Well, well well. The lady is for rocking!
Lucinda was good but overall I was a tad disappointed with the gig at the Empire.
The sense of disappointment was already on me before she had even started as her backing band, Buick 6 were finishing their warm up set as we entered the packed seatless stalls. No doubting their musicianship, with an absolute soild drummer, but god was it heavy. The portents were not good and so it turned out to be as Lucinda led the group back on stage for her set around 9:10.
A blistering opener followed by a further 5 or 6 songs, where not only did she not crack a smile, but had a go at flashing lighting display, photographers in the pit area and members of the audience taking photographs of her. To my left someone cried out 'keep it simple' when she was struggling to get her 'vibe' together, and another wag said something along the lines that she sounded like an old woman. We were about ten feet right in front from her and it was true, make up to a minimum with heavy eyeliner around her eyes, and she had done something to her hair. Either she had washed the blond dye out of her hair, or had done the opposite and dyed her hair brown keeping the odd blond highlight. Don't know which. but as my wife said to me during the gig, she was showing her age.
The audience were behind her though and with some encouragement from them warming to her obvious predicament, she gradually got going. During this period two songs were started again, one after the opening couple of bars but the second well into the first chorus, which I have never experienced at all before. She started to crack the odd smile, and between songs, apologised to the audience saying there are three places that make her nervous, LA, New York and here in London.
Strangely though that trademark cracking in her voice has missing somewhat only being noticeable on Blue, but then even less so that the rendition captured on Live @ the Filimore. This and a number of the quieter songs you could hear the audience singing along with her, but when it came to what I call the 'hard' songs, they were delivered in such a araul noise that their pain was overdone. Hard songs? well these are the ones that she regales against men in her lives, Joy, Come On, and Name Of This Town.
There was no shortage of songs, although to my surprise I think that only three were taken from 'Little Honey' which was the album that Buick 6 backed her on. Car wheels on a Gravel Road was well represented.
A disappointment of another kind was that I had been anticipating her singing Jailhouse Tears. When the stage was being made ready for her, the roadies prepped a mike on a long lead and had left it close to her song stand. (yes she had her own songbook of words and would glance down at it from time to time as if to remind herself what the next verse was about). Elvis Costello had done the duet with her on Little Honey, but who would turn up here? Well no one as they she did not perform it.
To me the highlights were two songs were the bassist dropped the use of the electric bass (he had two and you could tell the mood of the playing by which one he chose) and donned, if thats the word, an upright bass complete with bow. One of the guitarist played keyboards on one song and mandolin on another and with her acoustic guitar, the sound became magical again. The earlier 'keep it simple' plea being proven correct.
An encore followed, because we all wanted to her more and she was at home by now, but the last song said it all. AC/DC's 'It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll'.
Yes, she wanted to rock and roll, but what the Cambridge folk Festival audience will think of it by the time she closes out the festival this coming Sunday evening, I can only guess.
Now looking back on this performance, but really remembering the first time we had seen her, same venue only 20 months earlier, I cant help thinking that that first one was so much better. It had light and shade, it had her voice with all its imperfections that we so love about her, and it had backing musicians (and an absolute pearler of a guitarist...so much so that I came away wishing I could play like that...I cant play at all btw) that were in tune with her and her songs. Yes we all move on, but Lucinda has taken a strange path as she gets older, from the early years of Folk and Blues, through into a modern country, onto a uncategorisable genre through to rock, and at times hard rock that would live alongside the Iron Maidens of this world. Who would have thought it!
The Set list
- Real Love
- Right in Time
- I Lost It
- Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
- Fruits of My Labor
- Blue
- Side of the Road
- Tears of Joy
- Pineola
- Drunken Angel
- Out of Touch
- Changed the Locks
- Real Live Bleeding Fingers & Broken Guitar Strings
- Come On
- Honey Bee
- Joy
- Righteously
- Get Right With God
- It's A Long Way to the Top if You Want to Rock & Roll
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