There are few things more perilous on tour than a free afternoon. Lucinda Williams, the singer and songwriter, had one during a swing through the city not long ago to play a couple of gigs. “Last time I was in New York, we went to Trash and Vaudeville, and I spent—how much, honey?” Honey was her manager and husband of two years, Tom Overby, a mild and lanky Minnesotan. They were out on the sidewalk in Cooper Square in the dying light of an idle Sunday. They hadn’t been awake long. (Williams sleeps past noon while on tour.) “This was before we realized we were broke,” Williams went on. “I spent, like, eight thousand dollars.” So shopping was out. Instead, it was decided, they would get a drink. A few blocks away, they found an airy Italian restaurant, sat down at the bar, and ordered a bottle of Brunello. The bartender, sensing something, poured Williams the first taste. “Mmm, yeah, that’s good,” she said.
Williams and Overby live in Los Angeles, in Studio City. Eleven years ago, she was quoted in this magazine saying—twice—“I fucking hate fucking New York.” But she doesn’t really. She spent almost a year here, in 1978. She worked as a waitress and busked in the East Village and sometimes rode the subway out to Queens to play at a bar called the Flushing Local. One night, she was at Gerde’s Folk City, in the Village. “I was asked to get up and play two or three songs. The owner, Mike Porco, this little Italian guy, the sweetest guy, came over to me and said, ‘Lucinda, I want-a you to meet a friend of mine. This is-a Bobby.’ ” It was Bob Dylan. “He was with a beautiful tall black woman, and they’d driven down from Woodstock, I guess in their own car. For me, it was like there was no one else in the room. I’ve never experienced anything like it. He’d been my hero since I was twelve. He had heard me sing a couple of songs. ‘Keep in touch,’ he said. ‘We’re going out on the road soon.’ ” As he was leaving, she positioned herself by the door. “He leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.”
Twenty years later, Williams went out on a short tour with Dylan and Van Morrison, as a supporting act. “I had this fantasy that we’d all hang out,” she said. “Nothing could’ve been farther from the truth. Nobody talked to each other. Van’s band was unhappy, never sure if they’d get fired one day or the next. Same went for Bob and his band.”
Williams, who is fifty-eight, was wearing a leather vest and bluejeans tucked into knee-high boots. She had a great busby of frosted hair and a pair of filigreed glasses that, in the dim light of the bar, made it hard to get a good look at her eyes. She had performed well at Webster Hall the previous two nights. Onstage, Williams can occasionally get “kind of paranoid,” as she put it. She makes things a little easier on herself by having her lyrics nearby on a music stand.
“It’s mostly for the new songs, which I don’t know well yet,” she said, referring to those from her new album, “Blessed.” “But there were a couple of times years ago where I was forgetting the words to songs I’d sung thousands of times, like ‘Drunken Angel.’ ‘Oh, God, I screwed up.’ I’ve kind of gotten lazy over the years. It’s kind of a crutch. But now I don’t have to worry about remembering. I can think about singing.”
That night, she and Overby were planning to meet their tour bus at 2 A.M., ride down to Red Bank, New Jersey, the site of her next gig, and spend the night on board, while parked outside the concert hall. Williams first met Overby, who is fifty-two, at a Best Buy in Minneapolis, in 1992; she was reintroduced to him a few years ago at a hair salon. “I was attracted to him immediately,” she said. “He was tall, thin, nice smile, with a little bit of bling.” He leaned forward to show off a silver tooth, which he said he got at the age of six, after he tripped over the shoelace of a snow boot. “When I told my stepmother about him, she asked, ‘When was he divorced?’ Well, he lived with a woman for ten years, and then that fell apart. ‘No kids, never been married? He’s either gay or bisexual.’ ” Children, anyway, were pretty much out of the question for Williams. “Well, I didn’t want one in my twenties, in my thirties, or my forties,” she said. “Now I get kind of misty about kids.”
The bartender brought Williams a complimentary platter of fried calamari. “I knew I liked this guy as soon as I sat down,” she said. She scooped half the squid onto a saucer and pushed it toward Overby, and they began to discuss their dinner plans. ♦
