Salina Setlist

1 I just wanted to see you So Bad
2 Car Wheels
3 West Memphis
4 People Talkin’
5 Drunken Angel
6 Bitter Memory (sans Butch)
7 Ghosts (solo)
8 Side of the Road [trio again]
9 Jackson
10 Factory [Lu references Barbara Kopple’s documentary American Dream about the Hormel plant in Austin, MN, where Tom Overby’s father once worked]
11 Fruits of My Labor (Lu stumbles over the lyric “lavender” and has to restart the verse: she later threatens to assess herself a “fifty dollar fine” a la James Brown’s practices]
12 Steal Your Love
13 Come On (“I had some pretty bad boys for boyfriends”]
14 Real Live Bleeding
15 Changed the Locks (tech problems cause her to stop early in song: “Could someone tell a joke?” she says, but just when Lu herself starts to ramble on about the “Devil’s Guide to Politics” she found online, Justin fixes the problem and the song restarts]
16 Essence
17 Foolishness (Lu says something about a “naked statue” of Donald Trump]
18 Joy
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19 Ain’t My Cross to Bear
20 Honeybee
21 Rockin in the Free World

For a reserved seat venue, this one rocked–with people eventually standing up front a few songs after Lu invited us to do so. Lu was very appreciative of the sound (even a bit too overpowering rather than the opposite issue) and the people in the crowd.

Ah, Salina. I left Denver by Greyhound bus at 9 a.m., where curiously the driver asked me if my final destination was Wichita or Salina. My ticket clearly said Salina, period. But it turns out Salina was the transfer point for Wichita, which he sized me up as bound for. Shortly before our actual Salina stop a few hours later, he announced over the intercom “Salina is next, and one passenger is getting off. We’ll stop briefly and be on our way to Kansas City.” Then, when he did stop and looked at me rising from my second row seat, he said “Are you sure you want to get off here?” By this point I was unsure of the balance between seriousness and irony in his voice, so as he was unloading my big bag side of the bus, I said something to him along the lines of “You might be surprised at the Saturday night life here.” To which he replied, “Why exactly are you getting off here?” Wow. I looked up at the bus overhead destination sign and saw “New York City”; two or three days and a half dozen or so driver changes later, this very craft would be entering Port Authority, probably with some of the same passengers. But me? Salina, none other.

Thanks to “Iowa Mike” and his wife Doris for getting me off the bus lines into KC today. Another rockin’ one coming up, this time outdoors.