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Link to Melbourne review:
http://www.fasterlouder.com.au/reviews/events/32119/Lucinda-Williams-The-Palais-Melbourne-02042012Probably -for whatever reason she didn’t want to do Buttercup last night and I didn’t feel like arguing with her about it 😮
Here is the setlist from Sydney:
Can’t Let Go
Pineola
Crescent City
Drunken Angel
Well Well Well
People Talkin’
Fruits Of My Labor
Overtime
Born To Be Loved
Side Of THe Road (Lu & Doug)
I Lost It
Out Of Touch
Bleeding Fingers
Essence
Unsuffer Me
Righteously
Joy
Honey BeePassionate Kisses (Lu solo)
Blessed
For What It’s Worth (w/Eilen)
Get Right With God (w/Eilen)To Stoger– That colloquialism was done on purpose -for great literary effect of course. As a result I’m filing a professorial appeal to get the minus back.
To PDL & Marclaff– the world -but more specifically U.S.
Two in a row -I’m on a roll. I’m sure Stoger is grading my grammar.
4/3
Made it to Sydney about two hours ago and it’s déjà vu all over again. We are in exactly the same hotel room that we were in three years ago- we were also in the exact same room in Melbourne. Something very strange about that-really brings back a lot of memories from that tour three years ago. I had forgotten a lot of it and that was a good thing.. I will however, never forget being trapped in this very same 26th floor room when downtown Sydney had an electrical blackout. The elevators were down and we were not allowed to use the stairs. Hope you like the view because you ain’t going anywhere for awhile. We barely made it out in time for the 4 hour drive to Canberra. Not a memorable night as it was a log drive down and back to play to a very unresponsive audience. The ride was back was somewhat saved by some very colorful stories from the one and only Butch. No Canberra this time.So the Melbourne show is in the books. There was a palpable but healthy nervous energy before the show as is usual with first shows –and the first one with new guitar player Stuart. On the daily schedule sheets we have what we call the IMOTD which stands for Inspired Moment Of The Day but basically is the quote of the day from band or crew member — the quote on yesterday’s day sheet was Lucinda telling Stuart that she could already tell how great he was going to be –even though as we reminded her, he had yet to play a show. He got a lot of ribbing over that. There’s nothing like a little pressure to motivate the new guitar player. I share that anecdote because it didn’t take long to see that Stuart was going to live up to her pre-show evaluation. They had a pretty instant chemistry. Afterwards Lucinda was thrilled. Let’s just say that it was apparent that a lot of songs that had sort of gotten “lost” were suddenly back and sounding better than they had in some time and she was very happy about that. Not taking anything away from the previous guitar player but some songs had just lost their way or were not quite right. Probably more than it was realized. Two that I would put in that category were Unsuffer Me and Righteously. It turned out to be a really good night with a very big and excellent audience in the house.
We did have one scare yesterday as Doug’s plane from Puerto Rico to LA was cancelled. After a 5 AM panic call to Tour Mg Eric, he was able to be re-routed thru NY. So his flight was now Puerto Rico to NY to LA to Sydney. He got in this morning and was able to get a full row on the plane so he slept for 12 hours. That was lucky. Lu is really looking forward to having both Stuart and Doug for these next few shows. Should be fun.
Where is WNKU based? She did do one spot while down in San Diego at Sunset Sessions so I suspect that’s where it’s from.
Well, since you asked, Doug has signed on for London and whatever other shows that may be added to Europe in Nov.
John is doing the Woody Guthrie 100th birthday show in Tulsa on 3/10th. I don’t think he’s doing the Cash thing.
Ok -didn’t know that existed. Or maybe just forgot. By the time Alejandro’s annual Sunday SXSW closing party rolls around everybody who is still there is pretty delirious and I don’t think Lu was feeling any pain by the time she went on 😮
Guilherme– We would love nothing better than to come down there -just need to find enough shows to make it work -it wouldn’t have to be that many. Start up that petition.
Lefty- Funny that you mention that song -she actually did it with Tim Easton at the Continental Club during SXSW a couple of years ago. Just that one time. It was quite good and i’ve often thought about her doing that song again at some point. I think it’s one of those songs that she can really make her own.
Let me try and answer the questions above the best I can, which will take a little bit of explaining about all the variables that go into booking a tour, especially international tours. The first thing to understand is that basically everything is dictated by the promoters. They are the ones who make the offers, and if they tell us for instance that the Olympics will create issues then there isn’t anything I can do about it, and not that I would necessarily want to, because if they say they are not going to make offers during the period of time of the Olympics then that’s it. And maybe it’s not all of them but if one or more of the key ones, such as London, can’t make an offer because of the Olympics, then that basically shelves the rest of the tour. That is because when you begin to create a tour you have to have those anchor markets– for several reasons –financial, media exposure, routing etc. Without those anchor markets, or anchor shows financially, no matter where they are, it is impossible to make that tour work. Another way to put it simply is that some shows pay for other shows. The fact is, touring Europe has gotten to be an increasingly tricky and risky proposition-especially now with the European economy the way it is. It is very expensive to take even a small band and crew over there, as a result it is very difficult to make the numbers work. Because of that the risk for everyone is raised and that is why the experienced promoters will tend to be very careful. I hope this sheds at least a little light into what goes on with booking a tour.
On that note I have given our agent the go ahead to confirm two shows in London on November 9 and 10th– I am going to start a separate thread for that with a few more details.
