DON'T TELL ANYBODY THE SECRETS I TOLD YOU

The veteran singer/songwriter captures the essence of her life and career.

In this revealing memoir, Williams (b. 1953) writes that her Southern “childhood informs so many of my songs.” Her mother struggled with mental illness and alcoholism; her father was a poet and “a struggling itinerant professor moving around and working at various colleges.” Family provided her a “progressive streak,” and her music “borrows from southern gothic elements and blues and folk and rock.” At 12, Williams got her first guitar and started playing from songbooks. In the late 1960s, her parents divorced; Jordan, one of her father’s former students, became her stepmother. As a teenager, living in Chile and Mexico “made an imprint on me that lin­gers still today.” Her move to Austin in 1974 “started to liberate me from a lot of that southern Christian guilt and hippie bullshit that was very exclusive and limiting.” The author fondly recalls her friendship with the young Arkansas poet Frank Stanford, who committed suicide in 1978, the same year she signed her first record contract, with Folkways. She had a “vision” for her music but had to wait for it to happen “well into my forties.” In the mid-1980s, Williams lived in Los Angeles, performing in many clubs and opening shows for other bands. After starting her own group, a “British punk label” gave her a “chance to make a commercial record.” The author chronicles the many highs and lows of dealing with record labels and recording sessions. As she gained notoriety, she wanted to try new things. In 1998, her fifth album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, won a Grammy. Her 2001 follow-up, Essence, “would be all about the groove.” The author writes candidly about dealing with emotional problems and OCD, and she shares personal stories about many of her songs.

A poignant, plainspoken life story from a dedicated musician.