Dar Williams has been writing songs that feel like small private confidences since 1990, and the lyric that anchors her latest album — “Every time you round the bend / I’ll jump into your arms again” — proves the instinct hasn’t dimmed. Hummingbird Highway (Righteous Babe Records, 2025) is her thirteenth album, and its title track, which Williams traces to a real road she encountered in Belize, carries the same warmth and plain-spoken precision that first earned her Joan Baez’s attention in the nineties.
About the Show
Williams arrives at Asbury Hall at Babeville on Wednesday, November 18 as part of the Hummingbird Highway World Tour 2026, what she describes as the biggest run of dates she has undertaken since 2021. The album launched by the tour is one of her more stylistically restless collections: a bossa nova piece partially composed in French that traces to a conversation with songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman; a Celtic-inflected bluegrass tribute to labor unions featuring Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem; a Buddhist-philosophical meditation on the tension between contemplative calm and political action; and a rock-edged cover of Richard Thompson’s “I Wanna See the Bright Lights Tonight.” The title track uses hummingbirds and pirates as metaphors for departure and return, telling the whole story from a child’s point of view. What holds it all together is Williams’s description of the project as “a highway, filled with deep, exotic colors and beautiful delicate things,” and the playwright’s discipline she brings to each song: nuanced characters, she says, who “come alive in the space of a few minutes.” Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker has called her “one of America’s very best singer-songwriters.” Americana UK recently awarded the album 8 out of 10. She has also written the nonfiction book What I Found in a Thousand Towns (Basic Books, 2017) and has taught songwriting workshops since 2013.
Venue & Logistics
Asbury Hall at Babeville, on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo and western New York, is a historic music hall celebrated for its acoustics, exactly the kind of room where Williams’s lyrical precision has space to land. Doors open at 7 p.m. for the 8 p.m. show, presented by DSP Shows.
Tickets
General admission seated tickets are $35; limited reserved Gold Circle seats are $45. Tickets are available through TixR.com or in-person at the Babeville Box Office, Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (cash purchases are fee-free; a 3 percent fee applies to credit and debit card transactions). Buy tickets