Ohio?

Another glowing review from Cleveland.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams has been compared in style and substance to Hank Williams Sr. (no relation), Bob Dylan and Keith Richards. She did all three of those legends proud Friday night at the Music Box Supper Club, where the capacity crowd almost stomped the floor out of the second story venue during her four rousing encores.

Williams, with her snare-drum-tight three-piece band, demonstrated why she is a time-tested triple threat of alt-country, folk-blues and hot rock. The Grammy award winner put on a show highlighting her song-writing skills, her sweetly unique vocal imperfections and powerful performing chops that made for a profoundly satisfying show.

Dressed in a leather jacket, leather pants and knee-high leather boots, Williams looked absolutely punk with her rats-nest, bleach-blonde coif. She brings disheveled to a proud new level.

Early in the set, she played “Drunken Angel” a tribute to her late friend Blaze Foley who died after being shot, as she told the audience during an argument that had nothing to do with him.

Known as “the poet of loss,” Williams can write about heartache, heartbreak and life’s down-and-outers like nobody’s business.

“What would we do without beautiful losers,” she asked the crowd citing three songs about male friends who had come to early ends. “We need those bad boys in our lives,” she said before launching into another tribute to a lost friend who succumbed to a bad liver on the song called “Lake Charles.”

Williams’ father, Miller Williams, an accomplished poet and academic, provided the lyrics for the moving song “Compassion.” Her songs touched frequently on the spiritual including a number called “Protection” in which the chorus includes the line; “I need protection from the enemy of love.”

For an artist who writes so vividly and powerfully about love, loss and life, Williams seemed shy talking ever so briefly and almost inaudibly with the audience between numbers.

The song of the evening was the haunting “When I Look at the World,” which begins as a litany of lifelong disappointment and rejection. But she comes back in the chorus with “But when I look at the world, in all its glory. When I look at the world, it’s a different story.” It was a brilliant, gut-wrenching ode to the duality of existence and the possibilities of redemption.

Her two-hour set concluded with four powerful encores for the adoring, sometimes rowdy audience. The band performed, the gospel stomper, “Get Right with God,” the funky country, “Hot Blood” and concluded with Neil Young’s “Rocking in the Free World.” The rafters literally shook with that one.

Williams came out smiling for her final bow with a glass of red wine in hand.

“Just wanted y’all to know my management company is called “Hello Cleveland,” she said smiling to her cheering fans.

lwj

From T.O.:

“Kind of a crazy night. The show began with a very tired Lu and band trying to drum up some energy and not really sure what kind of audience it was going to be. It seemed like everyone on both sides was sort of feeling out the energy. Then somewhere in the middle of the set you could palpably feel the energy build within the audience and within the band. Suddenly everything changed and the crowd became very vocal -and signs with song requests started be put on stage and it was game on.Hot Blood was one of the handmade signs that someone put up on the stage during the first encore. Butch was not aware that Hot Blood had been added to the start of the second encore and started to play Rockin’ In The Free World until everyone started yelling “No, No, No”. He quickly shifted to a very groovy version of Hot Blood and then Rockin’ with the entire audience standing up front and singing along. A great night that didn’t seem like it was going to end up the way it did.”

Don’t you love it when the mojo takes over at just the right moment? AND Hot Blood??? Ewwwweeee!