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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

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.
DAR WILLIAMS

Discover Feelings Optimism Optimistic
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 WILLIAMS

Choices Political Real
And I’ll act like I have faith, and like that faith never ends, but I really just have friends.
DAR WILLIAMS

Ends Faith Friend Have
Every time you opt in to kindness Make one connection, used to divide us It echoes all over the world
DAR WILLIAMS

Echo Kindness Time
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
They preach that I should save the world. They pray that I won’t do a better job of it.
DAR WILLIAMS

Jobs Praying World
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

Appear Lives Themselves World
What was nice about the nineties is that it was an example of music that responded to a desire of the times. It spoke to the social conditions of the times.
DAR WILLIAMS

Friday Nice Night
We have evolved to understand that language of power that’s taken too much.
DAR WILLIAMS

Language Much Taken Too
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
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
And you bring your words, But you’re just like them, You’re unprepared ‘Cause you don’t know the terrain
DAR WILLIAMS

Causes Knows Terrain
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
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
The summer ends and we wonder who we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And today I passed the high school, the river, the maple tree I passed the farms that made it
DAR WILLIAMS

Goodbye Passed School Summer
I would encourage people to bridge broadly and creatively in their communities, not just because that creates the most fun and resiliency, but also because it creates the most points of access for people to be part of the community, which is what democracy is at its best.
DAR WILLIAMS

Bridges Fun People
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
Therapy was the biggest romance of my life.
DAR WILLIAMS

Life Romance Therapy
I really value people besides parents who nurture kids.
DAR WILLIAMS

Kids Parent People
The light that stopped the night felt like forgiveness.
DAR WILLIAMS

Light Night Revenge
At this point, I feel like I have roots in a lot of places. I have friends who have put down roots, in Seattle and San Francisco and Portland, and I feel very close to them.
DAR WILLIAMS

Country People Portland Roots
[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
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
God looks like a guidance counselor, God’s got that smile. God says, ‘How could this be? That’s really odd I guess I’ll have to check my records, silly me, you know, I’m only God.’
DAR WILLIAMS

Looks Records Silly
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?
DAR WILLIAMS

Come Notion Space
The pendulum usually swings from left to right and then right to left, but there are so many people in power who have taken the pendulum and just pinned it to the right that there is a fear that it’s never going to swing back.
DAR WILLIAMS

Fear Left never Right Swing
Slavery doesn’t have any positives.
DAR WILLIAMS

Any Positives Slavery

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.”

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Popular Authors

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.”

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Dar Williams Quotes