Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (Deluxe Edition) on 2 CDs

In den letzten 30 Jahren hat Lucinda Williams ihre Perspektive als stolze und dennoch verletzliche Frau aus den Südstaaten in eine ganze Reihe von grandiosen Alben übersetzt, von denen jedes einzelne Rock, Country, Folk und Blues so dicht verwebt, dass die einzelnen Elemente scheinbar verschwinden. »Lucinda Williams« von 1988 markierte ihren Durchbruch, doch ihr absolutes Meisterwerk von 1998 - »Car Wheels On A Gravel Road« - zementierte ihren blendenden Ruf als großartige Singer/Songwriterin.

Es dauerte drei Jahre, das Alternative Country Meisterwerk zu vollenden, doch das war es wert. Williams schreibt Songs, die die Wurzellosigkeit des amerikanischen Lebens mit lebendigen Bildern und kantiger Schönheit beschreiben. Als Gäste mit dabei: Steve Earl, Emmylou Harris und Buddy Miller. Williams selbst trat als Co-Produzentin in Aktion; für den Mix zeigen sich Rick Rubin und Jim Scott verantwortlich – »Metal Firecracker« wurde von Ray Kennedy abgemischt. Das Album gewann einen Grammy als »Best Contemporary Folk Album« und war die erste Veröffentlichung von Lucinda Williams, die mit dem Goldstatus geehrt wurde.

Village Voice ernannte »Car Wheels…« zum besten Album des Jahres, während es 2003 in der Liste der »500 besten Alben« des Rolling Stone die Nummer 304 enterte.

With a new Lucinda Williams album expected this fall, her most rapturously acclaimed and best-selling album to date receives the expanded Deluxe Edition treatment. The two-CD Car Wheels On A Gravel Road – Deluxe Edition (Mercury / Lost Highway / UMe), released October 24, 2006, adds a pair of previously unreleased studio tracks plus an alternate version of “Still I Long For Your Kiss” heard in The Horse Whisperer and an entire previously unreleased 1998 live performance to a newly remastered edition of the singer-songwriter’s most celebrated and beloved album.

Six years since her previous album, 1998’s long-anticipated Car Wheels On A Gravel Road was worth the wait. The 13-song collection’s passionate, sharply detailed accounts of love, loss and longing were matched by the deceptively laid-back intensity of Williams’ performances and those of guest artists that included Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Charlie Sexton, Jim Lauderdale, Buddy Miller and the E Street Band’s Roy Bittan. Topping many year-end critics polls and landing Williams her first gold record, the album also won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, despite being her least folkish work. A masterwork of roots rock woven through with folk, honky-tonk country and blues, the album (her fifth) marked her artistic and commercial breakthrough after a near 20-year recording career.

Augmenting the original album on Disc One are two outtakes from the album’s initial 1995 Austin sessions--the Williams original “Out Of Touch” (which she would re-record for 2001’s Essence) and a stripped-down reading of the 1920s blues classic “Down The Big Road Blues”--and the alternate “Still I Long For Your Kiss.”

Disc Two captures a spirited live performance, recorded July 11, 1998 at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia for WXPN’s “Live At The World Café” radio show. Featuring Williams’ then-current touring band, the set encompasses nine numbers from Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (the title track, “Metal Firecracker,” “Right In Time,” “Drunken Angel,” “Greenville” “Still I Long For Your Kiss,” “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten,” “Can’t Let Go” and “Changed The Locks”) and four earlier favorites (“Pineola,” “Something About What Happens When We Talk,” “Joy” and “Hot Blood”). The concert as well as the Disc One bonus tracks have also been newly digitally remastered.

What was said of Car Wheels On A Gravel Road in 1998 is still true today: “In a world inundated with cookie-cutter, Lilith-ready wimps,” wrote Entertainment Weekly, “there’s enough gravel on Williams’ wheels to fill a West Texas dump truck.”

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