The Barbican is not, of course, in south London. But we get out and about – and we’re pretty sure you do, too. So occasionally, when there’s interesting stuff going on elsewhere, we’ll give it a mention. Like this gig our writer Charlotte Harry loved
“Who’s Lucinda Williams?” has been the shockingly common response to my boasts about last week’s beaut of a gig at the Barbican. Que? We’re talking about a woman whose songs have been covered by Tom Petty and turned into smash hits by Mary Chapin-Carpenter; a woman who’s a peer/collaborator with the likes of Emmylou Harris and Nanci Griffith. This is a woman who has won not one but three Grammys, spanning three genres (country, folk and rock).
But maybe therein lies the clue. Trying to pigeonhole Williams’ music has long boggled the brains of certain music-industry simpletons, and she may have suffered commercially as a result. Acclaim and devotion, however, have never been unforthcoming, and seem to have sufficed: as she told the audience when musing on the subject, “I dunno… I’m just me”.
“Me” is a woman who can pull off that most challenging of feats, a stellar acoustic gig. Having missed the fact that it was billed as “an intimate evening with…” I was initially crestfallen at the lack of a drum kit. But by the second song (Car Wheels On A Gravel Road) any sense of lack was gone. Add some electric licks from guitarist Doug Pettibone (also on mandolin and lap-steel guitar) and some bass from David Sutton (playing a beautiful beat-up semi-acoustic) and all was well.
The generous 21 songs she proceeded to deliver provided a suitable overview of her scope and talent. (My guest was a Williams newbie who’d feared some kind of Nashville nightmare but was won over by about song six.)
It was hard to work out the single most impressive ingredient. Was it the sublime song-writing and melodies – simple, emotive, hooky as hell? In the rhythmically defiant Joy, her tell-it-straight lyrics and bluesy vocal riff packed such a punch they barely needed musical accompaniment: “I don’t want you anymore ‘cause you took my joy. You took my joy. I want it back.”
In Those Three Days, she slurred lazily about scorpions crawling under the skin that “bite through the flesh down to the bone, and I have been so fuckin’ alone, since those three days”. The chorus asks, heartbreakingly, “Did you love me forever, for those three days?”
Then of course there’s the delivery, and the sheer charisma – low key, sexy, cool-as-fuck-but-nice-with-it. And to top it off there’s the voice: so idiosyncratically stupendous live that she struck me as a kind of countrified opera singer. The power! The rasp! The smoky vibrato sweetness! Not to mention that Louisiana drawl…
The hush of the Barbican was the only factor threatening to detract from the warm, southern ambiance created. A buxom blond woman wearing a Stetson hollered “Baaaaaabe!” at one point (mid quiet song, yikes) but later tottered drunkenly out of her row, never to return. That aside, it was all perhaps a tad polite. But then again, so is Lucinda Williams, albeit in her growly southern way. So, in the spirit of minding my Ps and Qs, I hereby offer up a big thank you for A Big Gig.
Words: Charlotte Harry
