topic she frequently surveys), love or politics. After speaking with Williams, it became apparent that the humble charm that endears her music to listeners radiates from her in conversation, as well.
"My goal in life has always been to find clarity," she reflects. "So I have a hard time being preachy, or I hope I have a hard time, because I hate that humiliating moment when I think I know it all and somebody points out this other angle that I never thought of."
Williams adds that she is well aware of the folk singer stereotypes and makes a conscious decision to side-step them whenever possible. "It is really easy to make fun of strident folk music," acknowledges Williams. "I've seen all the SNL parodies of it, and I've seen my friends parodying it. I've seen myself made fun of … I've been called "Drab Lilith Fair.'"
Williams speaks via phone from a Kentucky hotel room. It's 10 a.m. and the singer is in for a long day of interviews. Come nightfall, she'll make her first performance in a long stretch of solo dates that will take her from coast to coast and across the United Kingdom. This time around, Williams is not touring in support of a new album, but rather to road test some songs for the tentatively titled The Beauty of the Rain, which she expects to be ready for release in June. Williams' last album was 2001's inviting concert document Out There Live, a well-chosen collection spanning her first four studio albums. The disc delightfully captures a performer who after a decade of honing her skills has emerged as one our country's most gifted singer/songwriters.
A native of upstate New York, Williams was strumming a guitar before she was 10 and wrote her first song at 11. The precocious youth was a product of an affluent, liberal family. Her parents graduated from Yale and Vassar, and Williams attended college at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, earning a B.A. in religion and theater. Both academic disciplines have impacted her songwriting ever since.
"I think religion (accounts for) a lot of the content and theater (for) a lot of the form," posits Williams. "I'm very interested in what people believe in and the religion major helped me figure out questions to lead me to that answer more quickly. The theater major was all about storytelling, how people tell stories. I'm addicted to stories. That's why I love going to see blockbuster films, and watching TV and listening to NPR."
After graduating college, Williams' love of storytelling began to pay off, slowly but surely, in the form of song. Her career first took shape playing the coffeehouses around Boston in the early 1990s. During that time she also recorded a pair of DIY cassettes to sell at gigs. Then, in 1993, she moved to Northhampton, Mass., and released The Honesty Room. The disc was given regional distribution on a small local imprint. A year later, her current label, Razor and Tie, signed Williams and re-released her debut nationally. The disc quickly received critical hosannas and garnered the attention of folk institution Joan Baez, who recorded Williams' "You're aging Well" for her own Ring Them Bells (1995) album and invited the youngster to tour with her across both sides of the Atlantic. During that time, the two performers struck up a friendship that remains today.
"She's a cool woman, just awesome," gushes Williams about Baez. "She launched my career."
Since then, Williams has maintained a strong foothold in the folk community on her own with a string of sonically diverse, contemplative, life-affirming albums. Her output is indicative of a person who watches the world with an analytical eye, yet refuses to allow herself to take life so seriously that she fails to celebrate the experience. "I feel extremely lucky to have finally be let in on the joke," says the 35-year-old with a warm laugh. "The joke that we spend so long hitting ourselves over the head with these heavy boards, chastising ourselves for not being more obedient and structured. The joke is that I think our role (in life) is to be quite awed by the planet and to enjoy it and to share that joy with others."
Contact music writer Wade Tatangelo by e-mail at wtatangelo@hotmail.com.
This article appears in Jun 19-25, 2002.