[music]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. When we were looking for a musical act to finish out our Get Lit with All Of It book club event with Rebecca Makkai, we wanted to invite someone who was on the scene in the 1990s when the novel takes place. We were lucky enough that Dar Williams had a night off from her tour and agreed to join us. Described by The New Yorker as one of America's best songwriters, she is also an author of four books. After graduating from Wesleyan, Dar launched her career, yes, in the '90s, in New England where I Have Some Questions for You takes place.

In the fall of 2021, she released her first album in six years called I'll Meet You Here. Dar Williams joined us for our in-person Get Lit with All Of It event, and you'll hear my interview with her in just a moment but first, here's a special live performance from that event. This is Dar Williams with, Are You Out There?

[applause]

[Are You Out There? by Dar Williams playing]

Perhaps I am a miscreation

No one knows the truth there is no future here

And you're the DJ speaks to my insomnia

And laughs at all I have to fear

Laughs at all I have to fear

You always play the madmen poets

Vinyl vision grungy bands

You never know who's still awake

You never know who understands and

Are you out there, can you hear this?

Jimmy Olson, Johnny Memphis,

I was out here listening all the time

And though the static walls surround me

You were out there and you found me

I was out here listening all the time

Last night we drank in parking lots

And why do we drink? I guess we do it 'cause

And when I turned your station on

You sounded more familiar than that party was

You were more familiar than that party

It's the first time I stayed up all night

It's getting light I hear the birds

I'm driving home on empty streets

I think I put my shirt on backwards

Are you out there, can you hear this

Jimmy Olson, Johnny Memphis

I was out here listening all the time

And though the static walls surround me

You were out there and you found me

I was out here listening all the time

And what's the future, who will choose it?

Politics of love and music

Underdogs who turn the tables

Indie versus major labels

There's so much to see through

Like our parents do more drugs than we do

Oh

Corporate parents, corporate towns

I know every TV set that has 'em lit

They preach that I should save the world

They pray that I won't do a better job of it

Pray that I won't do a better job

So tonight I turned your station on just so I'd be understood

Instead another voice said I was just too late

And just no good

Calling Olson, Calling Memphis

I am calling, can you hear this?

I was out here listening all the time

And I will write this down

And then I will not be alone again yeah

I was out here listening

Oh yeah I was out here listening

Oh yeah I am out here listening all the time

[applause]

Alison Stewart: Dar, thank you so much. You chose that song, especially for this event, can you share why?

Dar: Actually, the more I was listening to Rebecca the more reasons I came up with, but I was so interested in this teenager trying to get a hold of the information, trying to figure out where the power was, what the system was, trying to figure out things and all of the ways that teenagers get under the surface and figure things out. As you were saying-- Sorry. Hello. It's like they know certain things and at the same time, they don't. I love how teenagers are gathering information and there's nothing like that moment when you're a teenager and you're like, "There's something really messed up here." There's an adult who goes, "Yes, man, it is really messed up." [laughter] You're like, "Thank you."

Yes, I call this the avuncular character. I wanted that station to be that thing that kid could say, "Yes, I thought something was weird here."

Alison Stewart: You've written four books, correct?

Dar: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Two young adult fiction books and your most recent from 2022 is How To Write A Song That Matters. I love the title and also you have a retreat for songwriters. What was the origin of the retreat and the book?

Dar: I was teaching a course about music history and I loved it. A friend said, "You should lead a songwriting retreat." I said, "Never." Because it's too much, I don't want to teach people how to do a press back or how to get a record contract, or how to write a hit. It would have to be called something like, How To Write A Song That Matters, or Writing A Song That Matters, meaning to you, to your pet turtle, to your dog. What do you see? What do you really see? That's your song. He said, "Well, why don't you call it that," [laughs] and so I did. He's my friend Tom Todoroff. He's an acting coach and he's like, "I see that thing where you really love to bring that out of people, do that," and it's been a game-changer.

Alison Stewart: I'm not going to ask you to tell us how to write a song that matters, but how does one start?

Dar: For me, and for a lot of people, there's a lot of different words for it, but there's this moment when you feel like a little scrap of things. I will hear a bit of melody and then some lyrics on top. I have a song called If I Wrote You and it goes.

[singing]

If I wrote you

If I wrote you

Dar: I'm like, "Ooh, what would happen?" It's like.

[singing]

You would know me

And you would not write me again

Dar: It's like, "Whoa, who is this person?" That's what happens. I let the character guide me a little and then I think, "What's up with me? That's interesting to me right now," because as I said, nothing's going to grab you, it's got to grab you in order for you to grab it. If you want to write a song about something, good luck, it's really got to be a two-way street of being interested as well as pursuing what is interesting.

Alison Stewart: Let's go back to the '90s. In 1995 when this book takes place, where were you in your career? What was Dar doing?

Dar: [laughs] I was on tour in Europe with Joan Baez. [laughs] She brought me around the United States, and I was basically kissing the ground every day thanking Ani DiFranco for being out there because she brought the scream into acoustic music. [chuckles] The coffee house culture, she helped to-- A whole bunch of people was just infusing the coffee house culture, which was such a beautiful mosaic network at the United States into the strength that it had. I had signed with my record label Razor & Tie, who they just did compilations like disco compilation [laughs] since they'd have all their former law school just good friends wearing dashikis and with big headphones on these disco thing.

They took me on. They said, "Look, let's put you out there. We have a few developing artists, and we'll grow and you'll grow. Let's see what happens." That was happening but that was very much of a very DIY Indie culture. I got to ride every wave, it was the beginning of the internet, and people were saying, "Let's see how far we can take this without the middleman of a lot of corporate things." I really got to discover who I was in a really wonderful things with good coffee and bad coffee but at least that network.

Alison Stewart: You've picked another song to play for us.

Dar: Yes. I went off script because I gave you a couple of songs but I'm going to do another song. [chuckles] It's a song called When I Was A Boy, and it was the song that started my whole career because there was so much going on with feminism. There was so much going on with sexual orientation but this is a gender song. I remember at the time saying, "There's this other thing that's happening." I wanted to sing. I wanted to dedicate it to the non-binary movement as well as the trans movement as well as the gender openness that we are discovering on our society.

They're not mutually exclusive, but I just wanted to put this song out there for all of the ways that people are finding gender freedom, and also wanted to hopefully extend a sense of love and safety to those who are facing discrimination still. The genie is out of the bottle. A very non-binary, gorgeous genie is out of the bottle, and I'm very happy, hopefully, to have been part of the beginning of that.

Alison Stewart: Dar Williams.

[applause]

[When I Was a Boy by Dar Williams playing]

I won't forget when Peter Pan came to my house, took my hand

I said I was a boy

I'm glad he didn't check

I learned to fly, I learned to fight

I lived a whole life in one night

We saved each other's lives out on the pirate's deck

And I remember that night

When I'm leaving a late night with some friends

And I hear somebody tell me it's not safe, someone should help me

I need to find a nice man to walk me home

When I was a boy, I scared the pants off of my mom

Climbed what I could climb upon

And I don't know how I survived

I guess I knew the tricks that all boys knew

And you can walk me home, but I was a boy, too

I was a kid that you would like, just a small boy on her bike

Riding topless, yeah, I never cared who saw

My neighbor came outside to say, "get your shirt"

I said "no way, it's the last time I'm not breaking any law"

And now I'm in a clothing store, and the sign says less is more

More that's tight means more to see, more for them, not more for me

That can't help me climb a tree in ten seconds flat

When I was a boy

See that picture, that was me

Grass-stained shirt and dusty knees

And I know things have got to change

They got pills to sell, they've got implants to put in

They've got implants to remove

But I am not forgetting

That I was a boy, too

And like the woods where I would creep, it's a secret I can keep

Except when I'm tired, except when I'm being caught off guard

I've had a lonesome awful day, the conversation finds its way

To catching fire-flies out in the backyard

And I tell the man I'm with about the other life I lived

And I say now you're top gun

I have lost and you have won

He says, "oh no, no, can't you see?"

When I was a girl, my mom and I, we always talked

And I picked flowers everywhere that I walked

And I could always cry, now even when I'm alone I seldom do

And I have lost some kindness

But I was a girl, too

And you were just like me, and I was just like you

[applause]

Dar: Thank you very much. Thank you, Alison. Thank you, Rebecca.

Alison Stewart: That was Dar Williams with a special performance of her song, When I Was a Boy, from our March Get Lit with All Of It book club event, with author Rebecca MacKay. That's all of it for today. Thank you to Dar, Rebecca, the NYPL, and all our book club members for a great Get Lit event. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.

[music]

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.