Album by Williams ’89 Looks Back at Her 20-Year Career

Dar Williams ’89 has released a new double retrospective CD, Many Great Companions (Razor and Tie). The first CD contains live acoustic performances that reimagine fan favorites, while the second showcases original recordings from past albums of her 20-year career. The collection features guests such as Mary Chapin Carpenter, Sara and Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek, Patty Larkin and the trio Motherlode. Songs Williams revisits include “As Cool as I Am,” “Spring Street,” “When I Was a Boy” and “The Babysitter’s Here.”

In his recent review of the album in American Songwriter, Matt Popkin writes: “Throughout the new recordings, Williams’ voice is as strong and clear as ever. In some cases, her vocal performance has even improved—her new take on “When I Was A Boy” now has a much more mature tone. That aged quality spills over to “As Cool As I Am,” where the boisterousness of original becomes a little less spoken word and a little more coffee shop performance on the re-recording.”