Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Recording

After signing a record deal with Rick Rubin's American Recordings label, Williams began recording songs for Car Wheels on a Gravel Road in 1995. The album was originally made in collaboration with Williams's long-time producer and guitar player Gurf Morlix. According to Morlix, the recordings (in Austin, Texas) were "90% done," but Williams shelved them and redid them in Nashville. In the middle of the re-recordings, they "butted heads in the studio" and ended their partnership. She also worked with Steve Earle who said of the experience that it was "the least amount of fun I’ve had working on a record."

The final version of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road was produced by Roy Bittan. Williams incorporated country and blues elements into her modern roots rock style for the album.

Critical reception

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road received widespread acclaim from critics. In a review for Entertainment Weekly, David Browne found Williams' hard-edged evocations of Southern rural life refreshing amid a music market overrun by timid, mass-produced female artists. Richard Cromelin of the Los Angeles Times said her "resonant, resolute and reassuring" answers to the questions romantic passion and pain pose are as ambitious as the "rich", commanding sound she crafted with producers Steve Earle and Ray Kennedy. NME magazine said Williams transfigures "American roots rock into a heady, soul-baring and, would you believe, unabashedly sexy art form", while Uncut credited the album with "repositioning country-blues roots rock as contemporary Southern art" and offering listeners "a sense of life and place that leap from every line and guitar lick". Village Voice critic Robert Christgau argued at the time that she proves herself to be the era's "most accomplished record-maker" by honing traditional popular music composition, understated vocal emotions, and realistic narratives colored by her native experiences and values:

At the end of 1998, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road was named one of the year's best albums in many critics' top-ten lists. It topped the annual Pazz & Jop poll and earned Williams a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, although AllMusic's Steve Huey later said it was her "least folk-oriented record". In a five-star retrospective review, About.com's Kim Ruehl credited the album with solidifying Williams' status as one of the best singer-songwriters of all time, as she "single-handedly marries the genres of traditional and alternative country, roots rock and American folk music so smoothly, it almost feels like magic." In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine called the record an alternative country masterpiece and ranked it number 304 on their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Dave Marsh said it is a masterpiece of timeless quality and greater depth than anything else by Williams, who offers a perfect collection of "faces, fights, keening swamp guitar and sighing accordion, strong drink and stronger lust in an album about places shadowed by memory". According to Acclaimed Music, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is the 336th most ranked record on critics' all-time lists. It was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Track listing

All tracks by Lucinda Williams except where noted.

1. "Right in Time" – 4:35
2. "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" – 4:44
3. "2 Kool 2 Be 4-gotten" – 4:42
4. "Drunken Angel" – 3:20
5. "Concrete and Barbed Wire" – 3:08
6. "Lake Charles" – 5:27
7. "Can’t Let Go" (Randy Weeks) – 3:28
8. "I Lost It" – 3:31
9. "Metal Firecracker" – 3:30
10. "Greenville" – 3:23
11. Emmylou Harris on harmony vocals
12. "Still I Long For Your Kiss" (Williams, Duane Jarvis) – 4:09
13. "Joy" – 4:01
14. "Jackson" – 3:42

14. "Down the Big Road Blues" (Mattie Delaney) – 4:07
15. "Out of Touch" – 3:50
16. "Still I Long For Your Kiss" (Alternate version) (Williams, Jarvis) – 5:00

1. "Pineola" – 4:18
2. "Something About What Happens When We Talk" – 3:44
3. "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" – 4:42
4. "Metal Firecracker" – 3:39
5. "Right in Time" – 4:32
6. "Drunken Angel" – 3:27
7. "Greenville" – 3:46
8. "Still I Long For Your Kiss" (Williams, Jarvis) – 4:39
9. "2 Kool 2 Be 4-gotten" – 4:53
10. "Can’t Let Go" (Weeks) – 3:51
11. "Hot Blood" – 7:38
12. "Changed The Locks" – 4:19
13. "Joy" – 6:08

Personnel