When the acclaimed singer-songwriter, Dar Williams was growing up, her parents’ record collection had a profound influence on the kind of performer she has become today. “My parents had a great folk-rock collection from the late 60s and early 70s and we loved all that music,” she remembered. “They alphabetized the collection and basically, whether it was the Byrds, the Beatles, Joan Baez, Judy Collins [or] Jim Croce … the Bs and Cs were where the music was!”
These artists have touched her in a way she hopes to touch and inspire her audiences this weekend at the Birchmere in Alexandria where she has performed for the past 15 years and where she herself finds a great deal of love and inspiration in her fan base there.
| ONSTAGE |
| Dar Williams |
| » Where: Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria |
| » When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday |
| » Info: $35, birchmere.com, 703-549-7500 |
“I’ve been doing this long enough that I know what I’m about on stage,” she continued. “But I hope I don’t make it look too hard. I always hope that people will feel like the door is open for them to go home and write their own songs.”
Williams and her keyboard player, Bryn Roberts, will perform some newly written material that will be featured on her upcoming, full-length studio album due out in April 2012 on the indie Razor & Tie label. But while giving her fans a taste of the new songs, it is the work from her “Many Great Companions” album, released last year that audiences on her current tour have been hearing and cheering. This compilation, in addition to tracks that highlighted guest appearances by Mary Chapin Carpenter and Patty Larkin, also includes an additional disc of her greatest hits spanning the course of her entire career — from 1993’s “The Honesty Room” through “Promised Land.”
When asked about her music as providing a vehicle for positive change in the world (as certainly was the goal for many of her childhood idols,) she answers truthfully, “I don’t see my work as changing anything. Actually, I see it much more as music that helps the good get better. I think that in the scale of things, there’s a speed at [which] we go and my music goes at a more human speed, one that slows us down enough so that we can recognize ourselves and … hold on to what’s important.”
