Dar Williams – HuffPost 10.6.10

Mike Ragogna: What advice do you have for new artists coming up?

Dar Williams: I always tell people to go to a place where there’s a scene, you know? You can do it in a vacuum, and one could argue that a guy like Elliott Smith, who had such innovative, interesting melodies, was maybe off on his own, but I think he’s part of the Hoboken scene. I was part of the Cambridge scene, and we all played together, we did song circles, we gave advice, we had coffee together, we slept together, and it was this whole social scene. There were poets and homeless people coming in and banging on their guitars, so you really got a totally twisty view on what artistry, creativity, and meaning are. It really grew me up to be part of this group. Some people were jealous and told me to quit, some people told me to get a new guitar, some people said, “No, no, your guitar is perfect.” But it takes a scene, you know? One boyfriend or girlfriend or one sounding board isn’t going to do it. A scene and an audience and then tip jar gigs, and that slow evolution into playing for audiences and playing for college radio stations and stuff like that. I got all of that in Cambridge, and I really don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have that. Otherwise, I would have gone into a glass penthouse and had to play in front of a person at a desk, and I don’t even know how I would have gotten there. Because of these scenes that were happening and then the scenes of the internet and stuff, instead of there being artists that sold five thousand and artists that sold five million, there was that forest canopy for that middle-sized career that was audience-based and people-based. That’s always my first piece of advice.

Then, my second piece of advice is kind of like don’t sell out unless you really want to sell out. (laughs) And then, more power to you. If you want to go get the nose job, the boob job, and you want to turbo-charge things and just write to what the audience wants to hear and get the manager who really pushes the door open and gets you singing on every commercial, then do it. But either really find your audience, love your audience, develop your audience, love to travel, and make friends or really do it and just move to one of the three coasts, as we say, and immerse yourself in the commercial enterprise of entertainment and music for entertainment, which is a fine career, and a lot of great philanthropists come out of that world. There is still artistry, but it’s maybe with a different goal. I don’t even want to demean it, but the soul searching that I see some people doing before they finally say, “Okay, I’m going to go to L.A.,” but they kind of do it late. If you’re going to do it, do it, but if you’re not, figure out what you want and write songs that feel like you’re telling the truth.

The song “When I Was A Boy”? I thought I was just writing for me and this girl named Sue on the softball team who was whispered to be a lesbian. Like, of course she was a lesbian. She was a tough, lonely, shy, athletically gifted person who is off on her own and kind of hostile as people are when people are whispering about them and pointing at them. So, I was kind of saying she belongs. We all have parts of ourselves that are like a boy or like a girl, and it turned out to hit a nerve because the nineties were a time when people were saying, “So, I’m wearing a dress now, but I really remember being covered with mud in a swamp and loving it. Does that make me less or more of my gender? Does that matter?” So, that really worked for me. Truthfully, though it might sound weird to the world, it actually worked for me.