ALBUM REVIEW: Lucinda Williams’ ‘Rock N Roll Heart’ Beats Strong

Stories From a Rock N Roll Heart, Lucinda Williams’ first album since suffering a stroke in November 2020, plays directly to those kids in the high school parking lot during a Friday night football game in the era when they’d probably be blasting the album from a gold Camaro — on 8-track, of course.

During her recovery, as Williams went through intensive rehabilitation, including having to relearn how to walk, she began writing again. She even penned a memoir — Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You — published in April (ND review). For her new album, as on her previous Grammy-nominated Good Souls Better Angels (ND review), she collaborated with husband, manager, and co-producer Tom Overby. Unable to play guitar now, Williams reached out to Jesse Malin and Travis Stephens — her longtime road manager and a veteran Nashville guitarist — and together they helped craft what became Stories From a Rock N Roll Heart. The players also include Stuart Mathis on guitar, Reese Wynans on keys, and Doug Pettibone on pedal steel and guitar, along with bassist Steve Mackey and drummer Steve Ferrone. (In a cruel twist of fate, Malin suffered a rare spinal stroke in early May that has left him paralyzed from the waist down. A fundraiser has been set up to help cover his expenses here.)

Stories From a Rock N Roll Heart is music made by the still hungry, by an artist who feels she still has something to prove. Williams’ passion is infectious, spreading to the guests that appear here. To wit: Two songs feature Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa — “Rock N Roll Heart” and “New York Comeback” — and they force Springsteen to reach back in time and recapture the hungry heart that fueled the likes of “I’m a Rocker” or even “Rosalita.” Meanwhile, on the creeping “This Is Not My Town,” Margo Price’s backing vocals add the right amount of punk snarl that takes the defiant outrage of the message over the top. Price also joins Jeremy Ivey, Siobhan Maher Kennedy, Buddy Miller, and Sophie Gault for backing vocals on the statement-of-purpose rocker, “Let’s Get the Band Back Together.” Its joyous energy is cathartic for anyone who felt cut off from the world during lockdown, whether they were ever in a band or not.

Rock-and-roll legends no longer with us occupy Williams’ mind and pen for two of the album’s most poignant tracks. Tom Petty’s ghost haunts and rides with Williams on the captivating “Stolen Moments,” while its music could’ve fit right in on Petty’s Echo. (It’s fitting that the drums throughout Stories From a Rock N Roll Heart are handled by Heartbreaker Ferrone). “Hum’s Liquor,” meanwhile, was inspired by Overby’s account of watching the late Replacements’ guitarist Bob Stinson enter a nearby liquor store each morning. Tommy Stinson — Bob’s brother and The Replacements’ bassist — contributes backing vocals.

After experiencing everything from a debilitating stroke during the height of a pandemic to a Nashville tornado in the last few years, Williams has not only bounced back, but she has also given us the best rock-and-roll album of the year so far. It’s so good, in fact, that the final track, the sublime “Never Gonna Fade Away,” sounds less like a boast and more of an obvious understatement.

Lucinda Williams’ Stories from a Rock N Roll Heart is out June 30 on Highway 20 Records/Thirty Tigers.