“You took my joy, I want it back”.
So sings Lucinda Williams as her last song. You do not need to be a professional psychologist to have a go at the symbolism here. That song, appears to encapsulate her, well, joy at being back on stage.
Cleverly the show had begun with a song from last year’s “comeback album”, called “Let’s Get The Band Back Together” and that those pair bookend the gig is telling.
The last thing Williams had said before she left the stage was: “I want to thank L.A Edwards for opening, they are a wonderful band. She’s not wrong either. Frequent visitors to our shores over the last couple of years, what started out as a solo project has gradually morphed into one of the finest, well what exactly? Bands there is around. If you were being lazy you call him Americana but as we’ve said on the last couple of times we’ve seen them they inject such a West Coast warmth into their proceedings they do not fit into any neat box. That much is evident even from the opener “Now You Know” which sees Jay Edwards play the flute and give things a real folk feel. They can, however, rock out with the best of them and the drums on Louisiana from another brother Jerry are particularly strident, while Saint Augustine, has hints of Tom Petty about it. The one thing you can never fail to notice with the band though, is there simply gorgeous harmonies and when the three siblings crowd around the microphone for the first part of “Day I Die”, a song for their mother, it is both timeless and very special. They have just released a new song and “Good Luck” comes from the rockier end of their repertoire, but whatever they do just has a knack of sounding right. The harmonica is back for “The Crow” which is very much the sort of thing that the Gaslight Anthem had cornered, before “Let It Out” ends things with a real groove. It is almost two years since we first saw them and in that time L.A Edwards have gone from a band that is promising, to one that you really cannot ignore.
“Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart”. That album title from the record that Williams put out last year, says much. In 2020 she suffered a stroke, but a little like fellow lifer Walter Trout, there was a need -something more than a desire – to get back to doing what she was born to do.
The aforementioned opening song “….Together” is poignant of course but my God! it sounds absolutely righteously filthy. Like something The Stones were too scared to put out. The move things change…..
When she slows things down, on songs like “Drunken Angel” she’s equally brilliant and the harmonica sounds almost haunting. Guitarists Marc Ford (who gets Black Crowes bonus points) and Doug Pettibone (who has played with everyone from The White Buffalo to Keifer Sutherland most recently over here) are incredible throughout the night, but the slide work on “Stolen Moments” written in the wake of Tom Petty’s death is a particular highlight.
There is an astonishing, if subtle, array of styles here. Whether it is the funky “West Memphis” or the folk standard “Freight Train” or any of the others she plays in a lengthy 2-hour long set, they are all bound together by one thing. Williams says she likes to write about “beautiful misfits” and those tales, like “Lake Charles” make for stunningly interesting material.
She is she says, still fascinated by people and places, work like “Car Wheels On A Gravel Road” has that all the way through, she is also the mistress of an understatement too as when she plays the title cut from that recent record she says: “Oh yes, we got Bruce Springsteen to sing on it for us” like its no big deal.
After the defiance of “You Can’t Rule Me” comes a tender moment, with “Dust” which sees one of her father’s poems set to music, while the twin guitar of “Honeybee” is a raucous moment.
In the encore she plays “Where The Song Will Find Me” – another of the newer tracks it is perhaps the reason why she’s here. Music – and not just this music- is ingrained in her and as she plays a cover of ZZ Top’s “Jesus Just Left Chicago”, followed by “Joy”, it is exactly that to see her perform. Standing for two hours, with her band and these songs, it is like a lifetime in music, as well as loving it, has burst forth. It was a captivating display of sheer musical power.
