The second night of Lucinda Williams’ two-night stand at Tipitina’s was all about Louisiana. Instead of playing the entire Rough Trade album plus bonus tracks, as she did on Sunday evening, she built the set list around her induction in the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame (which happened before the encore). Which meant she pulled out nearly every song in her catalogue with a local reference, from obvious ones like “Crescent City” and “Joy” (where she goes looking for the latter in Slidell) to rarely-played numbers like Memphis Minnie’s “Nothing in Ramblin’” and her own “Bus to Baton Rouge.”
Though something of a dream set, it took awhile to get going. Williams has always been unable to fake it onstage—when she’s not feeling a song, you can tell; and that was the case for the set’s first few numbers. The should’ve-been-sublime “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” began at the wrong tempo and had to be re-started; “Metal Firecracker” also sounded tentative; a real loss for a song whose chorus (“All I ask, don’t tell anybody the secrets I told you”) has probably been in a million high-school yearbooks by now. Since she couldn’t pick up yet, she wisely decided to dig further down: “Pineola” and “Drunken Angel” are two of the darker stories in her catalogue (both were introduced as being “about someone who left us too soon”), and allowed her three-piece band to get good and spooky. Williams’ voice has probably deepened since you last saw her, and it made both tunes that much more ominous. From there the energy level gradually ascended, until “Blessed” and “Little Honey” (it was a good night for title tracks) found her open-hearted, losing her guitar to dance on the latter.
Lucinda Williams
The award presentation was short and sweet, down to Williams’ acceptance speech of “Thanks so much, y’all.” But she let slip later that she was “so touched and moved by this,” and it showed in her choice of encore: Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya” and her own “Get Right With God,” both turned into communal sing-alongs (the guilt that infused her original version of the latter tune was nowhere in sight). By then she’d found her joy, and she didn’t even have to go as far as Slidell.
She was joined on those last two numbers by her hand-picked opening act, the Kenneth Brian Band, an Alabama group who noted on stage that they usually play the Circle Bar when they’re in town. Their set was built on loping country-ish grooves and Neil Young/Drive-By Truckers guitar, plus a star-quality fiddler who sat in on a few tunes. No surprise that familiar names like Bonnie Bramlett and ex-Allman Brothers producer Johnny Sandlin worked on their album; they’re a fine throwback to the glory days of Southern rock—or as it’s known in these parts, rock.
