Lucinda Williams announced the official release date of her 2016 album Ghost of Highway 20 on Thursday (Oct. 29). The album is a follow-up to her fantastic, Americana-Award-winning album Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone.
This will be Williams' 12th record, invoking those gritty alt-country sounds that made her last effort so beloved and accessible, and opened her listenership to a wider audience than she's been able to garner in the past.
Ghosts of Highway 20 is a thematic album covering her experiences traveling along the 190 mile stretch of highway connecting Texas and Georgia. Rolling Stone Country said Williams plans to craft characters that have lived, loved and lost, either as travelers on the expressway or in the many communities that exist just off its exit ramps. Given her propensity for story telling, this concept seems like the perfect fit for her Americana, telling-it-like-it-is style of song writing.
Fans can also expect at least two covers on the new record, including cuts of Bruce Springsteen's "Factory" and a reworked version of the often forgotten Woody Guthrie song "House of Earth," which will combine lyrics from the folk icon with Williams' own take on the song.
Williams is bringing a lot of familiar faces back for this album including co-producer and guitarist Greg Leisz, who has played a pivotal role on the album alongside Williams and producer Tom Overby. Butch Norton and David Sutton once again make up her rhythm section with appearances from guitarists Bill Frisell and Val McCallum.
Her 2014 release of Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone won this year's Americana Album of The Year award out of a crowded and competitive field of contenders including Shakey Graves, Lee Ann Womack, Rhiannon Giddens and Artist of the Year winner Sturgill Simpson. Hopefully, Williams has struck gold again on this release.
Watch her perform songs from the award-winning album on KEXP below.
