Bonnie Raitt gambles -- and wins
Albany Times Union, 10/19/05
by Greg Haymes
ALBANY -- These days, when veteran pop stars hit the road, they trot out a rather predictable show -- a career retrospective emphasizing their biggest hits and crowd-pleasers while slipping in a song or two from the new album they're touting. The stars know that in a concert situation, familiarity breeds acceptance.
Bonnie Raitt, of course, isn't your typical pop star, and she knows that her fans aren't typical pop fans, either. So she took a big gamble when she grabbed the spotlight for a sold-out concert at the Palace Theatre on Tuesday -- rooting her two-hour performance deeply in the material of "Souls Alike," her new album that's only been in stores for a month. Fortunately, it's a great album.
And Tuesday's two-hour show -- featuring eight of the album's 11 songs -- was a great concert, as Raitt shifted gears effortlessly from slashing, up-tempo bayou blues to lush, heartbreaking ballads. Just two weeks shy of her 56th birthday, the red-headed Raitt is a masterful singer and a dazzling slide guitarist, and she made the most of her talents at the Palace, opening with the New Orleans funk of "Unnecessarily Mercenary" (as a duet with stellar keyboardist Jon Cleary). Two more new songs followed -- the spiritual, but seriously spooky, "God Was in the Water" and the determined "I Will Not Be Broken" -- capturing the spirit and the resilience of New Orleans recently torn asunder by Hurricane Katrina.
Raitt couldn't possibly be as amazingly versatile as she is without a great band, and her current quartet is a killer -- not only Cleary, but also guitarist George Marinelli, drummer Ricky Fataar and longtime bassist Hutch Hutchinson.
Raitt was also helped out by opening act Maia Sharp, a super singer-songwriter -- she co-wrote three of the tunes on Raitt's new album -- and a mega-talented multi-instrumentalist who joined the headliner for a half-dozen tunes, including the mantra of grief-stricken denial "I Don't Want Anything to Change."
An old pal of Raitt's from Woodstock, John Hall -- of the band Orleans -- also dropped in for a scorching version of Sippie Wallace's bawdy blues, "Mighty Tight Woman."
Eventually, Raitt got around to some of her biggest crowd-pleasers, including "Nick of Time" (with Raitt at the piano), "Something to Talk About" and "Love Letter." And her rendition of the heart-wrenching ballad "I Can't Make You Love Me" during the string of encores was as devastating as ever.
"I love this theater," Raitt declared at the start of the show. "I've been playing here since 1975 -- 30 years and counting."
Come back again anytime, Bonnie.
