LUCINDA WILLIAMS: Why did I choose this one? I just really like it [laughs]. I really like the lyrics. I love the melody. And I love the way the song itself turned out. I play it live a lot.
The song is inspired a bit by the blues and Joni Mitchell’s song “Blue”. I just really liked the idea of taking the idea of blue and personifying it, almost as if it were a real living thing.
BEST FIT: What do you remember about recording this particular song?
Ah, well, I remember being worried about my vocals on the track because it kind of hits a high note and I kind of struggled with that. I wanted to sing it again, but Charlie Sexton, who was co-producing with me in the studio, said, “Okay, well, I don’t think I should, but if it makes you feel better, go for it. ‘ So I did and tried to get the vocals, but of course he was right. I already had it, I just didn’t know it yet.
When you were doing the demos for Essence with Bo Ramsey and you sent them to your new record label, they liked them so much they said they could use them pretty much as is. So I wonder how close the album version of “Blue” is to the demo version.
Oh, it’s very close because that’s how I like to do things. When I first write a song, I like to record it acoustically only in raw form. Then when we get ready to make an album, I’ll take the first version written and play it for the band so they can learn it. And sometimes when we’re working in the studio and I feel like the song is drifting a little bit, I’ll say, “Let’s hear the demo again.” I always want to go back to that raw, acoustic form, just to reconnect with it.
It was interesting to read in your memoir that the creation of Essence was your first introduction to the world of ProTools and that you were kind of overwhelmed by all of its capabilities.
To be honest, I’m not sure if it was the first time because maybe there was an earlier song when we used it. But, well, yeah, there’s been a lot of situations since then where if we didn’t have ProTools, we’d be up the creek, or whatever the phrase is.
with Essence, I had great musicians on the album. I had Jim Keltner on drums and Tony Garnier from Bob Dylan’s band on bass, and I had Bo Ramsey and Charlie Sexton on guitars. But we only had a certain number of days to get the main tracks out because some of the guys had to get back on the road. In the end, there were a handful of things we had recorded that needed to be fixed, but those guys were gone at the time. I was sitting there in the studio pulling my hair out and thinking, “What are we going to do now? We’ll have to wait until they go back and re-cut the whole song. I can’t remember now which one it was, either “Get Right with God” or “Essence” I think.
Anyway, Bo Ramsey offered to bring some friends over to redo it with them. But we already had the atmosphere of it, with some of the best musicians you can find, so I didn’t want to do it. Then Charlie came to work with this young college kid who was really good at ProTools. It was almost like doing surgery, the way they teased everything together so you couldn’t tell anything was wrong. It really changed the game.
You also mention in the book that you were a bit influenced by Sade on this album. Where do you feel that influence in the songs?
In the song “Are You Down”, I think. Sade is great. I love all her music. I also like a lot of Latin music. Everything Brazilian. I love all these things.