Is there ever a point in your life where it's in some way easier to lose someone? Does getting to spend a little more time with them - well into and past their expected life span - somehow ease that pain, or does it make it all the sharper? Does the larger swath of places dotted with your memories of them give you happiness or does it make the whole Earth seem haunted?
Lucinda Williams' twelfth studio album, The Ghosts of Highway 20, is as much about the memories of her father, poet Miller Williams, and her own life as it is the characters who dot the length of the title road. The term 'ghosts' here holds a variety of meanings -- memories of loved ones, people who exist when we need them to and fade out when not, and our past selves. All of this creates a fantastic tapestry interwoven with the heartbreak over the passing of her father in 2015. The previous year had birthed Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone -- an lp marking the first collaboration between father and daughter, with Lucinda adapting one of Miller's poems for the album's opener, "Compassion". And while that was the only track Miller Williams was directly a part of, on this album his presence is a constant.
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