When Car Wheels on a Gravel Road revved up in 1998, it garnered immediate recognition as a breakout document of the alt.country era. Lucinda Williams’ fifth LP struck raw and personal even for a notoriously autobiographical writer, with the singer’s visceral growl walking an edge of bittersweet loss in excavating her past.: “I still get choked up sometimes when I sing songs like ‘Lake Charles,’” she admitted last week from a tour stop in Jamaica. “It still really resonates. Sometimes it’s just a perfect night and vibe in the room because people are so into those songs.”: Currently writing her memoir, the one-time Austinite revels in the revisitations even as more recent works like last year’s Vanished Garden with Charles Lloyd & the Marvels stretch in fascinating new directions. For the 20th anniversary tour of Car Wheels, however, Williams is playing the entire album in the first set of a show that runs over two hours.: “There are two big differences with the Car Wheel shows,” offers Williams, who plans on special guests joining the Austin show. “I always explain the songs to some degree, but with the Car Wheels shows I open up and talk more about the stories behind the songs. Even with the stories, it’s still hard to explain certain times during Austin. The days when I first moved there in 1974, and then returned in 1981, it’s hard to explain to people now because the city’s changed so much.: “The other difference is we’ll have a video screen behind us with photographs and videos clips going as we go through the songs,” she adds. “You can really put the faces with the names, and with the film and photographs behind it, the spirits are really there, too.”
Mon., April 8, 8pm