Review: Lucinda Williams- 'Stories from a Rock and Roll Heart'

Sometimes when you lose something, it makes you love it that much more. Beethoven composed some of his best music after losing his hearing. Film critic Roger Ebert, after losing his ability to eat to cancer, wrote beautifully about food and released a cookbook. So, one supposes, it should be no surprise that, following a 2020 stroke that left her unable to play guitar, roots legend Lucinda Williams is releasing the most guitar-driven album of her career, Stories from a Rock and Roll Heart.

Williams, who had always written on guitar, enlisted the help of husband and co-producer Tom Overby and Jesse Malin in the writing process. Assembling a crack band of musicians including Doug Pettibone, Stuart Mathis, Reese Winans, and Steve Mackie, Williams cranked the amp and called up her rock and roll friends, including rock's first couple, Bruce Springsteen and Patty Scialfa.

Springsteen and Scialfa guest on two tracks, and they're two of the hardest rockers on the album. “Rock and Roll Heart” kicks off with an electric guitar wail that could have pulled right off Darkness on the Edge of Town alongside “Badlands.” It's a “blue collar kid finds salvation in rock and roll” story, one that's been told a dozen times but Williams and Springsteen manage to make it sound fresh. The Boss also appears on “New York Comeback.” Here his signature voice is more prominent and blends perfectly with Williams' own.

The album's most fun song is its opener, “Let's Get the Band Back Together.” A post-COVID celebration of togetherness and a call to old friends who only “see each other every couple of years / at funerals and weddings / laughs and tears” to reconnect more often. And reconnect Williams does, bringing in a raucous chorus to sing along that includes Margo Price, Jeremy Ivey, and Buddy Miller. They all sound like they're having the time of their lives and the joy is infectious.

Williams also pays tribute to some fallen rock legends on Stories from a Rock and Roll Heart. “Stolen Moments” remembers Tom Petty, an artist who Williams released a tribute album to as part of her “Lu's Jukebox” series in 2021. “Somewhere between First Avenue and Second Street / I think about you/ It's like a heartbeat,” Williams sings. Petty would have been proud. “Hum's Liquor” pays tribute to The Replacements founder Bob Stinson. For the song, Williams tapped Stinson's brother and Replacements bassist Tommy to provide backing vocals.

But it's beautifully orchestrated by Lawrence Rothman “Where the Song Will Find Me” that provides the album's most poignant moment. A song that could only have been written by someone who has recently stared mortality in the eye and found her way back through her music, Williams croons the chorus “I know they will find me / like they somehow do / I know they will find me / when it's time to” like salvation is on the line.

Stories from a Rock and Roll Heart is an album I want to listen to in the car while driving with the windows down. There are tender moments here but, at its core, it's an electrifying rock and roll mission statement that's more fun than it has any right to be.