After recently releasing the critically-acclaimed Plains album (“I Walked With You A Ways”) with Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, Jess Williamson’s “Time Ain’t Accidental” is the sound of a woman running into her life and art head-on. With a vocal dynamic kindred to Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, Williamson blends the emotional immediacy and story-telling of traditional country with the artful, wholly honest transmissions of songwriters like Townes Van Zandt and Terry Allen.
In the three years since her last album, 2020’s “Sorceress”, Jess Williamson has lived a lot of life. She went through a heavy breakup, found herself single for the first time in nearly a decade, and began figuring herself out alone in Los Angeles. She reconnected with an old acquaintance in Marfa and struck up a new relationship; she now splits her time between the two towns.
JESS : “Time Ain’t Accidental” is one of those lucky songs that I wrote really fast in one afternoon. The chorus talks about reading a collection of Raymond Carver short stories. The song is like a short story itself. It’s the true story of a day. It captures that feeling of the beginning of something where you’re just so excited and you don’t know if it will become something or not. When I wrote that song, it was celebrating this sweet beginning and not needing it to turn into anything or knowing if it would, and that being some of the beauty of it too. I’m just appreciating this moment.
The album’s reckoning with loss, isolation, romance, and personal reclamation signals both a stylistic and tectonic shift for Williamson: from someone who once made herself small to an artist emboldened by her power as an individual.
“Time Ain’t Accidental” is the new LP from Los Angeles Based, Texan musician Jess Williamson. Her voice is absolutely sublime; rich and effortlessly warm. Personal but relatable, she transcends generations of country vocals; this really is a special one.
WILLIAMSON: I had had really long relationships, and here I am single for the first time in nine years and it’s COVID dating. [Laughs] I tried it. I was raw from the breakup. It felt like being thrown to the wolves. It felt like: “These people have no context for me, and I have no context for them.” Everyone is judging each other and ghosting each other. It really didn’t align with my way of relating. It felt like an experiment. It was interesting, but it was very short-lived for me. I felt belittled by the whole process, if that makes sense. I felt unseen, the way I want to be seen by someone I’d potentially be dating. It was a weird way to be witnessed.
Thankfully, though, it did birth the song “Hunter.” I would hear people talk about “I’m just dating people, I’m not in a relationship,” so I thought, “OK, maybe that’s what I’ll do.” What I learned from attempting to do that was, that’s not interesting to me. What’s interesting to me is love and real connection. So that lyric “I’m a hunter for the real thing,” I learned that about myself by trying it a different way and realizing it was boring and unfulfilling. I would rather be home or with my friends than whatever this is.
WILLIAMSON: That is to be determined. I’m about to go on tour and we’ll be playing some songs that will hold a new meaning for me now. Ultimately I think the answer to that question — “Are my love songs lies now that the love is gone?” — is no, they’re not lies. It’s a funny thing to sit with though. I wrote these devotional love songs about loving someone forever. I have a song on Cosmic Wink called “Forever,” that’s what I reference on “Chasing Spirits.” The lyric is “There’s the one about forever and/ Loving you in a past life/ Or whatever.” I said all that. That’s on the record — literally. [Laughs] I went on the record with talking about loving someone across lifetimes.
The Fat Angel Sings 