Dar Williams

During her sophomore year at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Williams spent a few months in Berkeley, California, where she wrote songs and performed at the Starry Plough. After earning a B.A., she moved to Boston in 1990 to find a career in the arts, dabbling in everything from directing plays and operas to performing. By the year's end she was stage manager for the Opera Company of Boston. She also began taking voice lessons and it was her teacher, Jeannie Diva, who encouraged Williams to try the coffeehouse circuit. Williams tried hard, especially between late 1992 and early 1993, but things didn't pan out, so she abandoned Boston for the relaxed folksy, artsy atmosphere of Northampton, Massachusetts, home of many prominent universities. The Honesty Room Williams claims to draw much inspiration from her home community. Her love of the folk scene stems from her admiration of its integrity toward honesty and real emotion, and a creative freedom not found in more popular music genres. She loves trying to use traditional methods to express the realities and foibles of contemporary life. After several self-released cassettes, Williams made her proper debut in 1993 with the independent Honesty Room to considerable critical acclaim for both her beautiful soprano voice and her lovely, intriguing songs. The following year she signed to Razor & Tie Records, which reissued the album. Her second album, Mortal City (1995), was similarly praised, and was followed by 1997's End of the Summer. Cry Cry Cry Williams performs on the college and coffeehouse circuit and has also won rave reviews for her festival appearances, including the Newport Folk Festival and the Mississippi River Music Fest, St. Louis. She issued Cry Cry Cry as part of the folk trio of the same name in 1998, and her own The Green World followed two years later. Over the next few years, Williams remained a major presence on the concert trail; she also recorded songs during a two-year trek across America and Europe. She hooked up with Alison Krauss, Béla Fleck, Dave Matthews Band's Stefan Lessard, trumpet player Chris Botti, and others for the impressive The Beauty of the Rain, which appeared in February 2003. My Better Self, Williams' most personal set of her career yet, arrived two years later, followed by Promised Land in 2008. In 2010, Williams released the career-spanning two-disc set Many Great Companions, which features one compilation disc of fan favorites and another disc of newly recorded songs from her catalog performed in an acoustic format. Williams' ninth studio project, In the Time of the Gods, appeared in 2012 from Razor & Tie.