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There’s always people who came 600 miles to hear the song you didn’t play.

Dar Williams

Women were making more money. Women were saying, “My voice counts. If we’re going out on a Friday night, I don’t want to see a Rambo movie. I want to go see a singer/songwriter who sings about my life”.
DAR WILLIAMS

Friday Night Songwriter Women
Every once in a while I’ll say something…I dropped the F-bomb early on in my career. There was this lesbian couple and they looked super-hip.
DAR WILLIAMS

Careers Couple Thinking
I was raised by parents who really admired the religious leaders of the left, as many 60s and 70s liberals did.
DAR WILLIAMS

Leader Parent Religious
You fly all over the country opening for these other people. You pay a publicist to get some press while you’re establishing yourself and you will be solvent in this career forevermore.
DAR WILLIAMS

Carer Extra Fly Layer Publicist
I remember doing “As Cool As I Am” and Steve Miller, the producer, saying “I really hear a drum loop here. I want to play it for you.”
DAR WILLIAMS

Play Sound Thinking
And where does magic come from? I think that magic’s in the learning.
DAR WILLIAMS

Come Learning Magic Thinking
I’m just trying to be part of the movement that decentralizes and hopefully creates peace. By supporting smaller, democratic structures, you can effect change.
DAR WILLIAMS

Change Movement Structure Trying
Slavery doesn’t have any positives.
DAR WILLIAMS

Any Positives Slavery
The best, most solid place to stand as you look at our present situation is on a foundation of history. The Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the Nazi empire all have things in common.
DAR WILLIAMS

Empires Foundation Looks
I really value people besides parents who nurture kids.
DAR WILLIAMS

Kids Parent People
Now that I believe in God, I have an extra layer of saying I’ll write about what I write about and assume that I’m being offered the opportunity to illuminate something important. But when you think you are too important, you become some sort of fascist.
DAR WILLIAMS

Believe Opportunity Writing
I have a sordid past.
DAR WILLIAMS

Happen Past Sordid
There’s tons of anger and angst and peculiarity and eccentricity, and good towns know that that’s okay. But towns that are kind of bullshit don’t know what to do with all those feelings.
DAR WILLIAMS

Bullshit Feelings Towns
It’s a collective truth that slavery is wrong, that child labor is wrong, that gross inequality is wrong. God didn’t send it.
DAR WILLIAMS

Child Children Labor Slavery
We all do the wrong thing. And then we have to wake up the next morning and live with the fact that we have done things that are wrong.
DAR WILLIAMS

Done Morning Up Wake
I really lucked out with that song [“As Cool As I Am”]. Men were becoming much more comfortable with all the different facets and parts of their identity, including their gentler, funnier, sillier, nurturing parts. They started showing up.
DAR WILLIAMS

Identity Men Song
[Mortal City ] was also the beginning of the reality of the fact that I was going to have little pieces of my personality identifying with all of these different parts of the country.
DAR WILLIAMS

Cities Country Reality
If you’re looking for can-do, earthy-crunchy attitude then you’ve got to go to Wisconsin.
DAR WILLIAMS

Attitude Crunchy Wisconsin
A lot of the songs are pretty unmasked. If you listen to “As Cool As I Am,” it’s not all that different from what you were hearing from Ani DiFranco and some of the other indie women artists of the time. It was still in that context, still seen as folk music.
DAR WILLIAMS

Artist Different Song
The light that stopped the night felt like forgiveness.
DAR WILLIAMS

Light Night Revenge
I have odometer readings, kids; all sorts of measurements of what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years. I get it. I get that it was a while ago.
DAR WILLIAMS

Kids Reading Years
I went from having three little jobs that I strung together to being on the road full-time; having some savings that my managers told me to spend.
DAR WILLIAMS

Career Country Jobs
I am one of those sort of “lesser” types, those sensitive types, those people who wouldn’t have made it on their own if other people hadn’t helped them.
DAR WILLIAMS

Cutting Family People Sensitive
Therapy was the biggest romance of my life.
DAR WILLIAMS

Life Romance Therapy
Through the last days of the century And I knew that I was going to learn again Again, in this less hazy light I saw the fields beyond the fields The fields beyond the field
DAR WILLIAMS

Again Beyond Century Field Learn
I’ve watched towns and cities evolve and become very resilient, and fun, and unique, and prosperous on their own terms. And the secret is bridging. It’s when the local church has a fun clothing swap fundraiser with a temple, and then the next year they bring in the mosque.
DAR WILLIAMS

Cities Fun Unique
Choices you made about how you recorded and what instruments you used and how much real versus how much synthetic. Those were choices that were seen as very political at the time.
DAR WILLIAMS

Choice Make Political Time

There’s always people who came 600 miles to hear the song you didn’t play.

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There’s always people who came 600 miles to hear the song you didn’t play.

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Popular Authors

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