10.04.2007 Lucinda Williams at Town Hall

Shot a video with live audio of me riding through the streets of Times Square to Town Hall with a camera mounted on my helmet. The final video will be used as a show-beginning gag at Saturday night’s “How New Yorkers Ride Bikes.” After the third take, just as we were leaving, Steve Earl entered the theater with his new wife Allison — Lucinda Williams was doing a three-night run there and Steve was guesting. We chatted and on the way out Lucinda’s guitarist invited me to sit in that night.

I couldn’t, not that night…but last night I did. I gave them options of three tunes we could do — Buck Naked, Heaven and Overtime (the latter is one of hers, a duet with Willie Nelson) — and they said, “We’ll take all three.”

She’s been doing these shows where she plays an old album top to bottom, then takes a ten minute break and does about another half hour with guests, etc. Last night she did her Lucinda Williams album. I realized I could sing along with almost every song — God she’s written a lot of memorable songs!

I came in after she’d started and took a seat. Immediately she played a song I knew that gave me chills. Another song almost had me in tears. Her voice was a little ragged, but sometimes that just made it seem more real. She stopped a few times in that part of the show, sometimes feeling that a song was not off to just the right start, and then she’d start it over. She made some jokes about her perfectionist insecurities, quipping that she was keeping her legend intact.  Sometimes she’d stop and then change the key to make the song more comfortable to sing. Whatever.  Her insecurities vanished in the second half and she relaxed and smiled and had fun.

David Johansen was the other guest in that section, which goes to show how widely Lucinda’s influences range. They sang a hilarious Jailbird song duet, and then David performed “Lookin’ For a Kiss,” an old New York Dolls song. Somehow it all made sense.

In the end, they dragged me out as Lucinda wanted to do “Take Me To The River” (she had the words printed out and everything). She has a great band, so with a few hand signals from me they pretty much nailed it. Susan, L’s backup singer also sang with Cat Power and said Teeny Hodges, who joined Chan Marshall on her last tour, would be happy I had announced that he wrote that song.