When you go, you let me know If there's a Heaven out there. When you leave me here to grieve In pain and despair, I've seen the face of hell. I know … - Lucinda Williams

I grew up being aware that I was Southern, and that being a very important thing for me. And being drawn to short story writers, like Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty—the surroundings in their stories were so familiar to me, the whole Southern Gothic thing. That world only existed in that part of the country. It’s going to inform the personality of the songs. In a lot of my songwriting, I mention towns and places. It’s a culturally traditional thing in the South to tell stories.

Are you alright?
All of a sudden you went away.
Are you alright?
I hope you come back around someday.

I would rather suffer sweet silent solitude,
Deathly defiant from drowning out.
Filthy sounds stumbling, ugly and cruel
Between the lips of your beautiful mouth.<p>Deep down within me words move in phases,
Frozen and still until they decide
To melt and drip over the pages,
Until that moment they live inside.