Lucinda Williams limped to the stage with an escort Monday night to begin her record five-night, sold-out run at the Dakota in Minneapolis. The revered singer-songwriter doesn’t play guitar anymore. She simply stood in place for the next 110 minutes or so, gripping the mic stand, and singing.
“I haven’t been able to play guitar because of that dad-blamed stroke I had,” she said after a few selections.
Williams suffered a stroke in November 2020 but that hasn’t prevented her from authoring a captivating memoir this spring, releasing another impressive album this month and treating her fans to a rewarding night of poetic rock ‘n’ roll on Monday.
“YOU CAN’T RULE ME” declared her T-shirt in all capital letters. It’s the name of a Memphis Minnie country blues that Williams performed Monday. But it also defined her mind-set. She was determined, a little defiant, a little rebellious, true to her rock ‘n’ roll heart. In short, she lifted a middle-finger to the stroke.
Delivered as a sweet Southern stroll, “People Talking,” from 2003, implored you to stop listening to the noise around you and lead your own life. And Williams is doing that herself.
The 70-year-old found a different voice on Monday. There was less of her slurring, Louisiana drawl and more clarity in her words. She’s always about her words. And she had plenty of them to say between songs.
Perhaps inspired by her raw and revelatory memoir, “Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You,” she peeled back layers about her life and songs on Monday more than in previous Twin Cities performances.
She explained that “Lake Charles” chronicled her wild-child friend Charles Joseph Woodward III who was born in Nacogdoches, Texas, but liked to stop at a gas station in Lakes Charles, La, where Williams was born. “Bus to Baton Rouge” was filled with memories of trips to Williams’ maternal grandparents such as banana pudding with a vanilla wafer and grandpa spitting chewing tobacco into a can. “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” the title track of her Grammy winning 1998 breakthrough, revisited her childhood views from the car’s backseat.
Williams talked about having to go find “switches” as a kid so Mother could spank her. “You’ll think I’m weird now,” she said. “Read my book, y’all.” Then she did “Mama You Sweet,” which earned big applause especially because Williams had to stop in mid-song since her teleprompter malfunctioned before she eventually finished the tune.
The chatty singer, who grew up in several Southern states as her poetry professor father landed at various colleges, talked about how Southerners and Midwesterners, like her Minnesota-reared husband/manager Tom Overby, have a lot in common. Whatever it is, she pointed out that he helps her with her songwriting.
Williams and her four-man band, Buick 6, did a few tunes from the new album, “Stories from a Rock ‘n’ Roll Heart.”
There were quieter numbers like pedal steel guitar-kissed “Jukebox,” about finding solace from loneliness with the corner bar’s record machine, and the mid-tempo, Tom Petty-inspired “Stolen Moments,” about thinking of someone in unexpected places.
There were more energetic efforts like the spooky Doors-evoking blues “This Is Not My Town,” about feeling disconnected, and the Stonesian shuffle “Let’s Get the Band Back Together,” a good metaphor for Williams’ post-stroke comeback.
After saying she’d probably depressed the audience enough, Williams picked up the tempo late in the evening, a move that was hit and miss. “Out of Touch” and “Dust,” raised by Stuart Mathis’ trippy guitar work, worked; however, “Righteously,” her song about lust that was listed at a karaoke bar she visited in Burbank, Calif, did not. Her tone Monday on that tune was more chaste than lustful.
Williams knew some of her numbers like the sloppy-as-a-garage-band “You Can’t Rule Me” were not her best efforts. So, not surprisingly, she offered her own candid review of the performance at night’s end: “It was a little loose, but it was real.” Indeed.