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I vehemently disagree with the first paragraph, but the rest is a great review –
http://www.martinezgazette.com/opinion/story/i2650/2011/05/26/have-you-been-blessed
Have you been blessed?
Gordon on MusicBy Gordon R. Webb
Gazette Columnist
May 26, 2011A few years ago, singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams fell in love, got happy, got married (eventually), and proceeded to release what could easily be described as the worst album of her career – so much for happiness. Little Honey (2008) is packed with cheesy lyrics like these excerpts from “Real Love”: “The thing about you so far, you squeeze my peaches / Then you send me postcards, of girls on beaches … I’m thinking baby far-out, be my man.” And her cornball country duet with Elvis Costello on “Jailhouse Tears” is a career low for both. Is this really the high priestess of alt-country? The artist championed as America’s best songwriter by several major publications, including Time magazine?
“Thundering news hit me like a snowball, striking my face and shattering.”
What a relief when the new Lucinda Williams CD hit the streets in March of 2011. Blessed marks a return to her usual brilliant form with songs that would fit nicely on past releases such as: Essence (2001), World without Tears (2003), and West (2007). The first track is “Buttercup,” one of her (two per CD minimum) “dude done me wrong” rockers and features some gritty electric guitar from Elvis Costello. The remaining cuts are primarily ballads, which create a unique overall mood to the recording that sucks you into Lucinda land, and holds you mesmerized until you safely land at the end of “Kiss like Your Kiss.” Two of the songs, “Blessed” and “Convince Me,” begin at a slow pace and gradually build to thundering climaxes. The achingly gorgeous “Sweet, Sweet Love” is a classic example of how to write a simple, yet great song. Overall, the 12 tracks are as close to perfection as you’re going to get from an album these days.
“Covering me in a fine powdery mist, and mixing in with my tears.”
Grammy Award winning producer Don Was should win some kind of award for this one. The sound is warm and punchy, almost certainly recorded with analog gear. The dual electric guitars are creatively blended, utilizing a wide variety of tones and styles. I can’t rave enough about the steel guitar playing of Greg Leisz (Joni Mitchell, etc.). No blues or country clichés, just some gorgeous, atmospheric sounds and melodic touches.
“I’m 57, but I could be seven years old, ‘cause I will never be able to.”
Blessed also comes with a bonus disc called the “Kitchen Tapes,” which includes raw demo versions – just vocal and acoustic guitar – of every song from the original CD. The recordings were made at Lucinda’s kitchen table where she likes to write. It’s a captivating listen and removes any doubt that her brilliant songwriting and original, natural vocal delivery is even remotely studio created.
“Comprehend the expansiveness, of what I’ve just learned.”
In an unusual design concept, the two CD set was issued with eight different covers, distributed randomly, showing various individuals holding up “Blessed” signs. The packaging and several pages of the booklet include the same thing – full size photos of different folks holding up their version of the “B-sign” (I ended up with 15 variations). Think she’s trying to drive home a point? But in all seriousness, the images fail to become monotonous, because each one is unique, powerful and thought provoking. Combine the striking emotional impact with stunning photo quality and you have reason enough for making the purchase. And plus it makes a nice mini coffee table book!
“That you have disappeared, you have been released.”
The first two decades of Lucinda William’s career were mired in obscurity and several years were spent singing on the streets for quarters. Her special blend of country, blues, and folk hadn’t caught on yet. Eventually it would be combined with rock and classified as Americana or alternative (Alt) country, but those terms didn’t exist yet. Her luck changed in 1993, when Mary Chapin Carpenter scored a number one country hit with the Lucinda Williams penned, “Passionate Kisses,” which also won the Grammy Award for Best Song (the songwriter award) the following year. Suddenly, everyone from Willie Nelson to Tom Petty was covering her songs. Then in 1998, she released her landmark CD, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Universally, “Wheels” received positive reviews, spawned several radio hits like “2 Cool to be Forgotten,” and eventually went gold (500,000 copies sold). She hasn’t looked back.
“You are specks of light, you are mist.”
More than a decade later, Lucinda Williams has become a national treasure. Her voice alone, scarred from long days of busking, has never sounded better than on Blessed. Ragged and glorious, beautiful and painful, you feel everything when Lu sings. There’s no fluff, no waste, just emotional honesty. Nobody does melancholy like she does and no one can sing “baby” like she can. The lyrics between the paragraphs of this article are from “Copenhagen” off the new CD. If you look closely, you’ll see the endings of the lines don’t rhyme. While it’s not that unusual, Lucinda sings it in such a graceful manner you might not notice.
“Somewhere spinning ‘round the sun, circling the moon.”
I was originally going to call this article, “Country Billie Holiday.” Yeah, it’s a good thing I changed my mind. “Fruits of My Labor,” off World without Tears, was the first Lucinda Williams song I ever heard. Here’s this ragged voice singing so far behind the beat – just swinging away to this slow (and I mean slow) country/jazz groove. The drummer is playing brushes while guitarist Doug Pettibone lays down some trippy echo effects. It made me think of Billie Holiday (circa 1957) with her ravaged voice, luxuriously backed by a sympathetic jazz sextet – only this time it was a country trio (sort of). I’ve been a fan of Lu ever since. Get blessed!
“You are specks of light, you are mist.”
Time: Tuesday, May 24 at 1:00pm – May 25 at 8:00pm
Location: North Carolina Museum of Art
Created By: Lucinda Williams
More Info: Lucinda will be performing at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh on 7/27 at 8:00PMNCMA has graciously opened up their ticketing to only Lucinda’s Facebook Friends and Museum Members today and tomorrow before announcing to the general public.
Please note – you will have to create a free account with them at checkout time in order to purchase tickets. Please visit:
https://www.choicesecure03.net/mainapp/eventschedule.aspx?clientID=ncma
See you in NC! – Lucinda mgmt.
TnT wrote: Fort Stewart, GA?!?! That’s the home of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, down next to Savannah. They have been very active in Iraq. Also, Fayetteville, NC is home to Fort Bragg. Is Lu doing a benefit for the troops?
I wondered the same thing. I also thought “Hmmm, that’s only 3 hours away from the nation’s oldest city, historic St. Augustine, with a new totally covered amphitheatre that is very near the ocean. And so many Facebook fans have been requesting a Florida show. And it’s less than an hour south of I-10 to be able to hop back on the highway to head back out west with potential other stops in I-10 towns like Tallahassee, Pensacola, Mobile, etc. 🙂
Thanks, Stoger!!
http://www.nola.com/jazzfest/index.ssf/2011/05/lucinda_williams_pushed_her_mu.html
Lucinda Williams pushed her music to a boil at the New Orleans Jazz Fest
Published: Thursday, May 05, 2011, 6:25 PM
Updated: Thursday, May 05, 2011, 6:53 PM
By Brett Anderson, The Times-Picayune NOLA.com“This is a song I wrote about living in New Orleans,” Lucinda Williams announced from New Orleans Jazz Fest’s Acura Stage Thursday afternoon, before her band lit into “Crescent City.” It was the fourth song of the set, the first culled from the singer’s rich catalog of songs about the South. If you’re the type of listener who focuses on lyrics, “Crescent City”‘s jaunty content (first line: “Everyone’s had a few”) probably came as a bit of a relief.
It immediately followed two songs – “Pineola” and “Drunken Angel” – drawn from Williams’ less voluminous but still rich catalog of tender songs about loved ones whose lives ended in senseless death. The third – “Buttercup,” the lead track from her latest release, “Blessed” – was built on what could be the Lake Charles-born songwriter’s Holy Trinity: a romance gone south and a rough melody, both expanded on by guitar uprisings that have the effect of filling in the blanks the words leave open.
It was a fitting introduction to Williams’ world even if her show took some time to reach full stride. Its intensity shifted just shy of its mid-point with “Essence,” a humid blues drawn from Williams’ rich catalog of vivid songs about sex. (Second line: “Come on and let me taste your stuff.”) Dressed in black and wearing dark shades under Rod Stewart’s “Blonds Have More Fun” haircut, the singer’s slurred delivery carried as much longing and exhaustion as it did ecstasy (“I am waiting here for more/I’m waiting by your door”), and her three piece band was bucking with extra force.
By the time the set reached full boil with “Changed the Locks,” one of the most defiant responses to a break-up ever set to music, and “Honey Bee,” a fiercely delivered piece of carnal blues-rock, it was abundantly clear why the “Treme” crew had chosen Williams’s set as the backdrop to film footage of the characters Davis and Annie making out.
Williams, whose shows often convey extra intimacy with between-song repartee, wasn’t particularly chatty on Thursday afternoon, but her music communicated plenty with its sturdy distillations of blues, rock and folk.
Her band stripped Fats Domino’s “I Lived My Life” bare, leaving guitarist Blake Mills to sketch out the contours of the absent piano. The snare beat that drummer Butch Norton tapped to open “Get Right With God,” the show’s finale, wouldn’t have been out of place at a New Orleans street parade, and it gained muscle as the song progressed. When it was over, all that was left was for Williams to wish the audience “peace and love” before she turned to walk off.
Brett Anderson can be reached at 504.826.3353. Follow him at twitter.com/BrettAndersonTP.
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/may/05/gurf-morlix-salutes-the-rootsy-music-of-his-late/
The news he was dreading, the news he knew one day would come, was waiting on Gurf Morlix’s answering machine one night in 1989. The call was from Lucinda Williams, who Morlix toured with and produced. She didn’t say what she was calling about — but she didn’t have to.
“I put the phone down and started crying,” Morlix has said. “I knew it was Blaze. I didn’t know what had happened but I knew it was Blaze. I’d been expecting that call for a long time.”
Blaze Foley was a straight-talking, hard-living musician who wrote honest, heartfelt songs. He and Morlix were tight, which is why Morlix took it so hard that night when he found out Foley had been shot to death. “Blaze could cut right through the bull—-, or he could be the cause of it,” Morlix said. “He was the funniest person I ever met, and also the most tragic.”
To salute his pal, Morlix this year recorded and released “Blaze Foley’s 113th Wet Dream,” a 15-song set of Foley-penned tunes like “Big Cheeseburgers and Good french fries,” “No Goodwill Stores In Waikiki” and “Cold Cold World.” Morlix, a respected roots musician who has worked with the likes of Slaid Cleaves, Eliza Gilkyson and Mary Gauthier, will perform some of those songs Monday at Zoey’s, 185 E. Santa Clara St., Ventura.
The evening will start at 7:30 with a screening of Kevin Triplett’s new documentary, “Blaze Foley — The Duct Tape Messiah.” Tickets are $15-$20. Call 652-1137 or visit zoeyscafe.com. Morlix’s website is gurfmorlix.com. For information on the film, visit blazefoleymovie.com.
It was a pleasure meeting you and your family, DJ. I am so glad you made the long drive to the show. 🙂
http://www.deadjournalist.com/DJdc/2011/05/01/live-review-lucinda-williams/
Live Review: Lucinda Williams
April 29, 2011, Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center, Atlanta
by Eric WildesI’m an in-town, Decatur guy. And though I love a wide range of music genres, most country from the last 30 years is not part of rotation. So when I decided to cover an artist of which I am a fan – the Lucinda Williams show out at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center – I didn’t really know what to expect in many ways.
First, the venue is pretty much what you’d expect from a large, corporate venue including free illegal parking at a nearby shopping center. After some challenges getting inside, I settled in amongst the crowd of mostly older couples. Invisible clouds of Chanel No. 5 and remnants expensive yet legal cigars were powerful reminders that Atlanta crowds are as diverse as the city itself.
As the lights dimmed on stage, all the extraneous minutiae faded into the background and Lucinda Williams and her band came out to hearty applause.
If you aren’t familiar with Williams, you don’t know what a powerful, yet controlled voice she possesses. If you haven’t seen her live, you don’t know how remarkably poignant her songs can be when experienced in a raw setting. She didn’t waste time with softening up the crowd with banter.
Moments after coming out, she launched into some of her most popular works such as “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”, “Bus to Baton Rouge” and “Drunken Angel”. Between each song, she briefly delivered several matter-of-fact anecdotes about the song’s meaning or inspiration. She said this such as, “This one has a lot of imagery” or “this one is about another beautiful loser”.
Each explanation apparently delighted many of the vociferous fans in back of the venue and they raised a adulating ruckus in response. After continuing with several personal favorites such as “Blue” and “Lake Charles” she slipped in some well-received new material.
Lucinda Williams’ performance was very much about guts over artifice. Every detail was boiled down to base model to emphasize this point. The guitar player mimicking familiar pedal steel lines, and accordion runs, the bass player switched freely from standup bass to electric. She just swayed a bit and let her voice and lyrics become the centerpiece to a magnificent display.
Editor’s Note: Eric Wildes is a contributor to DeadJournalist.com. A writer, musician and teacher, you can follow him on Twitter: @Elvis_Skinner.
Atlanta – Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre – April 29, 2011
Double-checking to make sure I had the correct ticket for this show, I noticed the ticket indicated this performance was put on by “Windstorm Productions” – very appropriate considering the severe weather in the South this past week.
Some of us had concerns that this venue might be too swanky and that the well-heeled audience might be too hoity-toity to constitute a good and enthusiastic crowd. I am more than happy to report that we were wr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-ong. The acoustics were perfect, the crowd was appreciative, and Lucinda and the boys were spot on and having fun, and the audience was obviously wowed by Blake – the kid is generating a LOT of buzz!
Lu took the stage at 9:08pm, saying “It’s great to be back in this part of the country again, the part of the country where I grew up”.
1) Buttercup – crowed roared its welcome
2) Car Wheels On A Gravel Road – “This song is about growing up in the South, which I’m sure you can identify with.”
3) People Talkin’
4) World Without Tears
5) Bus To Baton Rouge – “This is a song I wrote about imagining going back and visiting my grandmother’s house in Baton Rouge, my grandmother on my mother’s side… Not all of the memories are good – as most people’s aren’t.” One of my
favorites, what a treat it was to hear this song performed so beautifully. 6) Crescent City – “Another Louisiana song, in honor of the Jazz Festival.”
7) Drunken Angel – “This is a song I wrote about a Texas songwriter named Blaze Foley, about a story that happened. Blaze was a big follower of Townes Van Zandt, and Blaze tried to keep up with Townes, which no one could do. If you know about Towne’s history, you know about Blaze’s history.”
8. Lake Charles – “We’re gonna break it down a little bit, another song about Louisiana, about a guy named Clyde from Nacogdoches, and he really did have a yellow El Camino.” (solo acoustic)
9) Ugly Truth – Lu & Blake duet. Tour debut of this song.
10) Everything Has Changed – Another tour debut.
11) Blue
12) Born To Be Loved
13) Steal Your Love – lots of hooting and hollering in appreciation for this one, as well as a standing ovation. The new version, and Blake’s guitar work, are really drawing attention to this re-worked old favorite.
14) Blessed – another standing ovation.
15) Convince Me – yet another standing ovation!
16) Essence – ditto. Lu apologized for dropping some f-bombs.
17) Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings – another standing ovation – awesome audience!
18) Righteously – another standing ovation. “We’ve got a few more songs for you, if you’ll hang around for them.”
19) Changed The Locks – “I’d like to thank the …. uhhhh (trying to recall name) … Shannon Wright or the Wrights – they’re standing right here. We’re trying, as we’re going through towns, to have local artists open for us, and Atlanta sure has a lot of them.”
20) Honey Bee
Encore:
21) Hard Time Killing Floor Blues – “This is a Skip James’ song written during the Depression era, and unfortunately it’s very relevant for today. We’ve come full circle.”
22) Joy – Special guest, Rick Richards from the Georgia Satellites, joined in, playing Lu’s electric guitar on this one. “You’re watching history here.” Coincidentally and unbeknownst to us at the time, Stoger and I were standing behind Rick in the refreshments line between acts. He caught my eye because of his Slash-like hair and cool clothes, and I backed up to try and peek under his hair to see if I recognized him. Imagine our surprise to see him on stage two hours later. 🙂
23) For What It’s Worth – “This is an old Buffalo Springfield song.” Rick Richards stayed on stage, and the Wrights also joined in on this one. Great rendition, probably the entire audience was on its feet, and the perfect way to close out a great night. The usual profound goodbye of “Love, Peace, and Revolution”.
For me, this was probably my third favorite show, behind the inimitable no curfew, never-ending World Without Tears tour closer at the Ram’s Head in Baltimore, and the Orange Peel in Asheville last month. Great performance and great energy! I suspect the gang will be back in Atlanta sooner than later. 😉
Hi Noelle!
I was the ‘lady’ handing out the Blessed stickers. It was a pleasure meeting you and Betty. Welcome to the friendly forum. 🙂
Knoxville, TN – Bijou Theatre – 4/27/11
What a wild and woolly night! Wicked bad weather in Knoxville with heavy rains and wind, and a strong burst of hail that shattered the neon sign of the restaurant where we dined prior to the show, and speared shards of the sign through the restaurant’s canvass canopy. Even so, the weather was nothing compared to the F-5 tornado that hit the poor people of Tuscaloosa.
Lu took the stage around 9:20pm, stating “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I know I’m late. We got caught up in the hail. Have you ever heard hail inside a bus?! It’s f-ing loud and scary.”
1. Buttercup
2. Drunken Angel – I was sitting up in the balcony thinking how flawless Lu’s voice sounded during this song – or else perfectly flawed in all the right places, but then the poor girl got hit by a coughing attack. “I’m on a roll tonight, first I’m late and then I’m coughing during the song. I wish I could just give y’all your money back. I’m serious. I’ll try to make it up to you tonight.”
3. Pineola
4. Greenville
5. I Don’t Know How You’re Livin’ – “This is a song off the new album about my younger brother, who has a tendency to run off and hide, and he still is.”
6. Born To Be Loved – “Bless your hearts…”
7. 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten – “This next song I started writing here in Knoxville. You know I used to raise hell, some serious hell, back in the 90’s. I lived in Nashville and raised some serious hell there, and I raised some serious hell here. It was New Year’s Day, and we’d gone out the night before and I was feeling pretty bad. The guy I was with at the time played in a band, and I’d embarrassed him. I was dancing and getting all…
, and he didn’t like it. So the next day I was sitting there by myself at somebody’s house, looking at some photography books – ‘Juke Joint’ by Birney Imes and ‘Appalachian Portraits’ by Shelby Lee Adams, and got the inspiration for this song, especially from ‘Juke Joint’.” At the end of the song, Lu introduced the band, saying of young guitarist Blake – “This is the most phenomenal addition to the band. I don’t want to embarrass him, but this is the best version of the band to date. These guys back here are just my heart and soul. It’s just a love thing.”
“I got all stressed out about the hail. My husband, Tom, is from Austin, Minnesota, and he said he’s seen lots worse than this, denting cars, etc.”
“I feel like Loretta in ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ when she just started going off and had a breakdown on stage.”
“Another thing – I played three shows in the snowstorms in Minneapolis, and the people all came out. Trust me, if I was sitting home tonight, I wouldn’t want to come out.”
The bad weather rattled most everyone that night.
8. Steal Your Love – Blake is amazing on this innovative new version of the song. “See what I mean
? I just stand back there all aghast.” 9. Hot Blood – “This is a really old song that we re-worked.”
10. Sweet Side
11. Convince Me
12. Blessed
13. Essence – A lady in the audience yelled out “Lucinda, you’re the best songwriter ever!” Lu replied “Thank you, Bob Dylan’s pretty good.”
Then a guy yelled out “Dubb says ‘hi’!” Lu replied “That’s the guy I was raising hell with that night. Dubb and Bo Ramsey would drive down; and BB Morrison – I think he might be here tonight, is a great songwriter.” 14. Come On
15. Awakening – “Apparently on May 21st the world is supposed to end – the apocalypse. We’ll be in Chicago that night. Jim Morrison is going to come back and join us on stage.”
“Glenn Beck is going to burst into flames.”
“Jesus is going to return and punish Glenn Beck and all those other people.”
“Glenn Beck is now saying not ‘What would Jesus do?’, but ‘What would Jesus take from the rich?’”
“I guess that means we have Jesus on our side.”
“Something’s gotta give. Something’s gotta change.”
16. Atonement
17. Righteously – “Oh yeah, I know what I was going to say. When it was raining earlier, and the sun was shining through, when I was growing up the saying for that was ‘The Devil’s beating his wife with a frying pan’.
18. Changed The Locks – “I especially want to say thanks for digging in your pockets during these hard times, and coming out and supporting live music. This is one of my favorite venues to play in.”
19. Honey Bee
Encore: (I had to go stand outside the theater at this time, to do my Lost Highway street team duty of handing out Blessed stickers as attendees left the venue; this is what I heard from outside.)
20. Hard Time Killing Floor Blues
21. Joy
I’ve read the Living in a Tree book – it was really good – at some points almost unbelievable, but you knew it was true. Blaze was a wild man!
Great recap, Tom, really made the reader feel like they were there. thx, ww
LWJ – YAY!!! I am doing Cincinnati and Cleveland – we will finally get to meet, you prolific poster, you! 😀
LWJetta wrote: Any guesses West Words ? ( or any other Friendly Forum member )
I got nothin’, LWJ. All of my guesses appear to have other gigs during this time frame. …hmmm… will continue pondering…
TnT said: well, stoger, has a mind like a steel trap & a memory to match…
Stoger is a friggin’ SAVANT!! Not only can he remember every song played, in the correct order, but in an instant he can recall, for example, “Ah yes, Copenhagen was song # 10″!!!” Sometimes, he might have to put his hand to his chin to trigger the mechanism, but it’s a pretty reliable machine! How does he do that… 😮
