Williams’s music could be loosely called folk but it really occupies a room of its own. Of growing up, Williams says, “There’d be opera on Saturdays that my mother would listen to. There’d be church music on Sundays. And on the weekdays, there’d be country when we woke up to my father’s radio.” In the ’80s, the singer moved to Los Angeles and made two literate, willfully weird albums about weeds and back roads, puzzlement and wonder. Then, in 1992, her life underwent a seismic shift. Her record company went belly up. And while she was on tour, opening for Neil Young, her feet started getting numb. “it got to where I couldn’t walk and my whole body was numb,” Williams remembers. “I was up there trying to play guitar, but my bands just wouldn’t make chords.”
Williams checked into a hospital and began running up more than $20,000 in medical bills. Two musician friends, T-Bone Burnett and Michael Penn, organized a benefit in Los Angeles. And a Sony Records staffer named Kelley Walker put together a tribute in New York City, which included Lou Reed, Jules Sheer and Shawn Colvin. Some knew Williams’s work; others knew that adage about the grace of God.
Out of a singer’s misfortune, ironically, has come an odd celebrity. “Sweet Relief’ features 14 old and new Victoria Williams songs, rendered in as many styles by the likes of Reed, Pearl jam, Michelle Shocked and Lucinda Williams (no relation). The highlight is “Summer of Drugs,” covered by the ascendant rock band Soul Asylum: Sister got bit by a copperhead snake in the woods behind the house/Nobody was home so I grabbed her foot and I sucked that poison out/Sister got better in a month or two when the swelling it went down/But I’d started off my teenage years with her poison in my mouth.
Williams lost her vision briefly this year and her hands are still numb. But she remains resolutely upbeat. Gus Van Sant tapped her for a role in his next film, “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.” Record companies are making offers. “If I hadn’t gotten sick, nobody would have ever heard these songs,” Williams says. “In a way, something that could have been a really horrible thing has turned into a blessing.” The musicians who lend their voices to “Sweet Relief” have given Victoria Williams their friendship. But she has given them some of the best songs they’ve ever sung.
