Description
. Award-winning, revered singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams is working to help independent music venues during this time with the announcement of Lu’s Jukebox. Scheduled as a six-episode series of mostly full-band, HD video performances in-studio, Lu’s Jukebox will feature a themed set of songs by other artists curated by the multi-Grammy award winner. Running Down A Dream: A Tribute To Tom Petty, features songs from his celebrated career in advance of his 70th Birthday.
Williams has cut a set of her favorite Tom Petty tunes, and Runnin’ Down a Dream: A Tribute to Tom Petty is long on songs about Southern life, including “Gainesville,” “Down South,” “Rebels,” “Southern Accents,” and “Louisiana Rain.” It’s on these songs that she seems most committed, with a sense of shared experience informing her vocals and adding depth to her delivery. That said, Williams sounds very much at home on all of the 13 songs she covers; “You Wreck Me” feels like it was written with her defiant vulnerability in mind; she brings a sweet and subtle funk to “Wildflowers,” and she and her band make the most of the killer groove at the heart of “You Don’t Know How It Feels.” Williams recorded this material live in the studio with her road band backing her up, and that was the right approach for this music — if the wobble in her voice is more pronounced than it once was, it works like a charm in this context, and the players find their way through the melodies with assurance, control, and joyous force. The simplicity of Runnin’ Down a Dream is one of its virtues; these covers were documented with love and without overthinking the process, and hearing Williams explore the world inside Petty‘s songs will engage fans of either artist.
