Review: Lucinda Williams at The Orange Peel
I have been listening to Lucinda Williams and loving what I hear for what feels like forever. I remember right around 1990, flying out to San Francisco to visit with some friends from college who had moved there after we graduated a year or two earlier. They picked me up from the airport in a sweet late-model convertible, and as soon as I’d thrown my bag in the trunk, they excitedly popped in a cassette they wanted me to hear as we drove back across the bridge to their big house in the Berkeley hills. It was Lucinda’s eponymous third album, and her “Big Red Sun” instantly became my new favorite song. I’ve had her as a frequent contributor to the soundtrack to my life ever since.
When I saw Lucinda live at The Orange Peel on May 3, I got the sense that she was letting us know this won’t go on forever — but it won't be because she doesn't still want to rock or has stopped making music that matters.
This was another concert I’ve seen recently by a veteran touring band where they eschewed any opening act and got straight to the business of rock ’n’ roll. They Might Be Giants, Yo La Tengo, and now Lucinda. She didn’t exactly charge the stage, but walked — or, more accurately, was walked to the microphone in front of her fantastic bandmates Doug Pettibone on (guitar), Jim Oblon (guitar/keys), David Sutton (bass), and Butch Norton (drums) who were already in position.
Dressed comfortably in blue jeans, loose-fitting black leather jacket, and black T-shirt that read ”FILE UNDER ROCK,” she wouldn’t wander very far from her center-stage station during the sold-out show, but we don’t need her to do an extended song and dance to entertain us. We just need her to stand and snap and sing her host of gritty and undeniably great Americana blues rock songs in her genuine rough-around-the-edges vocal style.
I saw darling of the indie country music scene, Margo Price, perform in this same space a few months back. She is super talented and it is no surprise that she has recently sung on stage with so many stars of the music world like Jack White, Sturgill Simpson, Emmylou Harris, and even Lucinda herself. Margo’s concert was a stark contrast to what Lucinda did. Margo was all over that stage, with leg kicks and costume changes, eventually ending up in a spangled dance leotard. Entertaining? Sure. But it also struck me as a smidge overcompensating. Lucinda can’t do anything close to that these days — but she also has never had to.
Lucinda opened the show with “Can’t Let Go” off her 1998 breakthrough release, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. She’s long been known for her confessional lyrics, and these words — originally written about not being able to quit a broken relationship — now seemed to speak to her current compromised capabilities and her refusal to acquiesce as an aging rock star: “You don't like to see me standin' around / Feel like I been shot and didn't fall down / Well, it's over, I know it but I can't let go.”
And then Lucinda spent the next 17 songs proving that her reign as the Queen of Americana is not over — not yet — and she’s certainly not letting go. Yes, she’s now a senior citizen and has had some recent health issues, including suffering a stroke at the tail end of 2020. But damaged and defiant has been her brand from the beginning. If her voice is at times cracked and gravelly, that’s nothing new, and more of it only suits her songs of heartbreak and hoping for better days. The people in her songs have often been through some shit, and she doesn’t need to affect a persona to share these stories; she can keep it in the first person.
She followed up her opening song with another status report, “Protection,” off of her 2014 release, Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, admitting that she “needs protection from the enemy of rock ‘n’ roll,” among other threats. Her adoring audience let her know that they would be more than happy to provide whatever she needs to keep holding court.
After that came the iconic title track from Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, where Lucinda let us in on her songwriting style, saying this number is a series of snapshots seen from the back seat of a car. This is gorgeous Americana songwriting and imagery: “Cotton fields stretching miles and miles / Hank's voice on the radio / Telephone poles trees and wires fly on by / Car wheels on a gravel road,” sung in a voice that evoked the sound suggested by the title.
Next, she sang “Stolen Moments,” off her forthcoming album, Stories from a Rock ‘n’ Roll Heart, which she wrote after the death of another amazing American songwriter, Tom Petty, with whom she toured in 2017. As with “Car Wheels,” this song is likewise a series of stolen moments that make her remember her fallen friend: “Driving down Sunset / I'm stuck in traffic / With the sun / Comin' in from the West / So I cover my eyes / And I wait for the light to change / And I think about you.”
So good. A song that sounds like it could be a Tom Petty song, but instead of his signature nasally hum of a voice, it’s Lucinda’s strained and sentimental vocals. She’s not just singing lyrics to a pop song; she’s sharing personal experience. And that’s why she needs no additional bells and whistles.
She let us in even further a little later when she told the story behind the song “Lake Charles” (also off Car Wheels), about a friend who took to telling an odd lie that he was from that city in Louisiana, when in fact, “He was born in Nacogdoches / That's in East Texas.” Lucinda songs are not cautionary tales. She figures he had a good reason for doing so, and loved him all the same.
Lucinda's voice is more pained than pretty, but how it lands is lovely. Her vocal timbre and tone would be good for delivering lines in a Greek tragedy like Medea or Antigone, but she’s not wailing — just wondering why she or someone else would do the things they did. “Did an angel whisper in your ear / And hold you close and take away your fear?” And the hint of Zydeco laid underneath helps the song belong to the area it mentions, known for both happy music and hardship.
Lucinda then sang another love song to Louisiana, a frequently featured character in her music, with her beautiful “Bus To Baton Rouge” from her 2001 release, Essence. And then she reminded us that she has also written many powerful love songs of the people variety when she sang “Fruits of My Labor” from 2003’s World Without Tears.
She informed us that she only used to write songs about falling in love, but as she got older she needed to learn how to write about other things. I’m glad she did but her love songs sure do pack a punch: Baby, I remember all the things we did / When we slept together in the blue behind your eyelids, baby / Sweet baby. I think we all would like someone to call us “sweet baby” with the longing that she pours into her love lyrics.
Over the next stretch of songs, she played a few more tracks from Essence — “Are You Down” and “Out of Touch” — more songs written about irreversible rocky relationships that I interpreted as more of her admitting that she can not reverse the advance of years, particularly in the lyrics of “Are You Down”: Can't force the river upstream / When it goes south / Know what I mean.“
But unlike Cher, Lucinda is not trying to turn back time. Instead, she’s making the most of her current time as she also played a few more terrific tracks of her aforementioned soon-to-be-released record: “Last Call for the Truth” and “Let’s Get the Band Back Together.” With some veteran rockers, “This next one is from the new album” isn’t always what you want to hear, but Lucinda hasn’t lost a step and her songwriting continues to be driven by personal and even political narratives backed by vintage roadhouse rock and blues beats.
Another thing I love about Lucinda is she was not here to sell albums, even though she had them to sell. She threw in a few songs from the future release, but didn’t make much of a fuss about it. And her last album from a few years back, Good Souls Better Angels, was brilliant and on brand but we were more than ⅔ of the way into the show before we heard our first tune from it, the feisty feminist “You Can’t Rule Me.” She is not going anywhere, certainly not quietly: You wanna go and tell me what's good for me / You wanna tell me what I'm payin' for / Well, the game is fixed, it's plain to see / I ain't playin' no more / You can't rule me.” Lucinda may only mostly sing and dance in place these days, but her independent voice is still very much needed.
She whispered “sweet baby’ a few more times with the title track from Essence, and then reminded us that those sweet babies usually end up breaking her heart with Car Wheels standout “Joy”: "I don't want you anymore 'cause you took my joy / I don't want you anymore, you took my joy / You took my joy, I want it back / You took my joy, I want it back.” We love Lucinda in love. We dig Lucinda digging her heels and demanding to be treated better.
We were treated to that one-two combo one more time in her two-song encore. She was glad she got stung by love in her 2008 song, “Honey Bee,” and then she demanded that we keep making demands with Neil Young’s classic anthem, “Rockin’ in the Free World,” a fine song to finish on.
As somewhat of a connoisseur of the smartly chosen ironic yet iconic T-shirt to wear to a concert, I was intrigued by her FILE UNDER ROCK fashion statement but her finale and overall impact helped me understand the selection. We ran into some friends who left before the encore because, as they said, while they like Lucinda, “this wasn’t for them.” Some of it may have had something to do with her unapologetic progressive politics, but it also may be because they tend to trend more country.
While her music carries many country elements, as she tells you with her T-shirt, her mindset is more rock ‘n’ roll. Country music can sometimes celebrate the stereotypes of day drinking and women who must suffer the poor decisions of the men they love. But with Lucinda, it's not mythology — it’s memoir. She’s raw with no appeals to Jesus to steer us to safety, and no promised or even supposed happy endings.
At the end, we all sang along with our declarations to keep on rockin’ in whatever form of a free world we can find. And then we were done. Lucinda and her band waved goodbye to the crowd, who could have rocked more but were quite content with what we got. She, by just being who she is in her music and in her manner, was just great. And there is more new music to come, and hopefully more opportunities to play her library of songs live. Until again.
(Photos by Arlo Abrams)
