Victoria Williams

Despite a successful career as a idiosyncratic country-folk performer, Victoria Williams was perhaps best known as a songwriter; thanks, ironically enough, to a tribute album recorded in her honor. Born in Louisiana in 1959, Williams taught herself to play the guitar while still in her teens, and soon began composing songs. In college, she joined her first band, the G.W. Korners. After spending some time on the road, she ended up in California in 1979, where she was a regular at Los Angeles' famed Troubadour Club's "Hoot Nights." After first returning to Louisiana with the intent of forming a band, she moved back to L.A., where she performed on Venice Beach and ultimately signed a recording contract which proved fruitless.

Soon after, Williams met musician Peter Case, formerly of the Plimsouls. Not only did they form an act together -- a jug band-like trio named the Incredibly Strung Out Band -- but the couple also married. Finally, Williams made her solo recording debut in 1987 with Happy Come Home, a collection showcasing her vivid songcraft as well as her off-kilter, squeaky vocal style. After the record was released, Williams starred in a documentary by the filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker. In 1989, she and Case divorced; a follow-up record, Swing the Statue!, appeared in 1990.

In 1992, while opening for Neil Young, Williams began experiencing a numb feeling in her hands which made it increasingly difficult to play her guitar. Upon visiting a doctor, she was diagnosed with the degenerative neurological disorder multiple sclerosis. The medical bills quickly piled up, and like many musicians, she was not covered by health insurance. In response, her manager began assembling friends and fans to record Williams' songs for a benefit album; the result, 1993's Sweet Relief: A Benefit for Victoria Williams, featured the likes of Pearl Jam, Lou Reed, Matthew Sweet, the Jayhawks, and Soul Asylum, whose rendition of "Summer of Drugs" was the record's first single. Due to its all-star lineup, Sweet Relief far outsold any of Williams' own efforts, raising not only funds for her medical treatment but her visibility within the musical community as well. Additionally, the record's success enabled Williams to establish the Sweet Relief Fund, created to assist other musicians with health problems; in 1996, a second tribute record, honoring the partially paralyzed singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt, was released.

In 1994, Williams issued Loose, a varied collection featuring duets with Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner and the Jayhawks' Mark Olson, Williams' second husband. A year later, she and her Loose Band released This Moment in Toronto, a live career overview which also offered a handful of standards ("Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "Imagination") as well as one new song, "Graveyard." Her fourth solo album, Musings of a Creek Dipper, was released in 1998. Two years later, Williams issued her strongest effort date with Water to Drink. In 2002, she recorded an album of standards entitled Sings Some Ol' Songs. Her renditions of "Moon River," "Someone to Watch Over Me," and "My Funny Valentine" breathed new life thanks to Williams' impeccable touch.

from Wikipedia:

Victoria Williams (born December 23, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and musician, originally from Shreveport, Louisiana, although she has resided in Southern California throughout her musical career. She is noted for her descriptive songwriting talent, which she has used to immerse the listener of her songs into a vivid feeling of small-town, rural Southern upbringing and life. Her best-known songs include "Crazy Mary", and "Century Plant". Finding inspiration in nature, ("Weeds", "Century Plant," "Why Look at the Moon"), everyday objects ("Shoes," "Frying Pan") and the unseen, as in "Holy Spirit".

Biography

Williams was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. In 1986 she worked with then husband Peter Case on his debut album, following this a year later with her own debut, Happy Come Home, produced by Anton Fier, with an accompanying 28 minute documentary by D. A. Pennebaker. In 1990 she released Swing the Statue. She also often appeared onstage and on record with the band Giant Sand. In 1993 she acted in Gus Van Sant's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, who also made the video for Tarbelly and Featherfoot.

In 1993, Williams' life took a dramatic turn when she learned that she was suffering from multiple sclerosis. As she did not have health insurance, an array of artists from different genres, including Pearl Jam, Lou Reed, Maria McKee, Soul Asylum, Lucinda Williams and others, joined together to record some of Williams' songs for a tribute/benefit project called Sweet Relief: A Benefit for Victoria Williams. This led to the creation of the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, a charity that aids professional musicians (of any stature) in need of health care. That year, Williams also released a new album herself, titled Loose. Pearl Jam had covered her song "Crazy Mary" for Sweet Relief, however, Williams performed her own version of the song, and made a video that brought her closer to public notice and gained her more of a following after it ran on MTV and VH1 in 1994, and is still played on both cable channels. A second album, covering the songs of Vic Chesnutt, was recorded for the Sweet Relief Fund in 1996 under the title Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation, and Williams appeared on that album performing a duet with Chesnutt.

Also that year, Williams appeared on Strong Hand of Love, a fund-raising tribute album to songwriter Mark Heard, who had died in 1992. That December she participated in a Christmas concert with Jane Siberry, Holly Cole, Mary Margaret O'Hara and Rebecca Jenkins, broadcast over CBC Radio in Canada and National Public Radio in the United States and subsequently released on CD as Count Your Blessings.

In 1995, Williams released her first live album, This Moment in Toronto with the Loose Band. Williams ended the 1990s with an appearance on Jim White's Wrong Eyed Jesus (1997), a duet with Robert Deeble ("Rock a Bye") on Days Like These (1997) and her own 1998's Musings of a Creekdipper followed by Water to Drink in 2000. She also appeared in the film Victoria Williams – Happy Come Home, by D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

Williams recorded "Since I've Laid My Burden Down" for the compilation album Avalon Blues: A Tribute To Mississippi John Hurt in 2001. That same year her song "You Are Loved" was included on The Oxford American Southern Music CD #5 .

In 2002 she issued an album of standards recorded during the sessions for her earlier records. "Sings Some Ol' Songs" includes classics such as "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", "My Funny Valentine" and "Moon River". That year, Williams was also a judge for the 2nd annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.

Throughout her marriage to Jayhawk, Mark Olson, the pair regularly toured and recorded together as The Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers, The Creekdippers, and Mark Olson and the Creekdippers, releasing a total of seven albums and one "best of" compilation. "Miss Williams' Guitar", a song on the Jayhawks' 1995 album Tomorrow the Green Grass, was written for her by Olson and bandmate Gary Louris. Olson and Williams divorced in 2006 which also led to the dissolution of their musical partnership.

In 2006, she performed on fellow Creekdipper David Wolfenberger's album Portrait of Narcissus and even painted the portrait of Wolfenberger featured on the cover. In that same year she also appeared as a guest vocalist on Modern Folk and Blues Wednesday, the first solo album by Bob Forrest of Thelonious Monster.

Williams also plays in a band called The Thriftstore Allstars, a group of accomplished touring musicians who regularly play in Joshua Tree, California. The Thriftstore Allstars play what their MySpace page calls "loose drunken square dance country gone electric fantasmo."

In 2006 Victoria was ranked #89 on Paste magazine's list of the Top 100 Living Songwriters. The description stated: "Louisiana-born Victoria Williams’ music paints impressionistic, personal portraits of nature ("Century Plant"), of the spiritual ("Holy Spirit") and of common folk ("Crazy Mary"). Her songs—as distinctive as her high vibrato—dip heavily into the musical palettes of country, folk, rock, gospel and jazz. Although her debut album, Happy Come Home was released in 1987, Williams was largely overlooked until artists like Soul Asylum and Pearl Jam recorded her tunes for the 1993 Sweet Relief tribute/benefit CD, which helped pay medical bills in her battle against multiple sclerosis."

In 2007 she has played numerous shows with M. Ward and is featured on the track "Bottom Dollar" on Christopher Rees' album Cautionary Tales (2007).

In early 2009 Williams commenced the recording of a new album of original material in Tucson with Isobel Campbell producing. In May 2009 Williams and Olson reunited with fellow Creekdipper Mike Russell for a one-off performance at an exhibition opening being stage at the True World Gallery in Joshua Tree, California. In July 2009 Williams embarked on a tour of Australia and New Zealand with Vic Chesnutt, but he died of an overdose of muscle relaxants December 25, 2009. In fall of 2010 she toured Spain and Switzerland with Simone White and in late in 2011 Williams returned to the studio to record another vocal for Robert Deeble for the album Heart Like Feathers which released February of 2012.