Singer-songwriter Dar Williams is coming to Paly’s Haymarket theater January 17 to play a concert benefiting the children of Barron Park Elementary School.
Julie Williams, Dar’s sister and mother of a Barron Park School student, is part of the team arranging the event. “Barron Park is the most diverse school in Palo Alto,” Julie said. “We are so excited to be able to use Palo Alto resources [ticket sales] to support the children.”

With seven albums to her name, her latest, “Beauty of the rain” released this past February, Dar Williams recently spoke to the Paly Voice. The following is a transcript of that interview.

The Paly Voice: Let’s start at the beginning. Why did you start writing songs?

Dar Williams: It was a weird time. I started writing songs a lot when I was in college. But I didn’t know that I would be pursuing that, I think it was sort of a secret dream to do that. I thought I was going to write plays and maybe direct them. So it’s been an interesting development. And I was always interested in music and theatre. But I always thought I was going to go into theater direction as opposed to music. After college I wrote a play and a few songs, and I had a play reading around the time that I had my first open-mic, and it seemed like the music community was wide open to improving yourself by going to open mics, and getting that sort of feedback. There were song-circles, there were sort of little radio shows you could be on to sort of practice being interviewed and performing in public, and it was like being in school for music. And the theater scene was struggling so much, it was hard to figure out how to progress as a playwright without going back to school — which I really didn’t want to do.

PV: As a musician, where does your inspiration come from?

DW: I don’t know. Especially right now. I’m pregnant, and it’s hard to connect to the part of me that writes songs. It’s very weird, it’s like you have to take this part of you very seriously, the part that has a weird dream that you remember the next morning. You have to be open to seeing weird connections between people and things, between your interior life and your exterior life. My big joke is that you have to play to work, when you’re a musician you have to make sure that you keep playfulness and a playful eye out there. Because, I’m very concerned with various political causes, but that doesn’t change, necessarily, into any kind of songwriting. What translates into songwriting is deeper than politics. It’s how you look at the whole human experience and if you lose that, as it’s easy to do when you’re pregnant and you’re moving and you’re trying to make sure that all your file cabinets are in order, you’re not going to be writing a lot of songs, necessarily. So one could argue that responsible adult life is not the best thing for songwriting, but that as an adult you can figure out how to keep your eyes open in a certain way to the whimsy of the world, that you’ll have that access to what floats your boat, creatively, and it’s probably good for you as an adult, it just keeps your eyes open to seeing things, which is always a good idea.

PV: You mentioned being politically active, do you find that that influences your music?

DW: I have discovered with some real trial and error that if you care about something, it’s probably better to keep your songs, your creative works sophisticated, and incorporating what you believe in, but not really taking a side as much as one does in one’s political consciousness. So I find that it’s helpful for me to be working with a non-profit, which I am in New York, called Clearwater which is all about protecting the Hudson river, and to do fundraisers for things I believe in, and to speak supportively and be supportive of people who are out there working so hard for peace and justice and for the environment who don’t get recognized very often. A lot of times if you come to a fundraiser, you’re helping to raise money, and you’re helping to raise consciousness, but you’re also acknowledging the thankless work of the people who are advocates for various voiceless people or things. So I find that there are a lot of ways that you can comment your weird artistic self to an environment and witness and cheer and ask the audience to applaud for them and not just for me, and to my mind that’s a better contribution than sitting down and writing a song that you hope will change people’s minds about a certain cause.

PV: What is your motivation for playing the benefit at Paly?

DW: Julie, my sister, is not like my friend “Redwood Mary” who works for, guess which cause, and is constantly in the backroom, in the courtroom filing briefs. The reason that I want to do this for Julie is that I love Julie and I believe in what her elementary school is doing right now, which is raising money to focus on the challenges ahead, the real challenges ahead for a truly diverse elementary school, ethnically diverse, which translates into different languages, different backgrounds, and also the challenges of making sure that there is something inherently watching out for racism. That’s what I think is great about the Bay Area, is that people are open to discussing ways in which they’re subtly racist, not overtly racist, but ways in which people aren’t listening to each other. This fundraiser is about making sure that having a diverse school, which they do, is an incredibly positive experience for every kid and that no one’s overlooked because of a language barrier or unforeseen misunderstandings. It’s a very big deal. Because, making sure that you have multi-lingual resources for parents and kids is one of the big basic things that can get overlooked. That’s the kind of thing that they’re going to be looking out for and when those opportunities are overlooked at an early age it just doesn’t give a kid a great start in life. You don’t want to give kids barriers to start with, you want them to feel that their school is all about how special they are. So that’s why I’m really into doing this fundraiser. That’s my understanding, is that it’s about making sure that it’s a dynamic environment, looking after every single kid from every single background. Because, my sister is so excited by all these different minds, she just — she’s a high school teacher looking at the developing minds of these five and six year-olds and she’s just been completely excited by that whole world of learning, after being so concerned with 16 and 17 year-olds. This is like looking at how to look at the whole child and looking at what a crucial time it is — she’s just completely fascinated by it and I’m really happy for her. The other reason I’m coming out to California is that I love her kids, her family, and I get to visit with them. She’s also a great cook. And when you’re pregnant and someone offers to cook with you, you’ll do anything. So that’s another great draw of coming out to Palo Alto.

PV: From your point of view, is there anything else that sets this concert apart from other benefits you’ve done?

DW: No, but I would put it up there in terms of…Basically, I don’t do a lot of fundraisers unless I know who’s behind them. Because, sometimes people have good intentions but they do a terrible job putting things together and it’s almost worse for the cause than if they had done nothing at all, like the sound is terrible, and there’s no one there because they didn’t know how to do publicity, so…it’s really great to see how they want to turn this into an event that’s greater than the sum of it’s parts. Which is the kind of fundraiser you want to be involved with where every aspect of the evening is being looked after and it’s not just about…well, I guess I said it already, the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.

PV: Who do you see mainly in your audiences when you play a concert like this?

DW: A concert like this? Well, it’s probably concentric circles. There are people who are close to the cause, like the parents of the kids, but then there’s going to be people from PA who have seen how diverse the city has become and who will be very supportive of any kind of model for any excitement about diversity in the schools. And then, we’re hoping that…we tried to make the tickets a good price so that anybody who just wants to see a concert is there too. I mean, it is just a concert, it’s a fundraiser, but it’s also just a concert. It’s not that kind of black-tie thing. It’s just going to be very much about the kids, so there’s going to be some artwork by the kids up in the lobby, and stuff like that. And if you want to go to a DW concert and that kind of stuff turns you off then I guess that’s not going to be fun. I tend to do fundraisers for pretty bipartisan causes in terms of the environment and education and stuff like that. So, people just come for a concert. But I’ve met a lot of the kids that my nephew goes to school with, I’ve gone to school with him, and I’m looking forward to meeting their parents and stuff like that.

PV: What do you hope that people who listen to your music are picking up from it? Is there a certain message that you’re trying to convey or is it just your form of expression?

DW: Well, I that there’s kind of two worlds out there. There’s reality that you live day to day and there’s what people are trying to sell you, and then there’s supposed to be this kind of interesting world where people are communicating but they’re not trying to sell you anything, and that’s art. People need art more than ever right now, because you do have so many commercial media that are trying to sell you something that’s usually pretty fear-based, and that can be really frustrating to one’s reality. Art is hopefully about allowing people to chill out a little bit, to help them recognize themselves somehow and to see various angles and surfaces that have to do with a person who is trying to be honest about her reality instead of selling you something or being sold something. I guess that’s my responsibility, to be witnessing a reality that’s not commerce in some way, that’s about communication. So I think that that’s every concert, and hopefully every artist is out there doing that. It’s funny, people say that — and the older I get the more I realize it’s true — when you relate your own personal experience, something about being honest about your own personal experiences, somehow paradoxically, brings out the universality of human experience. I guess I come into a concert trying to be honest about who I am, I think that that’s artistically important. So, that’s not a message, that’s more like hoping that I don’t have any specific message so that people can kind of relax and be themselves as well.

PV: This is kind of a flat question, but are you working on anything new, or what can we expect from you in the future?

DW: I don’t know. I came out with an album last February, I’m working on songs for another album that hopefully I can record next fall, but I haven’t made any promises to myself, let alone anybody else. So we’ll see what happens.

PV: Thank you.

DW: You’re welcome. Thank you for doing this.

Tickets to the concert range from $25 to $75. The $75 tickets include a front-row seat and a souvenir metal lunch box with T-shirt and CD. To order tickets, email [email protected]. The show starts at 7:30 p.m.