“I won’t forget when Peter Pan came to my house, took my hand
I said I was a boy
I said I was a boy
I’m glad he didn’t check
I learned to fly, I learned to fight
I lived a whole life in one night.”
–“When I Was a Boy,” Dar Williams
She was born Dorothy Snowden Williams. One of her big sisters, Julie or Meredith, first mispronounced her name. Dar instead of Dorothy. And it stuck. For life. It’s just as well. Her parents had thought about naming her Darcy, after the character in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” But he was Mr. Darcy. When asked in a phone interview if that’s why she identified as a boy in the song she wrote and recorded on her album, “The Honesty Room” in 1993, Williams replied with a sly smile in her voice: “Maybe.”
Dar Williams
But how did she learn “all the tricks that boys know,” as she wrote in “When I Was a Boy”? She didn’t have brothers to mimic. But the Mount Kisco, New York, neighborhood she grew up in “was filled with boys,” she said, adding that she was more interested in their games – such as football. More than playing with Barbie, we suppose. She was also into garbage and where it went. A teacher told Dar that she might grow up to be a “garbage-olist.” She sort of has. More on that later. For now, just know that she’s playing the Avalon Theater Saturday night, May 11,
Her first love in the arts was theater. Maybe because she grew up acting and dressing like a boy “with short hair and all. I was very theatrical,” she says, as if she might’ve auditioned for the tomboy role of Anybodys in “West Side Story.” Moving to Massachusetts in 1990 to explore a career in theater, she worked as stage manager for the Opera Company of Boston, but soon turned to music, writing her own songs. “When I Was a Boy” led off her self-produced “Honesty Room” album. Williams had enough talent and good luck to attract the attention of Joan Baez, for whom she opened in the early ’90s. Baez was impressed enough to record some of Williams’ songs herself.
So then, Dar Williams had a career. “Joan went out of her way to be a mentor,” Williams says. In the realm of folk music, who could possibly have a better mentor? “She was sisterly,” Williams recalls with love and gratitude. “She modeled for me how to be on the road and enjoy it all and find a home away from home wherever you are.”
Williams seems to be paying it forward during this “Spring Colors Return” tour with Heather Maloney, who in her 30s is 20 years or so younger than Dar. Easton is their ninth stop in 10 days and nights on this road odyssey, which ends in Hawaii after a six-week break. They shared the driving throughout the South before winding up at the Avalon. “We share ideas for audiobooks to listen to, and Heather jumps out of the car to remove a cone that’s placed for our parking spot or calls ahead if we don’t know where the venue’s parking lot is.”
On stage Saturday night, Williams will sing some of her songs and Maloney some of those she’s written “and we’ll sing a few together,” Dar says.
Aside from writing music, Dar Williams is also an author of a few non-fiction books, including “What I Found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musicians’ Guide to Rebuilding America’s Communities – One Coffee Shop, Dog Run & Open-Mike Night at a Time.” Her theme is the recovery of downtowns across the U.S. that were drained by the crush of malls and big-box stores. Easton is on her list of favorite small-town downtowns, possibly because there was never a mall here. And now there probably never will be.
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When the tour ends in late June, the singer-songwriter and budding “garbage-ologist” moves on to her next gig – the annual River Roads Festival in Easthampton with a full day of music Sept. 7 headlined by Dar Williams, along with Cheryl Wheeler, Haley Heynderickx, Gail Ann Dorsey, Paula Cole, the High Tea duo and more artists. But the garbage mission comes into play the next day, as concert-goers and performers turn out to clean up the shoreline of the Connecticut River with the help of Connecticut River Conservancy, for which the festival concert raises money.
“Playing music is very abstract,” says Williams. “Getting my feet wet wading into the river is really grounded.”
When asked if she has a list of songs she considers must-play numbers on her tour, Williams says she has about 10 songs that would qualify, of which she may play two or three. She likes to mix it up, especially with a talented fellow singer-songwriter on the bill with her. But if Dar reads this story, she may consider “When I Was a Boy” my request. Among other songs that might be on her top-10 list are “Beauty of the Rain,” “Fishing in the Morning,” “The Great Unknown,” “It Happens Every Day,” “Mercy of the Fallen,” “The One Who Knows,” “So Close to My Heart,” “You Rise and Meet the Day” and “February.” Williams’ most recent album is “I’ll Meet You Here,” 2021; Maloney’s most recent is “Soil in the Sky,” 2019.
If you miss Saturday’s Avalon concert and can’t make it up to Massachusetts for River Roads, you can book a cruise next fall, October 2025. “Rhine, Women & Song” features Dar Williams, Susan Werner and Heather Maloney. Apparently, Dar loves rivers and the road.
Dar Williams in Concert With Heather Maloney
8 p.m. Saturday, May 11, Avalon Theatre main stage, 40 E. Dover St., Easton.
avalonfoundation.org; River Roads Festival, Easthampton, Mass., Sept. 7. riverroadsfestival.com; “Rhine, Women & Song” Rhine River cruise, Oct. 7-14, 2025. fanclubcruises.com/
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