DON'T worry, Dar Williams isn't one of those cringe inducing, guitar strum singers who tell Irish journalists,"Gee, but it's great to be home". Though she could, in a tiny, truthful sense. After all, our Dar, did make her debut in a Berkeley, California bar named Plough And The Stars and last year, the editor in chief of Billboard magazine, Timothy White, waxed lyrical about the "Celtic air " in her compositions such as You're Ageing Well and I Love, I Love (Travelling 11). But what Timmy didn't I know is that the Irish influence on even earlier songs, which she performed at Plough and the Stars, was calculated, self conscious and so crass that she now laughs at the memory.
"The truth is that I come from, the American suburbs, where there is a certain lack of roots, because they are designed to be safe, homogenised, with no roots to the earth. So it helps me to remember I am quarter Irish," she says.
"But when I played in that Irish bar that had the open mike, I thought you had to sing Irish songs so I wrote some for the occasion. Not the two Timothy identified, but another two, which I don't play any more, for reasons, that will become obvious from titles like Me And Molly McGee. But the Celtic influences in You're Ageing Well and I Love, I Love are more those that were absorbed through listening to American music. People like Judy Collins, Joan Baez, who tipped their hat to that.
Seeing herself as extending this line of folk singers, Williams says" there is no truth to the claim that she prefers to be known as a singer songwriter. "Actually, I'm very comfortable being described as a folk singer, though there are a lot of people who think I don't have enough `roots' in my music to warrant the label," she asserts, nonetheless agreeing that her expressed desire to give a voice to that hybridised mass of people who do come from the `safe, homogenised suburbs' of America is as noble an artistic goal as attempting to sing from knee deep within the soil.
"That is true and the classical composer Aaron Copland once said that he wanted to `write the landscape', which really is what I would love to do. And try to do. So although, yes, there is a part of me that wants to find my roots, there is another part that just wants to describe the landscape I know, which, to me, is also folk music. But my stuff is pretty cerebral, so I can see why people say there is a difference between that and folk music as it is perceived, say, by purists."
Purists may also frown on the fact that Dar has become probably the first "folkie" whose career was given a kick by the Internet. Indeed, she may even be the first cyberfolkie, in that she's available on Folknet and sees this particular form of digital communication as delivering the music back "to the people". She also obviously sides with Nicholas Negroponte, founder of M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Media Lab) who recently claimed that the Internet, in having "no hierarchy" and being a decentralised structure", is relatively unique.
"The Internet is accessible to everyone," she enthuses. "And I think it is wonderful because it is one of the folksiest things that has come along in a long time. It's not commercial. One third of the people who are on the Internet are frustrated business people who realise they can't make any money off it, which is great! So it is very democratic because it's basically a grapevine, people talking to each other about what they themselves like, in terms of music, for example. And, let's face it, much of the music press here in America is bought, and sold by advertisers. So the Internet takes you beyond all that.
"In other words, people tune into what they are told is good by other music buffs, rather than sections of the media, which have an economic, and political agenda. And that really is applicable in terms of my career, because I do operate outside the commercial realm, in that I drive my little car to gigs, carry my guitar and am signed to a small, independent label that has not made me sell out one iota. And the Internet has certainly helped me maintain my integrity in all of this.
What on earth would Dar's original heroes, such as Paul Simon, say? Well, if it was the Simon who, with Art Garfunkel, once sang of going off in search of America, he might realise that this venture into cyberspace is as authentic an American journey as Woody Guthrie's hopping trains during the Great Depression. He certainly would agree with those of us who believe that authentic American voices, from Presley right up to Prince and Ice T, also create their own form of American folk music - though, again, purists violently reject this point of view. Not Dar, however.
"That's also the America Paul Simon wrote about in American Tune, she says. "And your broad based definition of American folk music is true and feeds into Thomas Wolfe saying: `America is lost, but I think it will find itself'. All of us are trying to find an American culture that is not on steroids, in some form or another. America is called `Generica' and that is a sad, though powerful, definition. But the big hope we have, as a country, is that we find ourselves in relation to the land and our relationship with the land. I sense that connection in Irish culture and music but in America, people tend to pave over that with a hyper inflated media, as in commercials, television shows and movies, too often just selling us our fantasies, rather than any indication of how we can reconnect with our roots. But folk music can help us do that."
Prophetically, perhaps, Dar Williams herself was placed on this path by Paul Simon, particularly "when I heard he said he considered himself to be `a poet who plays the guitar'," she explains.
"That gave me a sense of freedom to go ahead, be lopsided, and be a language first songwriter, because I wasn't sure if I had music in my blood or not. These days I know I have, because I've since been exposed to more music than I previously ever heard in my life. Now I even have secret fantasies to just compose music, without words! That's all part, of my journey, as I see it now.
One could suggest that in suitably titled songs such as The Ocean, Dar Williams already allows the final sound waves of music to wash into silence her words, in a decidedly postmodern manner. It has also been suggested that through her own guitar work she explores spatial relationships in much the same way that Edge does with U2. "Well, I describe The Ocean as a "sea shanty gone awry, and that's the sound I wanted," she says, laughing. "But if someone is saying I'm exploring space, in the context you mention, that's probably also because the producer doubled the guitar, and made an acoustic guitar sound electric, to get the effect I wanted."
SPEAKING of concepts such as spatial relationships comes quite naturally to Dar Williams, who originally studied theatre and firmly believes that too often songwriters are asked simply to talk about their "musical influences" as though they somehow live in a world removed from wider cultural forces.
"I started out as a playwright, but there was no support for grassroots theatre in Boston, so I went to folk, which was an equal love," she concludes. "So, although, yes, I do listen to a lot of music, I also live my life in the wider realm and the whole thing gets distilled into my music. That's why I've no idea what comes from, say, my love for theatre, art, autobiography or the conversation I just had with my friend. At first that made me feel frustrated, because it made me feel ethery, as in, too ill focused and floating. But now I realise I'm probably writing for all of those of us who occupy a similar space, whether that is shaped by a base in homogenised suburbs, a country out of touch with its roots, like America, or whatever. And it really is nice to distil something tangible from such longings, don't you think?"
