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Williams to meet up with her 'Dar-lings' at Madison Roots Festival

Katjusa Cisar  —  7/31/2008 6:09 am

Dar Williams was recently driving with her 4-year-old son when the song "I Love, I Love" off her first album, "The Honesty Room," came on the radio.

"I was amazed at how different I sounded," she said. "I just thought, man, 15 years after writing that song, it rang true in a different way. I really thought I'd lost a lot of things in my life when I was 25. Fifteen years later, I've had to let go of whole concepts in my life."

Since emerging from the Northeast coffeehouse circuit in the early '90s, Williams has built up an adoring fan base ("Dar-lings") and released nine albums of folk/pop built on smart, soul-searching lyrics.

It's not that her approach to songwriting has changed since that first album in 1993, she said. It's just that she's gotten more mature. In a song from her forthcoming album "Promised Land," Williams sings about "the kind of change that severs you in two." Dealing with that kind of change by reinventing herself as a writer has a lot to do with learning what to leave out.

"Once upon a time, you'd say, 'This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong.' Now, you might just write, 'Ahh, life,' " she said. "You get bored with fussing over every detail of the guy that dumped you. At some point, you stop protesting the daily injustices and you start to figure out how to keep rocking and rolling with those realities."

The birth of her son in particular doesn't affect what she puts into her lyrics so much as what she leaves out: "Having a kiddo around, you don't have as much time for the B.S."

Williams' solo performance at the Madison Roots Festival on Aug. 2 is one of the first of a few warm-up shows before she kicks off a fall tour with a full backing band in support of "Promised Land," which is due out Sept. 9.

For the album -- her first studio album since 2005's "My Better Self" -- she brought in a new producer, Brad Wood, who's previously worked with Pete Yorn, Liz Phair and Smashing Pumpkins.

"I call him the professor of rock and roll. He'd be just as disappointed if you weren't getting your rock history and rock form correctly as a Latin professor who gets upset if you conjugate a verb incorrectly," she said. "He's really loose like a music fan should be, but he's really tight, in that he's very studious about good rock and roll."

Plus, she added, "he's worked out his mommy issues, so the balance of power in the studio is terrific."

It's been 10 years since Williams co-wrote her book "The Tofu Tollbooth," a guide to finding good food for touring bands and other road warriors. She doesn't have any plans to revise it, but said if her life "were a Groundhog Day" and she had endless amounts of time, she'd flesh out "The Tofu Tollbooth" into an online guide to neighborhoods for traveling musicians.

"I'd give a person a really great mental map of a neighborhood, real neighborhoods run by folks who are neighbors," she said, giving the Willy Street Co-op as an example of one store surrounded by a growing neighborhood where people could check out "the great massage therapist that (Indigo Girl) Amy Ray suggests. Or this chiropractor that really helped Shawn Mullins out."

But touring doesn't always take her to towns with co-ops and yoga centers. Sometimes, touring can get pretty nomadic, like at truck stops where unfrosted Pop Tarts are the "healthy alternative." In these cases, being strictly orthodox about eating habits would just get in the way of touring and making music.

"Being healthy really helps you appreciate your life, but being flexible helps you groove along the way you want to," she said.

Williams has been a vocal activist in environmental and social causes for years, but publicly supporting political candidates is relatively new for her. It's a tough choice to make, she said. Playing a fundraiser for Barack Obama in February generated "a little bit of hate mail," but she said it's just a way to be honest about her beliefs, even though she would have been just as happy if Hillary Clinton had been the Democratic nominee for president.

She doesn't think an opportunity to play in support of Obama will happen again ("Barbara Streisand might get the call before me"), and in the meantime she's supporting Al Franken, who's running for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota, and John Hall, a musician and New York congressman.

For her own part, Williams drives a car that got 44 miles to the gallon until she started experimenting and got it up to 50 miles per gallon.

But basically, it all seems to come back to that balance between flexibility and orthodoxy.

"I just try to sing really well to justify the fossil fuel of all my travels," she said.

Katjusa Cisar  —  7/31/2008 6:09 am