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Uptown Magazine - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News

June 21, 2007


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2007-06-21

Passionate musical kisses

Williams and band stoke up the heat with revealing songs and great guitar

(Lucinda Williams, June 17, Burton Cummings Theatre, w/ Kelly Joe Phelps)

B+

Time and time and time again, aspiring musicians are told that success in music "is all about the songs."

But there are songs such as Rihanna's Umbrella - catchy and well-made commercial pop fluff - and then there are songs like those Lucinda Williams brought to the Burt on June 17. The 54-year-old American's songs aren't smash hits, but their soul-baring essence strikes a universal chord with those tuned into her nasally drawl and her disarmingly frank lyrics.

This is a woman who can sum up the desire and spite of a passionate affair and its aftermath in just three minutes in Those Three Days, who can evoke an ethereal sense of Buddhist consciousness in Unsuffer Me, and who can literally jar the senses with smouldering cuts such as Righteously.

On this night, Williams' glorious tunes were delivered in no-frills fashion by the singer and her ace three-piece touring unit of guitarist Doug Pettibone, bassist David Sutton and drummer Butch Norman. The quartet was more than a match for the heat of the old Walker, and Pettibone, in particular, sizzled his way through at least eight different guitars in 100 minutes.

Williams herself seemed almost distracted at first. She apologized for playing with a binder of lyrics in front of her, saying she had too much material to remember it all - but she was also brave enough to play Words (from the new album West) for the first time live. By show's end, she was moved by the response of her Canadian audience to apologize for the political transgressions of her country and to close with a beautiful version of Marching the Hate Machine (Into the Sun) by Wayne Coyne and Thievery Corporation.

Opener Kelly Joe Phelps let his fingerpicking do the talking through his set of wordy folk tunes. Unfortunately for him (and many other openers at the Burt), much of his nuance was lost amid the chatter rising from the main floor's back bar.
— John Kendle

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