PLAYWRIGHT TURNS TO FOLK SINGING

-by Heidi Seigmund Cuda (?)

Dar Williams wanted to be a playwright. Still does, in fact, despite the young singer's burgeoning success on the folk music circuit. In a way, she's a folk singer by default.

When she left her hometown New York suburb in search of Boston's literati (and the promise that you could get a cappuccino and a bagel for $2), what she found was a city not particularly suited to budding playwrights but with a tremendous open-arm policy toward singer/songwriters.

"For some reason, there's little or no grassroots support for grassroots theater," says Williams, who adds the programs that were available through such universities as Harvard were very "snooty." "The attitude was you had to have 16 degrees to write a play, but you could write a song and get it on stage that night because the folk network was incredibly strong."

Williams says she "did a year of cutting her teeth, and doing tip jar gigs."

"I quit a lot," she says with a laugh, recalling the coffeehouse circuit. "I never dreamed that I would have the honor of doing music professionally. Music's another planet."

The talented artist, most widely recognized for her triple-A hit, "When I Was A Boy," off her debut album, "The Honesty Room," found a suitable niche for her way with words in folk.

With this in mind, it figures that the word "wordy" pops up in numerous critical reviews of her two Razor & Tie albums, a tag she's gotten accustomed to.

Commented Entertainment Weekly's Bob Cannon of the 28-year-old's new album, "Mortal City": "Williams' lyrics are so detailed that her records ought to include a bookmark."

"I don't like 'wordy' but it's true," says Williams, during the phone interview at an airport on her way to Nashville. "Still, no one tells me to take any words out."

Good thing. On "Mortal City," Williams gives a searing detailed account of the end of a relationship, while in "As Cool As I Am," listeners are treated to [a] visual of the singer dumping a cheating lover.

On "The Ocean," Williams is joined by one of contemporary folk's great heroes, John Prine, who matches her smooth vocals with his own wonderfully coarse tone.

Williams, who has been sharing recent tour dates with Joan Baez, says working with such folk icons as Baez and Prine has been pretty unreal.

"It's an honor and it's also huge," she says. "There's not so much to learn from them, because both of those people don't make it seem like learning. You just want to be like them because they did it right."

Calling folk a "wonderful world of real people," Williams recalls reading an article that noted, if you want to be famous in pop music you work with people who make you famous. If you want to be famous in folk music, you work with people you can trust.

"That accounts for Joan and John -- they're trustworthy people," she says. "They have vision that's always led them down really good paths."

As intercom voices boom back and forth overhead, one realizes that Williams must be getting used to the cacophony. The singer's been touring since February and a quick scan of her itinerary reveals she's booked through next January.

"I've taken like eight flights in eight days," she says of her current work week. "The big joke is that I'm gonna work really hard for three years, then I'm gonna become really snotty and exclusive."

Not. In fact, one of her aspirations puts her right back where she started. "I want to write a children's play," she says. "I love people, and that's what made me want to be a playwright in the first place." Still, she's not planning to dive in just yet.

"Songwriting is less lonely," says Williams. "When you're a playwright, you spend a year in your own world and then you present your world to people and in one night, it might get completely trashed."

Her current stage presence is getting nothing but rave reviews, and this pleases her.

"I think I'm supposed to have been an artist," she says. "I'd be a horrible surgeon. I'd be a horrible lot of things."

- Thanks to Sally Green for the transcript