Dar She Goes
It might be her breathy and vibratoless soprano that somehow suggests both urgency and a leisurely, steady pace. Maybe it’s her knack for rhymes that never feel forced, or her commitment to a more universal truth in her songwriting. Or her ability to erase any divide between passionate politics and personal songs. Whatever the reason, listening to Dar Williams has long evoked tears from deep within, somewhere beyond logic and reason, even on songs I’ve never heard before. My throat tightens and I’m softly crying without knowing why, which is a remarkable feeling.
Williams, the New England-based folkie whose career took shape more than 30 years ago with her acoustic highly acclaimed Razor & Tie debut The Honesty Room, has put out a dozen more albums over the years, each loaded with chestnuts that are revealing without sounding confessional as they address such issues as her own experiences in therapy, boyfriends who cheat, and environmental sustainability.
The singer-songwriter, who now regularly runs songwriting retreats, shares a co-headlining date with Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls at the Marjorie Luke Theatre on January 15. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation.
Q. I know you trust in writing what you feel. How does that show up in the songwriting process?
A. It can be frustratingly long. (You have to) ask yourself: What happened? OK, what really happened? Where did you go? Where did you really go? How did it feel? How did it really feel? Maybe it felt sad, but it was also a relief and kind of exciting at the same time. That’s the cool thing about music – it captures a lot of different moods. It gives you kind of an opportunity to be opalescent…
I’m fortunate in that my early songs came out in the ‘90s when I was riding the wake of Ani DiFranco’s incredible popularity. There was a strong growing coffee house circuit, and record stores were paying a lot of attention to independent artists. I thought “When I was a Boy” was going to be controversial because it wasn’t just a straight-ahead feminist song. But I really tapped into what I thought was true, and it turned out to be my most popular song. With every song I have to keep on checking in and making sure that it really rings true for me.
How is it to revisit those songs from 20-30 years ago? Do they still feel true and have you related to them differently over the years?
Well, “Aging Well” has actually gotten better with time because I was forecasting at the age of 25 what I might feel like now. It was pretty accurate. It always sounds so defensive, but it’s totally real about wisdom, about just knowing stuff. It’s everything that I assumed people weren’t talking about when I wrote it. When you’re in your mid-twenties, you’re surrounded by people who scare you about the aging process, especially if you’re not married and you don’t know what the future is. People tell you that it will be a terrible thing if things don’t happen. But that’s not true: you’ll have the life that you have, and it will turn into something that’s really meaningful because it’s your life. So actually, the song predicted what I think would’ve happened whether I’d written the song or not in terms of how I viewed aging…
Things like “As Cool as I Am,” which was a real cautionary tale for when you’re in your early twenties and you’re strong and have a light that you’re sharing with the world, that there are people who just want to pillage that. They do it by comparing you to other people and heading for all of your weak spots, which is really horrible. The song still holds to the audience I sang it to, and I still remember those feelings, but it’s been a while since I’ve had to raise that red flag in my own life.
Do you tap into the part where that’s still alive in you?
Yeah. I call it the 270 degrees. You’re three-quarters of the way to really processing something to the point where you’re done with it… By now, I know the metaphors and the arc, and I know what I’ve learned, and I’ve become wiser. But there’s a part of me that’s still there… I wrote “February” a year and a half after a breakup, but it still hurt, it still affected me physically and if I thought about it too much, I would get really shaky. But I did recognize that there was a lot of mutual misunderstanding and a lot of environmental stuff that was freezing us out of being able to be together. So I had enough emotion to be interested, but I also had enough wisdom to actually write a song as opposed to something that was just filled with mixed metaphors or blame or going all over the place.
How does all of this play out in your latest record I’ll Meet You Here?
“Time, Be My Friend” is about needing to have a better relationship with time where I’m not pushing to know what’s going to happen next and just stay in step with what’s happening now. That’s my latest done, but not quite done thing… “Magical Thinking” is about the difference between optimism and delusion… There’s a lot of songs about seeing the gifts of time, seeing the gifts of knowing, having a rich understanding and acceptance of what happened in the past, and appreciating the present and letting the future unfold.
And yet you’ve always seemed wise beyond your years.
No one’s ever looked at me and said I’m an old soul. I’m not. I think it’s just that what I was writing was accessible to all. I would argue that much of my success has been that I’m learning things alongside everybody else. I’m not ahead of the curve. I’m really not.
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