Victoria Williams lives in the Californian desert surrounded by Joshua trees and hummingbirds. She loves it there, contentedly making her strange and beautiful music in the company of her husband and former Jayhawk, Mark Olson. Her most recent album, Musings of a Creek Dipper, is a gentle, swinging and instrumentally curious album, informed, as ever, by Williams's quirky take on subject matter and lyric. Typically, she is surrounded by the very best of musicians, including Wendy and Lisa, one time associates of the Artist Formerly Known As etc. "It was all very enjoyable. We'd play all night long. Then I'd come home and the sun would just be coming up and then I would go out and dig in the garden. Then I'd go to sleep until four in the afternoon. The desert is different. You have different daily greetings. You have the animal kingdom, the coyotes howling at night and the birds singing in the morning and snakes and lizards. I like to be able to get out and taste the cultural activity of the world but the desert is a good place to delve in to one's innermost self and strengthen one's spirit."
That spirit cannot be overestimated. Diagnosed some years ago as suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, she continues to pen her remarkably life-affirming songs and still manages to seem endlessly positive and pleasant. The word "whimsical" is a favourite of those who write about her, often describing her music, and her voice in particular, as "a little bit kooky".
Certainly her voice is an extraordinary one, and something which immediately sets her apart from the pack, something she admits was not always to her advantage.
"On the very first record demo I ever did which was for EMI and produced by Van Dyke Parks, they said, well we already have Kate Bush! Those were the days when there wasn't room for a lot of women. Now I think those days are over and I notice that people seem to be a little more receptive to my voice these days. There are so many voices now. I was thinking about the voice and I was listening to a lot of 78s and, you know, I think I have an old-fashioned voice.
"My voice is very much like those voices of the 1920s and the 1930s. A lot of the girls nowadays are belters, it's aggressive and it's definitely getting it out. But I'm not like that. I'm a crooner. I use my voice a lot of times for expressing joy or sometimes just to tell a story. I just sing the only way that I can sing."
Growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana, Williams took some time to discover the hipper side of music. As a child her favourites were Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music and she cheerily performed songs from the shows with her friends in the neighbourhood.
Her most important discovery, however, was a television programme called Hallelujah Train - a gospel show run by the father of her current drummer Brian Blade. What she heard on Hallelujah Train suddenly connected her to the real music of her hinterland and the pleasant task of discovery had begun.
"I really enjoyed that programme musically. Al Green was on there and also Sweet Honey In The Rock and The Five Blind Boys, but mostly they were just locals from Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. You see, I grew up in an area which wasn't mainstream. Shreveport was kind of out of the loop and it didn't get that many concerts. Really, until MTV came into being they were very much out of things. But because we lived very close to the state line, I grew up playing with a bunch of people over in Texas. They knew a lot of country songs and I learned how to play rhythm guitar just by playing along with them.
"Then I started to play with Raymond Blakes, a big old black man who played like Albert King. I got Mississippi John Hurt records and learned all those songs and I also got into John Lee Hooker and whenever I went over there to East Texas, we would play until the sun came up. I was just a teenager and I guess, because everybody wrote songs, I thought, well I better write some songs too - they were about all the answers to the heaviest questions in the world! Oh yes! My very first song was a story song. In fact I woke up thinking about it the other day. It was called Hubie Hawkins."
If it's true what they say about living yesterday's dreams, then his sleep must be filled with nightmares. Today he had a flat tyre, two tickets and headache. He got home, found his woods burned by fire.
In the early 1980s, Williams headed west for California. She sang in a gospel group and busked with a thousand others on Venice Beach. It was there at a "hoot night" in the Troubadour that she came to the notice of a friend of Van Dyke Parks, an extraordinary and off-the-wall songwriter. He took an active interest in her music and has regularly added his trademark stings to her recordings. Through Parks she also met Richard Thompson who was impressed enough to play on her very first demo. Also in the mid-1980s she married songwriter Peter Case and signed to Geffen records, releasing her first album, Happy Come Home, in 1987. Swing the Statue followed in 1990.
Meanwhile, her marriage to Case ended, MS had been diagnosed and the next release, Sweet Relief in 1993, was to be a benefit album with Lou Reed, Pearl Jam, Evan Dando and others contributing their own versions of Victoria Williams songs. There was a bitter irony in such a glowing figure as Victoria Williams being attacked by such illness, but the 1994 album Loose showed she was still her old self - her whimsy, her positivity and that endearing "kookiness" undiminished.
"I can't really afford to get too down because then I'll be stuck. At times it (the MS) affects me but then I just have to go to bed. I take it as it comes and if I think I'll not be able to do something, I will just go to bed. I think my old self probably would fight going to bed. It used to be that at nap times, I was out the window! The only thing I can ever say is that you've got to learn to laugh at yourself and say `hey that's interesting!' And it is kind of interesting.
"You go along and one day you're able to feel things and the next day you can't feel anything. Then the next day you've learned to walk without feeling anything. There are always things to learn. I mean, I can get really down (and I have) but it doesn't really get you anywhere but further down. And once you get down into that hole it's curtains."
Musings of a Creek Dipper is an album ostensibly about little things. It is apparently simple and obviously sweet. It is a joyous sound full of regard for what are known as the simple pleasures of life - the lyrical observations of a person who can think of nothing more glorious than finding a creek and dipping in it. And it is precisely this stance on life that makes listening to Williams's musings such a delight. In a cynical world, far from the hummingbirds and the lizards, is it any wonder there are those who might find this outstanding artist just a little bit "kooky"? "Maybe it's kooky to them. But what does kooky mean? It seems to mean kind of unglued but I don't feel unglued. I have a strong faith and that's the glue for me. Ever since I've been able to put out records, I've wanted to make music that is good for people. If it is going to be in their lives, that is good for them and I guess that's always been my hope.
"Yeah, my faith has been rattled but that has just made it grow. I think if you're handed trials it's a surefire way for you to grow. In fact I think I'm fortunate to have been handed those trials. I think once you've gone through something yourself, you will understand that. Now, I wouldn't want to wish it on anyone but everyone has to go though some trials. And they're probably handed what they're able to handle. That's what's written you know, God never gives you more than you can handle."
Victoria Williams plays Vicar Street, Dublin, on Friday at 9 p.m.