Dar Williams

With opener Ruth Theodore

Folk singer and songwriter Dar Williams describes modern life as “a highway filled with deep, exotic colors and beautiful delicate things as well as the perils that come from moving so fast.” On her 13th album, Hummingbird Highway, Williams celebrates the colors she glimpses from her vantage as a touring musician. “I was a kid from the suburbs who listened when her hippie teachers said to get out in the world,” Williams muses. 

Hummingbird Highway is the latest chapter in the richly unfolding story of William’s 25+ year career. Drawing on her experience as a playwright, she populates her latest album with nuanced characters that come alive in the space of a few minutes. On the title track, Williams sings from the perspective of a child speaking to her nomadic and sometimes struggling parent.  Blooming columbines, china blue teapots, and cinnamon bark number among the “treasures” in her life, despite the “pirates” that she imagines populating her worldly parent’s life. 

“As I’ve gotten older, I feel more comfortable holding a lot of different threads in my hand to create more complicated patterns. Time has given me a better ability to hold a bunch of colors and temperaments and see what happens, where they become interesting new stories and also where I need to stop and untangle the themes and characters. It’s daunting, and I’ve learned that, you know, daunting is fine, just keep going,” Williams says.

Longtime listeners know that Williams and her music are always up for those kinds of conversations that glimpse the brightest colors, woven into the larger context of time. Williams sees and breathes the way people connect with one another, as chronicled in her 2017 autobiography, What I Found in a Thousand Towns. Williams not only draws inspiration from the social fabric of towns and cities, but also weaves it back into her own community—starting a thrift sale, chairing a local board, and organizing group sings in her New York hometown.