Between exits: Lucinda Williams’ ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’

Between exits: Lucinda Williams’ ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road sounds like a record that spent years riding shotgun through the American South before finally pulling into view. You can hear the mileage in it. The songs carry motel dust, cigarette smoke, old resentments, hard-earned tenderness, and the wisdom that comes from spending years being told you are almost marketable. They also carry movement, as though nobody in these songs, including the narrator, was meant to stay anyw…