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http://neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2011/03/tom-waits-induction-to-rock-and-roll.html
Check out this link to see some incredibly cool Neil Young posters, two of which have you-know-lu as opening act. 🙂
I bet tnt’s fingers are burning up ebay right now. 😉
Blessed wrote:
Once again a great night. Very different set list last night, which meant a bonus for those who were lucky enough to be on both days. The audience responded beautifully. Personally I enjoyed most of the show on Saturday, much more energetic. But appreciate to hear different songs during the second night.
Very nice to share the evening with our American friends, thanks to Stoger, West words, Paul-from Los Angeles, for his company.
Remember american cheeseburguer rocks too (bigsubi dixit)!Indeed, it was a great two nights, and a “joy” to see you both again. We only just figured out who you are, Blessed. You only recently began posting to the forum, and we are glad you have joined us here. Bienvenidos! 🙂
davek – thanks for sharing the pics. 🙂
lwj – thanks for the no depression review – good one. I will pay attention to the merch table in Asheville and post afterwards. What I remember that was new were two ladies v-neck t-shirts (one black, one blue), with ‘blessed’ written on them numerous times in different fonts. I think there were a couple other new t-shirts (mens style – crew neck). I’ll confirm and report back on Wednesday night. 🙂
stoger said: the public restrooms at the Webster are unisex. Word to the wise.. .
Not only are they unisex, they also sell a big selection of candy in there… Only in New York. 😀 At least they had real doors vs. curtains, which I’ve seen in other NYC unisex bathrooms. 😉
Good show!
Set list:
1) I Just Wanted To See You So Bad
2) Happy Woman Blues
3) Tears of Joy
4) Pineola
5) Drunken Angel – ‘This is another song about another beautiful loser’
6) Buttercup – ‘Just in case you’re wondering, I wrote this about the same guy as Jailhouse Tears – kind of the final chapter. It’s the only bad boy song on the new album – I still had a little bit left in my system.’
7) Metal Firecracker – ‘This is a real bad boy song’ Aborted song shortly after beginning – ‘My guitar is out of tune, I’ll come back to it in a little bit’ (never did)
7a) Copenhagen
8- Fruits Of My Labor
9) Born To Be Loved – ‘I appreciate you coming out tonight, especially in New York City where there’s so much great stuff going on, and especially during these hard times, digging in your pockets and supporting us.’
10) Convince Me – very well-received
11) Seeing Black
12) Essence
13) Come On
14) Unsuffer Me – tour debut
15) Righteously
16) Real Live Bleeding Fingers & Broken Guitar Strings – ‘This has really been a good time – thanks again. Some friends of ours are here all the way from Spain.’ (bigsubi 🙂 )
17) Changed The Locks – ‘Thanks again for coming out tonight all the way from Espana.’
18) Honey Bee – ‘Thanks for coming out – you were a great audience. Love, peace, & revolution. Gracias!’ (the third nod to bigsubi – you rock star, you! 😀 )
Encore:
19) Blessed
20) Joy
21) Get Right With God – ‘God bless – love, peace, & revolution – workers’ rights – power to the people!’
By Jay N. Miller
For The Patriot Ledger
Posted Mar 10, 2011 @ 10:03 AMBOSTON —
Lucinda Williams still loves playing music, jugglingnew set lists every night, and she and her band still create one of the most singular sounds in all of rock ‘n’ roll, a heady blend of country, r&b, mysterious Southern Gothic, and reverb-drenched swamp rock/noir.
Wednesday night’s two-hour, 23-song journey through her fertile songbook was as much a treat as ever, as her 2008 marriage has truly seemed to reinvigorate the Lake Charles,Louisiana native.
Looking like a long-lostRolling Stones’sister, Williams was dressed in black jeans, a black vest with shimmery designs, a denim-colored shirt, and blue-tinted shades, her blonde hair artfully unkempt. As usual she kept consulting a music stand between songs, and sometimes during songs, but with the number of songs she’s written, and the complex lyrics she writes,not to mention the way she crafts new setlists almost every night, that was okay with her fans.
Williams latest album, “Blessed,” is her tenth studio album, and it’s a lively collection where her more recent happiness vibe permeates the music. We’re all familiar with some of the lost-love/life’s travailsepics Williams has composed, and some of them are absolutely brilliant, but that sliver of optimism always peaking around evenher more downbeat stuff has fully blossomed in recent years.
The new album, and this tour, also features a new band. Superb guitarist and longtime Williams foil Doug Petitbon is gone on to other projects, but his replacement, young Val McCallum is a worthy successor. No doubt the secret weapon in many of Williams’ most haunting, noir-ish songs is the finely nuanced work of her guitarist. David Sutton on bass and Butch Norton on drums make up a stellar rhythm section that crafts the subtly burning foundation of so many of her tunes. Wednesday night’s concert proved the new quartet is a monster, and the sound they created belied the fact there were only four musicians.
Wednesday’s set included seven of the 12 songs on “Blessed,” and Williams repeatedlythanked the audience for listening, and showing its appreciation for, the new music. The rest of the material was drawn from all stages of her lengthy career, and if some fans may havemisseda fewof her classics – no “Passionate Kisses,” or “Six Blocks Away”–there were plenty of gems not often heard at Williams shows.
Williams, 58, kicked it off with her easy drawl driving the country rocker “Just Wanted to SeeYou So Bad,” and then donned an acoustic guitar for “Happy Woman Blues,” which she turned into a honky tonk two-step. The slow-cooking “Tears of Joy” was a paean to lasting love, a moving country-blues that ended up being one of her most soulful numbers. Williams kept that acoustic guitar for “Pineola,” one of her more Southern Gothic story-songs, and her gospel-inflected vocal addedvolumes of meaning to the lyrics. “Buttercup” is a new song that fuses that trademark swamp-rock sound with some of Williams’ most upbeat lyrics, and it was a joyous nod to enduring love Wednesday.
One of the tunes from the new album, “Copenhagen,” seems to be about a friend’s demise, and it’s one of the more haunting numbers, an eerie ballad with a softly thumping rhythm, as Williams’ vocal achieved some otherworldly levels of spiritual pain. After that poignant moment, the chunka-chunk blues momentum of “Born to be Loved” was just the brightening agent we needed. And then an indelible version of her old “Fruits of My Labor,” which features some of her best poetic lyrics, brought more of that slow-burning fire.
“Convince Me” from the new CD was a gritty swamp-rock ballad which built to a fiery finish, as her plaintive lyrics nevertheless conveyed that Williams is an independent woman. The older favorite “Come On” came across in all its swampy glory, each line setting up the punch line chorus, and much of the crowd singing along. Another tune from the new album, “Seeing Black” was buoyant country-rock with an edgy kick.
“Out of Touch” is a more classic Williams song, all about feeling isolated in the midst of a relationship, a low key rumination enlivened by McCallum’s subtle guitar sizzle. “Awakening,” apparently beingdone for the first timelast night,rode a shimmering guitar figure, but it was one spot where Williams was just too laidback, and the song needed more energy. That brief problem was cured with a potboiling take on “Righteously,” as again the throng of about 1800 fans sang along heartily. The Rolling Stones-y rocker “Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings” was every bitthe rollicking romp it usually is at these shows.
The older Williams chestnut “I Changed the Locks” was another trip to the grittiest side of honkly tonk music, and the regular set finale “Honeybee” was seriously pounding blues-rock. The highlights of Williams’ four-song encore were a marvelously nuanced solo rendition of “Blessed,” and a funky, down-home ride through “Joy.” The night ended with the haunting “Get Right With God,” Williams’ gospel-infused swoops providing one more stunning moment.
http://www.boston.com/ae/music/blog/2011/03/lucinda_fine_an.html
LUCINDA WILLIAMS
With Dylan LeBlanc
At: House of Blues, last nightBy James Reed
Globe StaffLucinda Williams got married in 2009, and even she wondered aloud in interviews how wedded bliss would affect her creativity. Anyone who feared happiness would spoil a woman who’s often at her best when life’s at its worst probably exhaled in relief early into Williams’s show at the House of Blues last night.
“Tryin’ hard to be a happy woman/ But sometimes life just overcomes me,” she sang on the chugging “Happy Woman Blues,” from the 1980 album of the same name.
She followed it up with the more optimistic barroom blues of “Tears of Joy”: “Now I have a real man/ Don’t have to pretend/ And that’s why I’m crying tears of joy.”
It was official: Williams still knows her way around a broken heart, but she has also made peace with hope and contentment.
Even when the songs were down and out, she sounded sublime at the House of Blues, assured and at ease. No doubt the club setting cut Williams some slack to loosen up, which was often at odds with her frequent glances at lyrics on a nearby music stand. Williams surveyed a wide swath of her career, from the earlier days (“I Lost It,” “Changed the Locks,” “Pineola”) to more recent fare (“Righteously,” “Honey Bee,” and most of her brand-new album, “Blessed”).
Williams is on the road with one of her leanest backing ensembles in recent memory, just David Sutton on bass, Butch Norton on drums, and Val McCallum on electric guitar and harmonica. Together with Williams on guitar, they fleshed out the songs with grace and economy, built firmly around Williams’s vocals. On several songs, it initially seemed like there was no fire, until you realized it was simply smoldering.
Much like the production on “Blessed,” the mood was mostly low-key except for when McCallum unleashed blistering solos that occasionally hijacked the songs. Other times, Williams put down her guitar long enough to become a dusky torch singer, never so evocatively as on “Born to be Loved,” a new song that was bookended with “Fruits of My Labor.”
By nature, Williams is not a raucous performer, but she doesn’t have to be. The hell-raising lives in the jagged edges and murky shades of her voice, not to mention her lyrics. “You can’t light my fire, so [expletive] off/ You didn’t even make me/ Come on!” is surely the most bracing kiss-off ever to be aimed at a lousy lover.
Celebrating his 21st birthday, Louisiana native Dylan LeBlanc opened the show with an unvarnished set of acoustic country-blues indebted to what he later requested from the audience: shots of Jack Daniel’s.
James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com.
Awwwww!!! So very sorry you got hurt and have to miss the show. That was very kind of you to offer up the tickets free – good karma will surely come back around your way. Wishing you a speedy recovery. 🙂
LOVE LOVE the bonus tracks. Add “Convince Me” (album version, extended version) to my list of favorites from “Blessed.”
TO, thanks for the added info on the “Ugly Truth” with Kris Kristofferson on background vocals. I love “behind the scenes embellishments” about songs.
Ditto! I finally got to my hotel and was able to download these and listen to them. Thank you so very much for these special treats, as well as for the Kitchen Tapes. Good, good stuff! Blessed was one heck of a deal, for all we got with it. 🙂
TomT – have yours shown up yet?
Mine arrived today at 2:40pm eastern time! Be sure to check your junk mailbox, that’s where I just found mine. I can’t think of anything else that would be further from junk!! ❗ ❗ 😀
And Buddy Miller’s not too shabby, either. 😉 I think his was the best performance of anyone’s at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival last fall in San Francisco. 🙂
Stoger, I gotta ask, by any chance did you happen to say to the barely post-nymphet Ivy League co-eds “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”? …I don’t think the Nabokov reference is too veiled. 😀
Stoger said:
We were greeted with a locked depot in downtown Ithaca, the station employee himself hopping on the bus (which was going to try to make it on to Elmira) after wishing the dozen or so of us who de-bussed good luck and announcing that no cabs were running “to the hill,” much less local bus service.Wow, Stoger! What an adventure, you get ‘most dedicated fan/road warrior’ award! Are you keeping a journal? Glad you made it safely, and please don’t bring that weather to Boston and NYC. 🙂
