Lucinda Williams - This Sweet Old World

This Sweet Old World is the thirteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, released in September 2017 via Highway 20 Records and Thirty Tigers.

Lucinda Williams has revisited her 1992 album Sweet Old World by re-recording the album with her current touring band, adding a bunch of new arrangements, revising the original running sequence and adding four new songs. The album was produced by Lucinda Williams and Tom Overby. The album was recorded over 10 days with her band comprising Stuart Mathis (guitars), David Sutton (bass), Butch Norton (drums), and collaborator and legendary lap steel player, Greg Leisz (who had participated in the recording sessions for the original album).

This re-recording of the album marks the 25^th Anniversary of the original album’s release, which came out between two of her landmark recordings, the highly influential Lucinda Williams album (1988) and Car Wheels On A Gravel Road album (1998).

The years have proven that the songs are as strong as any she has written, but Williams felt the need to revisit the recording. “Everything’s different now. It’s a different band, it’s a different studio, my voice is different,” says Williams. “It’s like a new album.”

The original 1992 album had been difficult to make at that time, as she went through several record label changes, A&R representatives and producers who were not a good musical match for her. The timing seemed right to revisit this album with her current touring band, and also now that she is on her own record label.

The song “Drivin' Down A Dead End Street” was originally titled “He Never Got Enough Love”, and features an updated melody and new verses after Tom Overby discovered an original demo in the archives. Lucinda Williams recalls shelving it because Bob Dylan had a track with the same title around that time. "Of course, in deference to Bob, I said to myself, 'Well, okay, never mind, I can't do that now,'" she says. Overby, who co-produced the album with Williams, convinced her to go back to the original concept.

"What I wrote it about was this article I'd read in the paper about this kid who had shot and killed somebody just in cold blood, kind of a Gary Gilmore situation," recalls Williams. "In the article, they were interviewing this kid's uncle, and the guy was describing this kid's life and how his mother left him and his dad was gone all the time, and the uncle said, 'He was just driving down a dead end street.' And I said, 'Wow, that's a story. That's a song'"

Check out the tracks:  “Pineloa”; “Six Blocks Away”; and “Sidewalks of the City”.

This limited edition double album 2LP record set is on pink coloured vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve with a digital download code, pressed in the US, limited to 2,000 copies for a breast cancer charity.