Bismarck Setlist

1 Blessed [with a Lu walk-on unhappy face]
2 Car Wheels [preceded by “Tonight might just be the night I tell you every little thing about every little song”: Lu uses the term “dysfunctional” to describe her family, then right before starting the song calls herself “Miss Honesty here. . .”]
3 Crescent City [before which Lu reveals that Mandeville is the town of a large mental hospital near New Orleans, also that there was good reason for her brother Robert to know “where the best bars are” in terms of his overall lifestyle–“I hope it’s not too weird that I’m doing this”]
4 Drunken Angel [not much she could have added to this intro, though we do get more about the man who killed Blaze, apparently the son of “a black man who owed him money”]
5 Buttercup [Lu gives us a tip about the perils of involvement with a man residing in a “sober living center,” then opines that “it’s getting to be like a writing workshop up here”]
6 Big Mess [Lu says this is “just a simple soul song” on the one hand–but then counters that with an elaborate background story about an ex-business manager who “screwed me over”]
7 West Memphis
8 When I Look at the World {Lu insists she is not a pessimistic person]
9 Lake Charles [several Clyde Woodward maxims are quoted at full length]
10 Side of the Road [Lu doesn’t personalize this intro, but goes on quite a bit about relationships in general from the female’s perspective]
11 West [this one about a Minneapolis lover who turned out to be a “&%&%*–Lu assures us Tom knows about all these folks]
12 Fruits of My Labor [this one about someone twenty years younger than Lu]
13 Are You Down {Butch hesitates in starting it, quipping “don’t you have a story first?”]
14 Protection
15 Changed the Locks
16 Unsuffer Me
17 Essence [“I’m going to leave this one a mystery”]
18 Joy
19 Little Honey {“for my husband Tom”]
__________________________________________
20 Righteously
21 Get Right with God

Man, one can almost hope Lu gets riled (by the bus condition or whatever else made her a bit late to the stage) more often. It amazed me how she turned that sulkiness into talky “Miss Honesty” intros again and again. I mean, I learned a lot. Many of those songs were Facebook requests, but that doesn’t account for the intro pattern. IN several of them there was an implied contrast between fairly straightforward, even upbeat, apparent song content vs. the turbulent backstory (mental illness; alcoholism; abuse) behind each. Whew, what a night–though less of a crowd than in Fargo, quality or quantity wise. Mike from Iowa was as pumped/drained as I was by the end of it. And now to hand the Mike torch to our Washington resident. . .