Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Studio album by Lucinda Williams
Released	June 30, 1998
Recorded	Room and Board Studio, Nashville, TN and Rumbo Studio, Canoga Park, CA
Genre	Folk-Rock
Length	51:40
Label	Mercury Polygram
Producer	Ray Kennedy Steve Earle Lucinda Williams
Professional reviews
Allmusic link The A.V. Club (Favourable) link Robert Christgau (A+) link Pitchfork Media (9.2/10) link Rolling Stone link
Lucinda Williams chronology
Sweet Old World (1992) Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998) Essence (2001)

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is the 1998 album by singer-songwriter and guitarist Lucinda Williams, her fifth professional release.

Williams hit her stride with this recording, which showcases her songwriting at least as much as her singing. As on her other recordings, she captures places and tells people's stories in her songs, as well as her own take on the perennial topic of love. This recording was issued by Mercury/Polygram Records. It was recorded in Nashville and Canoga Park, California. Lucinda Williams co-produced this album which features a stellar line up of musicians, including guest appearances by Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris.

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, and was Willams' first album to go gold. According to Billboard in February 2008, the album has sold 811,000 copies in the U.S.^[1] It was voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll. In 2003, the album was ranked number 304 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

The original CD release was HDCD encoded, although the logo was not printed on the packaging. A remastered deluxe version of the album was released on October 4, 2006, featuring three bonus tracks – "Down the Big Road Blues", "Out of Touch" and "Still I Long For Your Kiss", the latter from The Horse Whisperer soundtrack – and a 13-song live set recorded for WXPN-FM in mid-1998.

Track listing

All tracks by Lucinda Williams except where noted.

1. "Right in Time" – 4:35
2. "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" – 4:44
3. "2 Kool 2 Be 4-gotten" – 4:42
4. "Drunken Angel" – 3:20
5. "Concrete and Barbed Wire" – 3:08
6. "Lake Charles" – 5:27
7. "Can’t Let Go" (Randy Weeks) – 3:28
8. "I Lost It" – 3:31
9. "Metal Firecracker" – 3:30
10. "Greenville" – 3:23
    • Features Emmylou Harris on Harmony Vocals.
11. "Still I Long For Your Kiss" (Williams, Duane Jarvis) – 4:09
12. "Joy" – 4:01
13. "Jackson" – 3:42

Deluxe Edition Bonus Tracks

14. "Down the Big Road Blues" (Mattie Delaney) – 4:07
15. "Out of Touch" – 3:50
16. "Still I Long For Your Kiss" (Alternate version) (Williams, Jarvis) – 5:00

Deluxe Edition Disc Two

Recorded live Jul 11, 1998, at Penn's Landing, Philadelphia, PA.

1. "Pineola" – 4:18
2. "Something About What Happens When We Talk" – 3:44
3. "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" – 4:42
4. "Metal Firecracker" – 3:39
5. "Right in Time" – 4:32
6. "Drunken Angel" – 3:27
7. "Greenville" – 3:46
8. "Still I Long For Your Kiss" (Williams, Jarvis) – 4:39
9. "2 Kool 2 Be 4-gotten" – 4:53
10. "Can’t Let Go" (Weeks) – 3:51
11. "Hot Blood" – 7:38
12. "Changed The Locks" – 4:19
13. "Joy" – 6:08

Previous Sessions

Williams actually recorded the 13 songs on 'Car Wheels' from start to finish twice before she recorded the versions that would ultimately be released. In 1995, after previewing the material from the first sessions to rapt audiences in Austin, Tex., Williams went into the studio with her longtime guitarist and producer Gurf Morlix. The results, she felt, were flat, lifeless, not up to par, so she shelved the tapes. A year later, Williams fired Morlix and went back into the studio, this time in Nashville with the legendary songwriter Steve Earle as a producer. Earle and his engineer and co-producer, Ray Kennedy, worked with vintage recording equipment from the 1950s that produces a raw, scratchy sound Williams loves. But the notoriously perfectionistic Williams and the notoriously difficult Earle (who had just been released from prison for cocaine possession) couldn't sustain their collaboration, either. In the Fall of 1996, Williams dumped Earle and took her tapes to L.A., where she hired Roy Bittan, a respected producer and the longtime keyboardist for Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band.^{[citation needed]}

Personnel

• Lucinda Williams: Vocals, acoustic guitar, Dobro guitar
• Gurf Morlix: electric guitar, 12 string electric guitar, electric slide guitar, harmony vocal, acoustic slide guitar
• John Ciambotti: bass guitar, upright bass
• Donald Lindley: drums, percussion
• Buddy Miller: acoustic guitar, mando guitar, harmony vocal, electric guitar
• Ray Kennedy: 12 string electric guitar
• Greg Leisz: 12 string electric guitar, mandolin
• Roy Bittan: Hammond B3 organ, accordion, organ
• Jim Lauderdale: harmony vocal
• Charlie Sexton: electric guitar, Dobro guitar
• Steve Earle: acoustic guitar, harmonica, harmony vocal, resonator guitar
• Johnny Lee Schell: electric guitar, electric slide guitar, Dobro guitar
• Bo Ramsey: electric guitar, slide guitar
• Micheal Smotherman: B-3 organ
• Richard “Hombre” Price: Dobro guitar
• Emmylou Harris: harmony vocal

References