Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Infobox Album | Name = Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Type = Album
Artist = Lucinda Williams


Released = June 30, 1998
Recorded =
Genre = Folk-Rock
Length = 51:40
Label = Mercury
Polygram
Producer = Roy Bittan
Lucinda Williams
Reviews =
*Allmusic Rating|5|5 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:qa9as32ia3bg link]
*"The A.V. Club" (Favourable) [http://avclub.com/content/node/11675 link]
*Robert Christgau Rating|5|5 [http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/cdrev/lucinda-rs.php link]
*Pitchfork Media (9.2/10) [http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/23189-car-wheels-on-a-gravel-road link]
*"Rolling Stone" Rating|4|5 [http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/lucindawilliams/albums/album/126889/review/5944799/car_wheels_on_a_gravel_road link]
Last album = "Sweet Old World"
(1992)
This album = "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road"
(1998)
Next album = "Essence"
(2001)

"Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" is the 1998 album by singer-songwriter and guitarist Lucinda Williams, her fifth professional release.

Williams hit her stride with this recording, which showcases her songwriting at least as much as her singing. As on her other recordings, she captures places and tells people's stories in her songs, as well as her own take on the perennial topic of love. This recording was issued by Mercury/Polygram Records. It was recorded in Nashville and Canoga Park, California. Lucinda Williams co-produced this album which features a stellar line up of musicians, including guest appearances by Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris.

"Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, and was Willams' first album to go gold. According to "Billboard" in February 2008, the album has sold 811,000 copies in the U.S. [Caulfield, Keith. [http://billboard.com/bbcom/ask_bb/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003708948 "Ask Billboard - Williams' Wild 'West'"] . "Billboard". February 8 2008.] It was voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll. RS500|304

The original CD release was HDCD encoded, although the logo was not printed on the packaging. A remastered deluxe version of the album was released on October 4, 2006, featuring three bonus tracks – "Down the Big Road Blues", "Out of Touch" and "Still I Long For Your Kiss", the latter from "The Horse Whisperer" and "X-Men" soundtracks – and a 13-song live set recorded for WXPN-FM in mid-1998.

Track listing

#"Right in Time"
#"Car Wheels on a Gravel Road"
#"2 Kool 2 Be 4-gotten"
#"Drunken Angel"
#"Concrete and Barbed Wire"
#"Lake Charles"
#"Can’t Let Go"
#"I Lost It"
#"Metal Firecracker"
#"Greenville"
#"Still I Long For Your Kiss"
#"Joy"
#"Jackson"

Previous Sessions

Williams actually recorded the 13 songs on 'Car Wheels' from start to finish twice before she recorded the versions that would ultimately be released. In 1995, after previewing the material from the first sessions to rapt audiences in Austin, Tex., Williams went into the studio with her longtime guitarist and producer Gurf Morlix. The results, she felt, were "flat, lifeless, not up to par," so she shelved the tapes. A year later, Williams fired Morlix and went back into the studio, this time in Nashville with the legendary songwriter Steve Earle as a producer. Earle and his engineer and co-producer, Ray Kennedy, worked with vintage recording equipment from the 1950s that produces a raw, scratchy sound Williams loves. But the notoriously dissatisfied Williams and the notoriously difficult Earle (who had just been released from prison for cocaine possession) couldn't sustain their collaboration, either. In the Fall of 1996, Williams dumped Earle and took her tapes to L.A., where she hired the eminently laid-back Roy Bittan, a respected producer and the longtime keyboardist for Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band.

amples

Personnel

* Lucinda Williams: Vocals, acoustic guitar, Dobro guitar
* Gurf Morlix: electric guitar, 12 string electric guitar, electric slide guitar, harmony vocal, acoustic slide guitar
* John Ciambotti: bass guitar, upright bass
* Donald Lindley: drums, percussion
* Buddy Miller: acoustic guitar, mando guitar, harmony vocal, electric guitar
* Ray Kennedy: 12 string electric guitar
* Greg Leisz: 12 string electric guitar, mandolin
* Roy Bittan: Hammond B3 organ, accordion, organ
* Jim Lauderdale: harmony vocal
* Charlie Sexton: electric guitar, Dobro guitar
* Steve Earle: acoustic guitar, harmonica, harmony vocal, resonator guitar
* Johnny Lee Schell: electric guitar, electric slide guitar, Dobro guitar
* Bo Ramsey: electric guitar, slide guitar
* Micheal Smotherman: B-3 organ
* Richard “Hombre” Price: Dobro guitar
* Emmylou Harris: harmony vocal

References