Someone asked me once if I could date one famous musician, who it would be. At the time, I said Paul Simon. I still think that’s a decent answer, gender issues notwithstanding, but I think my new answer would have to be Dar Williams. It’s always hard to tell how much you can really know about someone just from listening to their music, but if anyone is just being her genuine self, I think it’s Dar Williams. She plays folk-driven music, has incredibly smart and witty lyrics, and demonstrates a very sensitive understanding of the human soul.
I saw her play at the Boston Folk Festival last year and she came off exactly as I expected: someone who is constantly amazed at the adoration of her fans, who never really wanted anything more than the chance to play music at a little club. Over the years, her music has changed a bit. There’s now a little less of the folk singer with a guitar and no accompaniment, and a little more of the full band approach. But these are changes in style, not in substance.
February
The timing seems appropriate. This is a song that makes a lot more sense to me after living in cold climates the last few year – I’m sure folks living in Georgia don’t have nearly the same relationship to winter as the rest of us. It’s a dreary February this year, not actually that cold, but with no snow. So everything is just brown and grey. I’d be much happier if it were 20 degrees colder all month and at least there was some snow.
The are a number of Dar Williams songs I like more than this one, but this is probably the best one for expressing the feeling of crushing sadness and dreariness. It’s not a song about being miserable; it’s just a song about finding it impossible to smile. The month of February seems to drag on forever and you wonder when it will ever be Spring. Like all Dar Williams songs, it’s very pretty, her voice soars at times and whispers at others, and the acoustic guitar holds the song together. The pinnacle of the song, for me, is the third verse:
And February was so long that it lasted into March
Found us walking a path alone together
You stopped and pointed and you said, “That’s a crocus”
And I said, “What’s a crocus?” And you said, “It’s a flower”
I tried to remember, but I said, “What’s a flower?”
You said, “I still love you”
Sometimes that makes about as much sense to me as anything I’ve ever heard. It’s just heartbreaking.
As Cool As I Am – live version from “Out There Live”
This is the first Dar Williams song I ever heard and still one of my favorites. It has a great sound, but what really does it for me is some of the best lyrics out there. For example:
So now we’re at a club, you watch the woman dancing, she is drunk
She is smiling and she’s falling in a slow, descending funk
And the whole bar is loud and proud and everybody’s trying, yeah
You play the artist, saying, “Is it how she moves, or how she looks?”
I say, it’s loneliness suspended to our own like grappling hooks
And as long as she’s got noise, she’s fine
But I could teach her how I learned to dance when the music’s ended
That’s just a sample. I could quote basically the entire song. This is a live version, which I might even like more than the original. It has a little quicker feel, since the driving instrument is the cascading guitar instead of the didgeridoo. But both are very good.
Are You Out There
This is my favorite song by her. It’s a paean to public radio and music that sidesteps the mainstream. It has such an interesting feel, being one of her faster-paced and more intense songs. The drums are far more prominent than in almost any of her other songs, and the background has a vaguely Revolver-era Beatles swirly feel to it. As per usual, the lyrics are fantastic: when she sings about staying up all night, you can almost see the dawn. And, with the line “Are you out there, can you hear this/Jimmy Olson, Johnny Memphis/I was out here listening all the time” the image of her crouched by the radio with the crackly music coming through is crystal clear.