Hot Summer Nights

August 14. It was a hot and sunny Sunday, the kind of hot hot heat that's really...hot. The kind of heat that turns the sky white. The kind of heat that stews you in your own sweat. The kind of heat in which blinking is almost too much work. The kind of heat that - well, you get the picture. In spite of the heat, the Mr. and I put on our best blue jeans and ventured to Knoxville to see Lucinda Williams. And eat. And drink.

First stop was the Preservation Pub, which normally orders food in from the Tomato Head if you want to eat. On this night, there was a Christian concert out on Market Square and only one bartender, so no ordering in. We refreshed ourselves and sought out another restaurant. The only other one open was incredibly packed with fellow concertgoers. Does everybody have to copy me????? We waited forever, but with drinks! Finally, we ate. As quickly as possible, a dash to the bathroom and out the door to the Tennessee Theatre.

Late as usual. Ran downstairs for beer. Ran back upstairs for ID armband. Got beer, found seats while Rob Jungklas played some dirty white boy blues.

Then Lucinda. The Tennessee Theatre is recently renovated, and while I think it is absolutely beautiful, something about Lucinda's voice amped up the bordello chic. I'd never noticed how much RED there is in the decor. And gold.

Lucinda knows something about that angel/whore archetype. If she's not wanting to Get Right With God, she's begging for someone to 'shoot [their] love into my vein.' Her voice, like John Prine's or Bob Dylan's, you either love or hate; it's impossible to be indifferent to it. It's powerful caterwauling, the perfect complement to the raw emotion her music captures. She's fearless in her writing. Brutally honest, brutally frank, she strips herself down to the bone lyrically. That said, she's curiously detached onstage - the cowboy hat stayed over her eyes and while she was chatty with the audience, the so-called fourth wall was certainly in place. I suppose when you open yourself up that much in your writing, you need to step back to perform it. Otherwise, the first three rows get covered in blood and tears.

It was a good show. Fanboys stole the unclaimed fifth row seats in front of me. She had some new songs to try out. Jailhouse Tears is gonna be a great duet - personally, I hear George Jones there. Unsuffer Me was one of those songs that fill the silence - the silence after your lover walks out, the silence after a friend has died. Where Is My Love was haunting, kind of like Are You Down. I was hoping for Greenville (and god help me, I shouted it out more than once) or Jackson. I got Essence, Ventura, a vicious Joy, and Lonely Girls, amongst lots of others. She told a story about writing one of her songs in Knoxville on New Year's Day a while back - for the life of me, I can't remember which one, so if you know, tell! For two and a half hours, she whispered and wailed and rocked and moaned. Kept me up way past my bedtime, but it was worth every minute of lost sleep.