8/6 Evanston Illinois

1 Steal Your Love [the walk-on includes one Doug Pettibone]
2 Can’t Let Go
3 Drunken Angel
4 Lake Charles [with both Flannery O’Connor & Eudora Welty mentioned in intro; Doug strummed well, but I miss the pedal steel on this]
5 Are You Down
6 Stolen Moments
7 Changed the locks {a chair appears onstage during, which Lu grips: after, Lu says “I know it’s not very rock and roll to hold on to a chair, but fuck it”–then we get some stroke recovery talk, including the relative merits of the walker vs. the cane]
8 Out of Touch
9 Righteously
10 Honeybee
11 Joy
_____________________________________________
12 You Can’t Rule Me (“This is dedicated to the United States Supreme Court”]
13 Rockin in the Free World {false start, but Lu is bebopping around the stage by the end of it}

I believe I failed to emphasize (though I did empathize) the co-bill nature of this show, with Waxahatchee. Frontwoman Katie Crutchfield dedicated her song “Lilacs” to Lu; below is a link to her interview from Lucinda’s Nashville home during the height of Covid. This interview may have appeared elsewhere in Forum, but here it is:

http://interviewmagazine.com/uncategorized/katie-crutchfield-and-lucinda-williams-on-staying-power-and-major-label-bullshit

I’m feeling the Tar Heel State at moment. I believe a certain band member lives a few miles from Saturday’s venue. . . .

Seventeen songs, three of them covers, graced the set of Plains last night–the side project of Katie Crutchfield and her sister bard Jess Williamson. Pappy & Harriets moved the show from outdoors to indoors late in the game; the Plains tour manager, one Peyton, told me they arrived in town fully expecting to perform outdoors (as both Lucinda and Katie’s band Waxahatchee had done in the past there). Apparently it takes a 100& complete sellout to merit this; we were crammed indoors like sardines, more than at any of the half dozen shows I’ve seen indoors there. The covers were former Lu collaborator (and Outlaw Cruise participant) Terry Allen’s “Amarillo Highway” and the chestnut “Mamas Don’t Let your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys” and some Dixie Chicks number. No Lucinda covers, despite my Little Honey t-shirt up front and a tendency to cover Lu in the traditional Waxahatchee configuration.

They played all 10 songs from the 2022 Plains record, plus two of my favorite Waxa compositions of Katie’s (“Can’t Do Much” & “Lilacs”) plus two Jess Williamson songs, one of them a new unreleased one. On the Plains record itself, the writing credits are split fairly evenly: five, four, and one cover. At both my live hearings, “Lilacs” was dedicated to a fellow singer-songwriter, Lucinda in Evanston and last night’s fine opener, a gentleman from North Carolina whose name I am blanking on. Both he and Plains had full backing bands.

I didn’t talk to Katie, but briefly to the Texas-born Jess. The tour manager took my liner notes for them to sign. Just as well, for I am quite shy about asking women to sign topless images of themselves.

Let the land shows go on hiatus while the liquid shows begin!