| Dar Williams – After All Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I had an interesting experience with that song recently, without fully realizing what it was about. I caught the references to life/death, but misunderstanding words had me thinking it was a story of someone else, like in Alleluia or I Had No Right. I had longstanding plans with my best friend to see DW in concert last week, since she's a mutual favorite. But I've been "frozen" since escaping the suicidal side of depression in mid-06, so I had to push myself to show up rather than just sit in my house. The first song she did was After All, played note-perfect solo with all the energy of an entire band. I was so overwhelmed by the beauty and power of her talent -- up there all alone, singing/moving playing as if she had ten people backing her up -- that I couldn't stay emotionally frozen. (I tried, as I started tearing up and had always opted to 'freeze' rather than let that happen in public.) By the end of the song, I felt like perhaps I could 'fix' my life, and well before the show was over, I was making plans for the first time in several years. I've had a few overemotional moments since then, but it hasn't gone away yet, either. (I don't think that I would have gotten that had she started with something else, as the words did make a big difference, and I might have automatically blocked her voice out emotionally by the time After All came around otherwise.) |
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| Dar Williams – Comfortably Numb Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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She writes almost all of the music she sings -- I think that all of the tracks on her regular albums are hers. I'm not sure how the covers are released, other than that "Starman" was originally only found online. DW tried singing "Comfortably Numb" at the convert I went to (Jan. 28 2007) but burst into laughter halfway through: "every time I sing this, they turn the reverb up!" She then said to the soundboard crew that they're wonderful, but to please stop doing that to her voice. Once they fixed it, she started over from the beginning, and played through perfectly. |
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| Dar Williams – The One Who Knows Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Dar Williams said in a 1/28/07 concert, that the song was written to honor the relationships she had with all of the women that had opened themselves to "the fundamental laws of childhood" in raising her -- her mother, grandmother, teachers, aunts, neighbors, etc. She then made everyone laugh by adding: "Of course, that's before I actually became a mother. There are (pauses to think) *moments* like that. I try to remind myself of them. Sometimes I even sing the song." She then told a tale of her little boy "acting insane" in a restaurant. She worried that if she "was too harsh he'd become a sociopath" but thanks to the backlash against permissive parenting, if she "wasn't firm enough, he'd also become a sociopath"... On top of it, some fans had noticed her, so she was also fretting that they'd "run back saying 'that Dar Williams SEEMS really nice, but I saw her and she's really bada**'!" |
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| Dar Williams – The Christians and the Pagans Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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They aren't necessarily lovers... It's not unusual for younger women to take trips together (i.e. "Road Buddy"), and some of the "Pagan" religions have a very strong emphasis on spiritual sisterhood. (Explanation weak because I'm atheist, and going off what my Wiccan friends have said over the years.) In concert 1/28/2007, DW said the song was written in the Clinton years, because so many kinds of people that formerly hated each other had become friends. She then said that the last several years, it has felt more like some fantasy she made up or a dream she had. |
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