Dear Lucinda,

We're not on a first-name basis, but you are one of the few people on this earth who doesn't need a last name. Sorta like Hank. Elvis. Oprah. Lucinda.

Besides, I'd feel silly addressing you as "Ms. Williams." That sounds secretarial, which you are not. Lord no, you're not.

Let's get right down to business. You saved my life. Fans who love your music probably say things like that all the time, give you over-the-top, fawning, obsequious compliments to ingratiate themselves with a big star.

Or, maybe they don't. Maybe they think you don't still need to hear that your weird lyrics and raw voice and attitude combined are a balm for a tired soul.

I had heard a few of your songs before. But it was a year ago that your potent and unique way with words started mattering to me deep down. For the first time I really listened to "Lake Charles." It became a eulogy for someone I lost. The accordion and Dobro and references to Lafayette and Baton Rouge were intensely personal.

And that song led me to others. Everything had changed.

"Faces look familiar but they don't have names/Towns I used to live in have been rearranged/Highways I once traveled down don't look the same/Everything has changed/Everything has changed."

I ordered everything you'd ever done. I ordered copies of your albums for others whether they wanted them or not. I gave impromptu lectures on the inside-out way your poetry resonates in "World Without Tears" and "Blue." I'm the reason your sales have quadrupled.

One January day I was reading the newspaper listing of birthdays of famous people. It was a long winter.

Your name was there. You're five days older than I am, which gave me a reason to rejoice. If you're five days older than I, I'm not old.

I can still wear a cowboy hat and boots and buy a red car. I can play my music loud. I can play your music loud. I did. And I do.

I am young enough to write another fan letter, too, same as the ones I wrote to the stars of the TV Western "Wagon Train." Or, later, Larry Brown the writer. As a matter of fact, your music is a lot like his fiction. Gutsy. Unglamorous. Real.

I'm glad, too, that you aren't conventionally, video-ready pretty. Your poetry matters more than your profile. And in this day in time, in the music industry where everything's pre-packaged and all about youth and looks, that's really saying something.

You have proven there's worth in a childhood of gravel roads and small Southern towns and Loretta on the radio. There is subtle beauty and a rich vein of meaning to mine. There is a ton of music.

Enough for now. I think I'll "go find a jukebox and see what a quarter can do."

It can do a lot.

Your grateful fan,

Rheta