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What happened last night? I just saw this message on Facebook. Stoger were you there?
I was at your concert last night in KC. I just wanted to hear the music, which is why I stuck it out with the other die hard fans huddled under umbrellas. How many songs did you end early or skip entirely due to your rage? disappointed
@tonyg wrote:
If there is a concert and Stoger isn’t there, does it make a sound?
If this were Facebook, I would be definitely “liking” this comment. Good one, tonyg… 😆
Tom
Boys, I appreciate your confidence in me (I think), as expressed above.
When Parker told me in Tulsa that KC’s was an outdoor venue, I thought little of it. Fortunately, there was no opener; the skies let loose about 8:30-8:45, and Lu walked on at 9:30 or a bit after with a “quite a night, huh?”–the lightning/thunder had subsided, but it was drizzling. After the first song, she said “I’m not going to talk much, so as to get as many songs as possible in before curfew.”
1 Can’t Let Go
2 Right in Time
3 2 Kool 2 B 4 Gotten [during which I retreat under shelter stage left, fortunately having a VIP ticket]
4 Convince Me
5 I Lost It
6 Well Well Well
7 Born to Be Loved
8 Lake Charles [solo]
9 Buttercup
10 Those Three Days [aborted after a few words/Lu starts a series of f-bombs, most interestingly as an adjective in front of the word “sprinkles,” surely some of the best reverse hyperbole heard in awhile/Lu compares this venue to Fayetteville, which moved show indoors, says there should be an “option” to do it here, as “the fans deserve better”/goes on to talk about people leaving and her starting an hour late and “My blood sugar level”/and yes, uses the word “meltdown” herself]
10a Out of Touch
11 REal Live Bleeding…
12 Essence
13 Changed the Locks
14 Honeybee
_____________________rest in a minuteAs I was saying…
At walk-off of main set, Lu bemoans having to cut things short and says she was just “following orders” in doing so*
Encore
15 Joy
16 Don’t Let the Devil Ride [a blues song worked up just today, no artist or performer given but same source as “Holy Rock” which led to “Stand on the Rock” in GRWG–this intriguing song has a line in it about “take the devil’s hand/you’ll have to join his band,” or some such]
17 Get Right with God [with “Stand on the Rock” interpolated and at one point Blake chanting that while the others do the lyrics to “GRWG” proper”–afterwards, Lu uses the word meltdown again and apologizes, yet exits smiling]* And I did get a gander at the set list, which had not only “Those 3 Days” on it, but “Where is My Love” and “Little Rock Star” besides. I’m sure we’ll get those in future; also the duo post-Lake Charles was to have been “Ugly Truth,” but that was when the “orders” got communicated to skip over, another storm in forecast apparently.
So maybe that answers the Facebook poster, Tim, but if he/she truly “stuck it out”, he/she knows which songs (only one) were started then dropped. No more than 4, maybe 5, songs in total were not done. I understand the disappointment, but it wasn’t quite the debacle this person implied. Let’s call it vintage Lu. those of us who really truly stuck it out got good bang, I thought. Kudos to the crew and band for fighting through this, and it was good to see Lucinda smile at least, at last. Knoxville hail-on-the-bus exponentially ratcheted up this evening, never a dull moment.
Great report Stoger. I guess I was one night off on getting a blues cover. Lucinda always works up the best blues covers.
Last time I saw Lu at Crossroads, Louvin opened up for her and the weather was terrible. I seriously thought a tornado was coming. If memory serves, that show was postponed for a while until the weather passed.
ParkerCA, stoger & I also dodged tornado warnings all afternoon & evening to see Lu at the Alabama Theater in Birmingham in February 2008. After show, it poured down rain to beat the band.
Also, there was the afore-mentioned hailstorm in Knoxville last month, the same night as the destructive tornadoes in Alabama & NW Georgia / SE Tennessee. When touring the South & Midwest in the Spring & Summer, stormy nights are bound to happen. Perhaps it would be appropos for Lu & the band to work up a cover of Billie Holiday’s “Stormy Weather” for future “dark & stormy” nights… 😉
Tom
Re: Song # 16-“Don’t Let the Devil Ride”
Appears to be written by Reverend Oris Mays in 1968.
He was a Pastor at the Boston Baptist Church in Memphis, TN (deceased in Memphis 1996)lwj
I saw the post on FB that Tim mentioned above and wanted to copy it here:
We were all disappointed with the weather conditions, we actually had the same thing happen the last time at Crossroads but it blew over much quicker. There are always difficult decisions to be made on nights like this. Number one of course is safety. We waited to start the show when it looked like the weather was abating and we went on still planning to do the entire show. After she played Lake Charles solo it seemed like the weather might be starting to change for the worse we asked her to skip 3 songs -two slow ballads and a longer jammy type of song. We thought it best to move forward to the more rockier songs of the second half of the set. Honestly that is probably what she was most upset about -she didn’t want to shortchange the fans. We simply made the decision with the best intentions for everyone involved. She later skipped Those Three Days and Little Rock Star partly because they had not been played in a couple of years and they were just rehearsed for the frst time earlier that day. That made for a total of 5 songs skipped and no other song was cut short. I should also add that because we had no opening act we had planned for a longer set overall so we thought we had some room to cut a couple without expecting that she would get thrown off by doing so. For the encore we put a group of songs on the list and then decide which ones to go with when she comes off. Blessed was on the list but it was decided to do the new blues song because she had never played it before and she wanted to try and do something a little special for the great fans who were still there. I’m sorry you were disappointed -we never want anyone walking away from a Lu show feeling that way. As I said above we made the decisions we made with the best of intentions and I hope in the end we at least salvaged a difficult night. Thanks for your support and for sticking it out-we love KC and hopefully we can be back soon.
The song Don’t Let The Devil Ride is one of those songs from gospel/blues history that has many many different versions that are variations on a basic theme and as a result many different writers take credit for it’s origin. The one that Lucinda heard is written by Ike Gordon and is on disc 3 of a 3 cd gospel/blues compilation called Fire in My Bones: Raw Rare + Otherworldly African-American Gospel (1944-2007). In fact there two versions on this record–on disc 1 the Mississippi NIghtingales do a song called Don’t Let Him Ride.
Lu been completely enamored with disc 3 of this set -the next track after DLTDR is called Holy Rock, the song she has been assimilating into Get Right With God. She was playing this cd for Erika the other night after the Austin show and she really loved it also.
For anyone who has an interest in this kind of thing there is a book called Stag O Lee Shot Billy that very thoroughly, and mildly academically, traces the origin of the song many now know as Stagger Lee. The author, whose name escapes me, traces the incident of how a man named Stag O Lee shot Billy Lyon in a bar room fight and it seems to go back to turn of the century St. Louis. Over the years many different versions appeared with new verses and the story evolving in each one. The song has really become legendary American folk lore and a great example of how a song travelled thru the south with each different bluesman putting his own stamp on it. A highly recommended read.
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