Dar Williams: Music of Eloquence and Vision
  by Ralph DiGennaro

    To seasoned cynics who would arch an eyebrow in effete snobbery at the suggestion of contemporary folk as a serious new musical genre,  singer/songwriter Dar Williams is living proof that there is life beyond rock, rap, punk and pop.
    Williams is part of a new breed of folk artists, male and female, slowly  making
themselves known to a growing contingent of music listeners with a collective  ear for songwriting intensely personal and universally prophetic.   Just as the songs of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Ramblin Jack Elliot and Tim Hardin, among others, summarized the active consciousness of a generation three decades ago,  this new wave of acoustic-oriented songwriters are striking an equally resonant chord with an audience that continues to grow, thanks in no small part to  radio stations such as WFUV in New York, WXPN in Philadelphia and the indomitable radio legend, Vin Scelsa.
    Arguably the best of this breed is Williams, whose latest CD, "End of the Summer" on the independent Razor & Tie label, hit Billboard Magazine's Top 200 in its first week of release, with over 70,000 sold to date, rare for any Indie recording (In total, combined sales of Williams three CD's has totaled just over 250,000).  Razor & Tie also released Williams' first video last year, "What Do You Hear in These Sounds" from "End of the Summer," that the company hoped would see air time on MTV and VH1 and perhaps even crossover into CMT.  Save for Canada, the video went largely unnoticed in the U.S.
    The video track is an eloquent example of William's quirky brilliance as a songwriter and her uncanny ability to translate personal experience and the  search for identity into a universal anthem.  While the majority of female popsingers  are busy baring various and sundry body parts in their videos, Williams instead bares her soul, with a three-octave soprano that lilts gracefully throughout the song's mantra-like hook.
    Says Williams of the song's probable origins:  "I was clinically depressed in college
(Wesleyan University).  I found that the best way out of it was through gentle self-effacement, as well as therapy, which makes you more comfortable with yourself.  It should be mandatory."
    Williams can wax eloquent on a wide variety of topics, from the perils of nuclear testing, and the menace to the hometown landscape that is Wal-Mart, to the romantic disillusionment that a life on the road can bring.  While acoustic-oriented, Williams' music transcends the boundaries of folk, randomly employing electric guitars, congas, fiddles, piano, string bass and even drums.  She also seems to have a particular love for the cello.
Add to all this instrumentation layers of backup vocals and choral voices and  the result is a textural sound at once sophisticated and stylish without  being slick.
    But unlike Ani DiFranco, the singer to whom she is sometimes inaccurately compared, Williams music and lyrics are less angry and hard-edged than they are passionate, idiosyncratic and heartfelt.  Her writing is also often not without a certain quirky sense of humor.
    "I've learned that when I obsess about something, it's usually a  disembodied, angry voice," she says.  "But if you can tell that voice who's boss, it will pipe  down a bit."
    The qualities in that' "voice" are certainly not lost on Joan Baez, who  after hearing Dar Williams for the first time in early 1996, plucked her from the coffee  house circuit and
installed the 30-year-old, Chappaqua, NY native as the opening act in her European tour.
Last fall, on her highly praised CD, "Gone From Danger," a compilation of covers of the
best new contemporary folk singers, Baez recorded two Williams tunes.
    As her loyal fans will undoubtedly attest, no one performs Dar Williams  tunes better than Williams, who performs these days accomanied by Stephanie Winters  on cello and backup vocals.  A nearly sold-out performance last September at Town Hall  in New York undercores the strides the singer has made from her beginnings in bohemian folk clubs like the Iron Horse in Northampton, MA and the Turning Point in Piermont, NY.
    Still, Williams continues to play smaller venues such as these, where eyebrows never arch and the small but attentive audiences know all the words to her songs by heart.

End