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Dar to be different

Chris Azzopardi

If ever a boundary, Dar Williams has crossed it. She's turned interfaith into a pop song – the mid-'90s single "The Christians and the Pagans" – and addressed her tomboy childhood on "When I Was a Boy," both of which lured a large LGBT following.
Calling Williams, who's released eight major studio LPs over 16 years, a folk artist seems too easy. Because she's not. Her last couple of albums were full of bubbly pop melodies and on her latest – "Promised Land," released last year – she wraps her spirited stories of life, love and everything in between with harder-edged rock sounds.
After finding a quiet spot at a friend's house in Virginia, Williams chatted with Between The Lines about her newfound sound, balancing motherhood with music and how some people still don't think she's straight.

Do people still think you're a lesbian?
No, no. Because I have the husband and the kid, but some people think I'm fooling myself. In the '90s there was this kind of "Who's a lesbian? Who's not? Does it matter?" and there was the evolution of this thing called the ally, and I thought, "Why did I enjoy being a part of this world so much where there was this big question of, 'Does it matter what your orientation is?'" It really clicked.
A friend of mine, she said, "People who are homophobic, they hate women" (laughs). It's like when I'm stepping out and doing things that are more conventionally male, which is often enough, it's not like that crowd is any more happy that I'm doing my thing than a person of a different orientation doing their thing. We're all in that boat together, and so I wrote songs like "When I Was a Boy" and songs about my hippie babysitter, and not just ones that are like, "If you leave me, I'll slit my wrist, Mr. Pillar of My Life." It's a similarity I have with this movement that was just taking off so beautifully in the '90s.
I just think that the world is a much better place. I've gotten some really lovely feedback from transsexuals who I'm running into now because there are a lot of transsexuals out in the world now thanks to a beautifully brave movement from the '80s into the '90s.

What kind of feedback?
They're happy that I covered "Midnight Radio" (from the 2001 film "Hedwig and the Angry Inch") and they're happy that I wrote "When I Was a Boy." I wrote that song for me, but this is a deep vein in our culture: People, I think, are really longing to be unshackled from their gender assignments, particularly men. I would say 50 percent of my success comes from what happened when I wrote that song. As my Jesuit priest says – friend, he's not my priest; I am not Catholic – but he's a friend of mine, and he's always saying that we must disarm our hearts, and he believes that homophobia is just a terrible byproduct of the armed heart. And I totally agree with him.

There's more of a rock vibe to this album. Why did you go this route and use producer Brad Wood, who's known for his work with Liz Phair?
You're right on the money in terms of calling it rock; a lot of people say it's more of a pop sound. My other albums have a bit of a pop sound, like "The Green World." What I love about Brad is he's like a rock snob; he kind of pulled up the encyclopedia of rock and said, "What are we going for here? Are we going for mid-'70s Bowie meets R.E.M. from the early '80s?" And he kind of puts things in sort of their historical context, and he would get very offended at sounds that didn't belong. I think it's the drumming that probably created that harder backbone to the album, but I like that. It also makes more room for the voice (in) the way he arranges things, the way he puts things together: What's hard is hard, what's soft is soft, and my voice is both, and he finds its perfect place, too.

You always pick really interesting songs to cover, like Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" (from 2005's "My Better Self") and, on this album, "Midnight Radio." Are you a fan of the film's writer/director, John Cameron Mitchell?
I am indeed. But I'm also a Stephen Trask (co-writer) fan 'cause I went to college with Stephen.

Well, you're biased then.
Yeah, exactly. Way biased, but biased toward both of them.

How did you adjust to juggling having a kid and a music career? Was it more difficult?
Well, yes and no. Ten years ago I didn't have a house or a garden or a child or a husband; I had a rent and I had plane tickets, and it was great in its own way. I had a lot of space and I need a lot of space to write, but it's really important that my life is filled with really wonderful things. And it's great to write about it, and it's exactly what I wanted, so it kind of got better when it got busier (laughs). And it's funny to walk into a 24-hour pharmacy in very high heels after a gig and buy diapers.

Dar Williams
8 p.m. Aug. 26, The Ark
316 S. Main St., Ann Arbor
$36
http://www.theark.org

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