One of the most vital voices in American songwriting, Lucinda Williams will bring her extraordinary life and music to the Sydney Opera House this August for a single, unmissable night of stories, songs and soul. 

Announced today, Lucinda Williams and her band, Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets – a very special night featuring songs, stories & visuals will take place Sunday 31 August in the iconic Concert Hall. It marks Williams’ first headline appearance in Australia in over a decade and promises a richly layered performance that spans memoir and music, legacy and resilience. 

Part concert, part reading, part cinematic memoir, Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets will see the singer pair live performance with visuals and spoken passages from her memoir. Backed by her revitalised full band, Williams will take audiences through the key moments, heartbreaks and musical milestones of her singular life – from her Southern childhood, through the long road to worldwide recognition with 1998’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, to recent collaborations with artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Margo Price

Lucinda Williams returns to Australia and New Zealand this August and September as special guest on Paul Kelly’s national arena tour (tickets on sale now here). This special performance in Sydney will be Williams’ only headline show.  

This one-off Opera House performance arrives amidst a moment of deep creative resurgence for Williams. In recent years, she has released her sixteenth studio album (Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart), published a critically lauded memoir (Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You), and mounted a triumphant return to the stage following a debilitating stroke in late 2020. In cities across the US – including sold-out shows in New York, Austin and Nashville – this unique show format has left audiences spellbound. 

“The Orpheum was filled with the warmth of her storytelling, and the audience was spellbound by every note,” wrote Glide Magazine of the Boston performance. Exclaim praised how she “took the crowd on a patient and winding drive through her past, steered by her wit and still-inimitable voice,” while The Tennessean declared: “Williams’ life is a bittersweet measure of divination and experience, simultaneously irreverent and spiritual.” 

As fans will know, in 2020, just as the pandemic took hold, Williams suffered a stroke that impaired the left side of her body and left her temporarily unable to walk or play guitar. But she returned to the stage within a year, buoyed by the energy of her band and her determination to keep singing. “I figured, ‘Hell, all I have to do is stand up there and sing. How hard can that be?’” she told Vanity Fair. And sing she has – with renewed urgency and power. 

Her latest album Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles From Abbey Road is testament to this creative resurgence – a bracing, joyful, and deeply felt collection recorded at The Beatles' legendary studio in London, the hallowed Abbey Road Studios.

As always, Williams' songwriting fuses grit with grace, and rock, blues, gospel and folk traditions into something fiercely her own. “Lucinda is the real thing. The genuine article,” one critic recently wrote. “Her songbook is an American Classic, and more. Shakespearean, in its weight… As she is lifted, so are all of us.” 

With just one Australian headline performance announced – and in a venue as storied as the Sydney Opera House – Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets promises to be a rare and revelatory night with one of music’s great truth-tellers.