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Written by Michael Muckian
Oct 20, 2010
Dar Williams appears at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 27, at the Barrymore Theatre, 2090 Atwood Ave., Madison. Call 608-241-8864 or go to barrymorelive.com. – Photo: Courtesy
When singer/songwriter Dar Williams periodically comes out, it’s to remind her LGBT fans that she’s heterosexual. Williams married college friend Michael Robinson in 2002 and had a son, Stephen Gray Robinson, in 2004. But her sexual orientation doesn’t limit her abilities to write songs about gender-identification issues or reach out and touch a community she considers one of the cornerstones of her musical career.
“I have a lot of LGBT friends who helped me stay on the path and not have to play the sex kitten role to get ahead in this industry,” says Williams, 43, who appears Oct. 27 at Madison’s Barrymore Theatre. “That meant no nose jobs, no boob jobs. I was playing to people who needed to gain strength from my songs.”
Williams revisits many of those songs on “Many Great Companions,” her new CD released Oct. 12. “We wanted to release a ‘greatest hits’ recording after five albums, but it ended up being after seven albums,” she says. “Being able to do this was a true gift to myself.”
Among the titles are “The Christians and The Pagans,” about a lesbian/wiccan couple visiting their Christian relatives for Christmas; “When I Was Boy,” about male and female gender-identity issues growing up; and selections that cross a variety of social and political themes. Williams’ second-person style of writing, designed to include listeners closely in the narrative, helps communicate these messages, she says.
“There’s a lot of ‘me’ and ‘you’ in the lyrics I write,” she says. “I think this is a nod to LGBT community.”
Williams, born Dorothy Snowden Williams in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., and christened Dar after one of her sisters had problems pronouncing her name, began playing guitar and age nine and wrote her first song at 11. As a young woman she was more interested in drama than music. She majored in theater and religion at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.
In the early 1990s she worked as stage manager for Opera Company of Boston while writing songs on the side and taking voice lessons. At her vocal teacher’s encouragement, she began performing at local coffeehouses. Early support from folksinger Joan Baez, who recorded several of Williams’ songs and employed her as an opening act, helped kick-start the singer’s career.
The maturation of Williams’ voice was one of the reasons she elected to re-record the songs appearing on “Many Great Companions.” But she was careful not to make major changes to numbers with which her fans were already familiar, since their appreciation for the works and the context their lives provided to the songs “gave the music its gravitas,” she says.
Williams also cites the social conditions of the ’90s as helping her music mature and reach people, especially LGBT audience members. The Clinton administration offered a more liberal, more open environment that made it easier for everyone to be who they were, she said.
“The ’90s weren’t about just coming out, but getting out of the house and exploring what there was to see,” she says. “Even if you had already made your decision about who to sleep with, you still needed to make decisions about how to deal with your lives and families. It was a time that made me feel very comfortable about the LGBT community because we all were part of the same healthy movement.”
Things changed during the Bush administration and, especially, in the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. There was a brief coming together in the wake of the deadly disaster, but that was quickly overtaken by a “bunker mentality” that made it difficult to be openly different, she says.
“We had turned inward rather than outward a month or so after the attack,” Williams says. “Now people have started coming out again, whether it’s simply coming to concerts or more openly exploring gender issues.”
Williams plans to explore these and other themes during her Madison concert, in which she and keyboard player Bryn Roberts will be the only band members. She’s dedicating $1 from the sale of each ticket to the Partner Shares Program of the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition, an organization that helps people in need purchase fresh produce from local farms. The donation is one more example of Williams’ commitment to social causes.
“Joan Baez once said that being a performer is not enough and music by itself isn’t going to change anything,” Williams adds. “I try to become socially involved in movements that need witnessing, that need cheerleaders. That’s the only way to help causes worth fighting for, and it’s really important for us to do that.”
