Dar Williams Quotes

Sometimes life gives us lessons sent in ridiculous packaging.

Milwaukee one of my favorite cites; I think Milwaukee is #1.

In the laughing times we know that we are lucky, and in the quiet times we know that we are blessed. And we will not be alone.

Basically, I have found that people who have tried to start communities out of good feelings or hippie-dippie abstract concepts of love - it doesn't work. But if you just concentrate on what is the identity of your town - its waterfalls, its battles, its notable mill strike or those things - you dig into what your town is from its rock formations to its history to its food. Then this thing called community happens all the time.

I'm becoming a professional nomad and enjoying that whole part of my life.

And where does magic come from? I think that magic's in the learning.

There's a marketing scheme that tells you that pregnancy and child rearing will make you into a moron, that your kids are only happy when you're buying them stuff. It's hard being a parent, but I laugh a lot and smile a lot and really enjoy it. The ratio of laughter to sadness is higher. There's part of me that wants to broadcast that. Parenting only affirmed what I already cared about, and that's good.

God looks like a guidance counselor, God's got that smile. God says, 'How could this be? That's really odd I guess I'll have to check my records, silly me, you know, I'm only God.'

And if I had a camera Showing all the light we give And showing where the light extends I'd give it to my friends

Writing 'February' made me realize that breaking form is a way of letting the song be human.

If you're looking for can-do, earthy-crunchy attitude then you've got to go to Wisconsin.

The rest of the songs on the album [Mortal City ] have spare arrangements on them. Steve [Miller], really loved that. He'd just come off of a project with someone who basically had to mask the fact that there were no songs there with production. He said, "Oh, my God, you have real songs here!"

All the things you treasure most will be the hardest won I will watch you struggle long before the answers come But I won't make it harder, I'll be there to cheer you on I'll shine the light that guides you down the road you're walking on

Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness. And I like the whole truth, but there are nights I only need forgiveness.

Slavery doesn't have any positives.

If a war has to happen, a war has to happen.

Being told that you are good at banter is like being told that you are a good person.

But if you're looking to be spooked by really tall trees then you've got to go to Washington State.

I just think the reassurance and the steadiness and the hands-on kindness can make a huge difference.

When we learn about ourselves, we can evolve.

It's just that you don't have to bring it to every stage. You can do a fundraiser for people that you support. You don't necessarily have to talk about one thing or another when you're on your own.

I am happy to do political fundraisers. I always hope that my friends will be, too. It's part of who you are and you shouldn't feel ashamed of what you believe in.

There was this moment in 2003 when I was asked to do a fundraiser for someone who was speaking out against the Iraq war when nobody was. I said, "I will do a fundraiser for that guy." And then my friend John Hall, from the band Orleans...He ran for Congress in my district and won. I did a bunch of fundraisers for him.

I would push for more production and Steve Miller would say, "Why do you want to have more production when you have real songs? You don't want to cover up the song."

I went from having three little jobs that I strung together to being on the road full-time; having some savings that my managers told me to spend. You fly all over the country opening for these other people. You pay a publicist to get some press while you're establishing yourself and you will be solvent in this career forevermore.

Empires are doomed. They become more diffuse, more broke, demagogues rule, and so I was just pointing out some similarities between past empires and what's going on right now. They all have had to apply more and more harsh rhetoric of superiority and divine right to justify the building of hegemony.

The best, most solid place to stand as you look at our present situation is on a foundation of history. The Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the Nazi empire all have things in common.

There are a lot of people out there who are exactly half extrovert and half introvert and they love to be extroverts as long as they have enough time to go off and figure it all out.

You know how people say they're either like a cat or a dog? I feel like a cat. I just want to be alone. Isn't that weird? It's a lot to take in.

Every once in a while I'll say something...I dropped the F-bomb early on in my career. There was this lesbian couple and they looked super-hip. One of them looked at me and shook her head, like "Don't do that." I think she was doing it to say, "It doesn't work." She didn't say anything but it was this cautionary moment. I knew it didn't work. There are just so many other words to choose from.

A lot of men were also becoming more attuned and less afraid of women [in the nineties ].

What was nice about the nineties is that it was an example of music that responded to a desire of the times. It spoke to the social conditions of the times. Women were making more money. Women were saying, "My voice counts. If we're going out on a Friday night, I don't want to see a Rambo movie. I want to go see a singer/songwriter who sings about my life".

The kind of organic wave, the way that waves move, and I'm not just talking about feminism, the way that a social movement might rise like a wave. It's harder to build any kind of wave now. Things are important to you and then they recede within a day. That's the only thing that keeps me from believing that there's going to be any one organic big wave; although the Americana (music) thing has been happening for a while.

There's tons of anger and angst and peculiarity and eccentricity, and good towns know that that's okay. But towns that are kind of bullshit don't know what to do with all those feelings.

I started going out with one of my managers and he really grew me up in a lot of ways. He introduced me not just to being a full-time traveler, which I was, but he was also really very interested in history and art and continued to open my eyes up to regional history; less splashy histories. He was interested in historical societies and stuff like that. He introduced me to a way of looking at the way communities form that is the foundation for the book that I've just finished writing that has to do with what I see as effective community-building wherever I've been traveling.

I spent a year pulling all-nighters and driving around in a really tiny fuel-efficient car relying on the kindness of strangers and seeing this incredible range of landscapes throughout the United States. That's what happened with The Honesty Room. It was a huge night and day switch.

A lot of the songs are pretty unmasked. If you listen to "As Cool As I Am," it's not all that different from what you were hearing from Ani DiFranco and some of the other indie women artists of the time. It was still in that context, still seen as folk music.

I remember doing "As Cool As I Am" and Steve Miller, the producer, saying "I really hear a drum loop here. I want to play it for you." When I wrote it, I thought, "This isn't going to sound very folky. I don't think it's going to go with mandolins and banjos." Then he played the loop for me and it sounded right.

What happened on "As Cool As I Am" was, you know how in the `90s, "the personal is political, the political is personal"? That was a really big thing. Choices you made about how you recorded and what instruments you used and how much real versus how much synthetic. Those were choices that were seen as very political at the time.

I really lucked out with that song ["As Cool As I Am"]. Men were becoming much more comfortable with all the different facets and parts of their identity, including their gentler, funnier, sillier, nurturing parts. They started showing up. There was so much exploration of gender at that time. Women were showing up with the range of ways of being female in the world and men were showing up with the range of being male in the world.

I think the music was speaking to that opening up of whose voice gets heard and how multidimensional that voice can be.

The only I would say is a little different is when I know my parents are in the audience. That's never going to be the same as another concert.

At this point, I feel like I have roots in a lot of places. I have friends who have put down roots, in Seattle and San Francisco and Portland, and I feel very close to them.

[Mortal City ] was also the beginning of the reality of the fact that I was going to have little pieces of my personality identifying with all of these different parts of the country.

Mortal City was really influenced by geography. [The song] "The Ocean" is the Pacific Northwest. Southern California and New York also figure into songs, and Iowa. "February" is very much about New England. "Mortal City" is Philadelphia. The whole album is this anthropomorphized landscape where the metaphors live in this geography.

I have odometer readings, kids; all sorts of measurements of what I've been doing for the last 20 years. I get it. I get that it was a while ago.

I went to Canada and played in this tiny bar where the windows were steaming up and everybody was so animated and singing along right there at the foot of the stage, looking up, and I got my mojo back .

There was one tour where I thought, "If I can't get this feeling back of being excited to be on the stage, then I will quit." Because I have friends who have dialed it in and I watch their concerts and shake my head. I'm sure the audience can tell, too.

Just like my career, I've sung the same songs night after night in so many ways. It's always different because every space is different. I lost my mojo once. It was like Austin Powers. I don't know why or how, but I had to get it back. And I did.

But I benefit from the taxes I pay because I know how to access the benefits of the taxes.