Lucinda Williams: Breaking Through to the Mainstream

IT'S ALWAYS a bittersweet day for music fans when their cult favorite finally breaks through to the mainstream. On one hand, there's happiness that the performer you may have championed to deaf ears for years is now garnering the attention you always knew they deserved — the "See, I told you so!" factor. But then there's that loss, the winking nods and affirmative smiles of other diehards "in the know" at a small show dissipating as the shared secret now becomes the popular bandwagon, tainting some ethereal purity that may have existed only in your mind.