Once in a great while I hear a song so special I just keep coming back to it, sometimes listening to it multiple times in a row. "West" by Lucinda Williams is one such song. It closes the album of the same title, and is the most hauntingly beautiful song I’ve heard in a long, long time.
The whole album is very strong, one of my favorites of hers, and was produced by Hal Willner. Musical accompaniment is provided by the likes of Bill Frisell, Doug Pettibone, Tony Garnier, and Jim Keltner (I knew it was Jim playing drums before I read the album credits; his style is that unique and identifiable), musicians as good as they come. Gary Louris of The Jayhawks provides vocal harmonies.
In the liner notes, Lucinda mentions that all the songs on the album were written at The Safari Inn in Burbank. I had to laugh; that’s a 2-level motel right on Olive Avenue, just down the street from NBC Studios (where The Tonight Show is taped) and a quarter mile from where I lived from ’93-’03. I used to drive by The Safari Inn all the time, but as the West album came out in 2007, in all likelihood she was holed-up there writing songs after I had moved up into the foothills above Glendale.