Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You: A Memoir by Lucinda Williams
Run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore or place an order online for Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You (Crown), a fearlessly frank and fascinating memoir by the mega-talented and tenacious singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams. The title comes from an admonition made to a former boyfriend after an all-night session of sharing passion and deeply personal true stories. The postscript of her thoughts and point of view on living a good life is well worth the reasonable price of the book.
70 may be the Age of Enlightenment for this resilient, hardworking performing artist who has been writing and singing songs since early childhood. She was playing guitar proficiently by age 12 and began performing professionally at age 17. She was never a stiletto shod pop princess relying on auto-tune to get her music across and nothing she has written has ever been sugar-coated including this memoir. Her songwriting has been compared to Bob Dylan, an idol with whom she once toured as the opening act.
Determination Lead to Williams’ Success
Music is her life and best means of expressing her deepest emotions; narrating heartache, depression, disappointments, sorrows, love and joy through her carefully crafted songs. By no stretch of the imagination was she an overnight success.
For the first 20 years as a recording artist, her music was deemed “too country to be rock and too rock to be country.” It was a conundrum for radio stations which gave her limited airplay and record labels that would sign her and later drop or sell her contract.
A less determined musician would have quit trying but Lucinda Williams pressed on undeterred, continuing to write songs and work any available gigs. She supported herself busing tables, working in bookstores, record shops and health food stores; wherever she could work enough to pay the bills and still be available to perform.
Her breakthrough came when her song “Passionate Kisses” which she had recorded in 1988 on her eponymous Lucinda Williams album was picked up four years later as a cover by Mary Chapin Carpenter and flew up both the Country and Billboard Top 100 charts. They each won Grammy Awards in 1994; Carpenter for Best Country Female Vocalist and Williams for Best Country Song. At the age of 41, it was her first nomination and first win.
Since then she has garnered two additional Grammys in Folk and Rock and received a total of 17 nominations in five genres. Since the Americana Music Awards and Honors were established in 2002, she has received 11 nominations and 2 awards. The music industry recognizes and celebrates her as one of its own.
Among other honors, she has been ranked as one of the 100 Greatest Women in Rock & Roll, included in the 40 Greatest Women of Country Music and inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone Magazine lists her as one of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time as well as one of the Top 100 Greatest Country Artists, including two of her albums in their 500 Greatest Albums list and “Passionate Kisses” as one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
She has received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College (not bad for a high school dropout) and in 2022 was awarded the Americana Music Association-UK Lifetime Achievement Award as well as the BMI Troubadour Award.
Defies Genre and Retains Originality
Lucinda Williams continues to defy music genre classifications which have included root, Americana and alt-country. The latter is the one that causes her the most discomfort. She prefers to be considered as a singer/songwriter musician who simply writes music. “I don’t want everything to sound the same.”
Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I’ve Told You contains both song lyrics as well as the raw, unadulterated stories of her life. Both grandfathers were preachers. Her paternal grandfather’s faith was based on a forgiving, tolerant and loving God. Her maternal grandfather was rigid, fundamentalist, fire and brimstone, forbidding and frightening.
It wasn’t until much later in life she learned her mother’s breakdowns and stays in mental institutions probably stemmed from or had been exacerbated by the years of emotional and sexual abuse by her holier than thou father and elder brothers.
The young Lucinda and her two siblings learned to be self-reliant. Until her poet, writer and educator father achieved tenure at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, the family moved frequently. During the first 18 years of Lucinda’s life, they lived in 12 different towns scattered around the United States as well as in Santiago, Chile and Mexico City. Along with tremendous success in the music industry, stability was long in coming to this remarkable artist.
Lucinda Williams freely confesses to a lifelong attraction to “poet-motorcycle-bad boy” men which didn’t work out so well in the early years. She was briefly married in 1986 and has remained in a lasting and happy marriage with Tom Overby who is also her manager. She continues to write, sing and perform in limited engagements and on longer tours.
Roseanne Cash was selected in 2015 to be the Artist-in-Residence at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. As such, she performed three concerts, each with different guest artists, two of which took place in the 776 seat state-of-the art CMA Theatre. There are no bad seats and the experience is akin to listening from inside a comfortable, acoustically near-perfect whiskey barrel. The September 3rd guests were Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams. It was the first time these three multiple Grammy winning legends and friends of several decades shared a stage and performed together for the entire memorable evening.
This sold-out, joyful collaboration was such a success that they have subsequently held similar concerts in later years in other venues. Music journalist Holly Gleason in a glowing article written for Twang Nation about the event described Lucinda Williams’ sound on “Sweet Old World” as “rusty barb wire tones; inspired a moment of true rapture with her song of death and devastation.” Do yourself a favor, play Lucinda Williams’ music and read Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You. It’s no secret this fine musician has written an honest and compelling memoir sharing her heartbreaks and triumphs in well-balanced harmony.
