What happened on “As Cool As I Am” was, you know how in the ’90s, “the personal is political, the political is personal”? That was a really big thing.
DAR WILLIAMSA song versus an album is not like a scene versus a play.
More Dar Williams Quotes
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I would push for more production and Steve Miller would say, “Why do you want to have more production when you have real songs? You don’t want to cover up the song.”
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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.
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I fear that to fall in love with you is to fall from a great and gruesome height.
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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.
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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.
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[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.
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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.
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Every time you opt in to kindness Make one connection, used to divide us It echoes all over the world
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But where do we come up with this notion of a woman in which the less space you take up, the more you’re worth?
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I have a sordid past.
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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.
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All the things you treasure most will be the hardest won I will watch you struggle long before the answers come But I won’t make it harder, I’ll be there to cheer you on I’ll shine the light that guides you down the road you’re walking on
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I came out of that and said I don’t want to go back to feeling depressed. So I asked myself, what can I be optimistic about, in terms of the course of the planet? And I discovered there was no end to the optimism I felt.
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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.
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Everyone has to decide how they’re going to appear in their lives, how they’re going to put themselves out there to the world.
DAR WILLIAMS