Here are some articles & reviews of Lucinda's shows in July & August.  She is taking a break before resuming touring on September 7 with Ron Sexmith opening.

Published: Friday, July 20, 2001 – TwinCities.com

You can take the rest -- just leave me Lucinda
JIM WALSH

You can have whatever was going on Tuesday night at the local arenas, but I get Lucinda Williams at First Avenue.
You can have your luxury boxes/funeral parlors, but I get the feeling of standing in the middle of a drenched, dripping sold-out crowd of 1,500 whom Lucinda and her band made love to for two glorious hours.

You can have SPIN and Rolling Stone and their industry boot-licking irrelevance, and I’ll take middle-of-the-night e-mails and chat rooms and Time magazine, which put Lucinda on the cover last week and called her “America’s best songwriter.”

You can have your too-quick-to-smile-and-please lost souls of the entertainment universe, and I will take Lucinda, who didn’t smile through the first four songs Tuesday night, but when she did, she meant it.

You can have your angst rock, death rap and superficial pop, but I get Lucinda singing blankly, sarcastically, “We’re out of touch, yeah/We’re out of touch, yeah.”

You can have your demographic studies and divisive radio formats, but I get a sexy Delta schoolmarm reminding everyone in the house that “blues is where hip-hop and rap and all that came from.”

You can have your air-conditioned arena antiseptia, but I get Lucinda saying, “It’s kind of tribal in here,” and “I feel like I’m in Mississippi tonight,” and “You people are tough,” and the feeling of wanting to try public nudity.
You can have all the video vixens, VJs, and V(iagra)H1, but I get Lucinda saying, as the introduction to “Bus to Baton Rouge” uncoiled like a stoned rattlesnake, with drums and bass going this way, guitars going that way, and Lucinda’s hips going both ways, “You gotta go slow. You gotta get that groove. That could apply to a lot of things in life.”

You can have all the video vixens, VJs, and ViagraH1, but I get Lucinda saying, as the introduction to “Bus To Baton Rouge'' uncoiled like a stoned rattlesnake, with drums and bass going this way, guitars going that way, and Lucinda's hips going both ways, “You gotta go slow. You gotta get that groove. That could apply to a lot of things in life.''

You can have all these little girls half-naked and desperate on the cover of their CDs, but I get Lucinda in her black lace top, cowboy hat, aqua leather pants with matching massive eyeshadow doing the puppy grind to her masturbation tribute “Right In Time,'' and the sight of her flirting with her guitar tech, whom she semi-straddled almost everytime he handed her a guitar or draped a guitar strap over her shoulder.

You can have the most perfectly choreographed dance team, but I get the men and women writhing together on the First Avenue floor between me and Lucinda.

You can have that song, “Blue,'' a song about depression that, when it ended, I saw something I've never seen in a club before: The young woman next to me turned and looked at me and we both had tears in our eyes. You can call me a hack if you want to, or reach for your barf bag if you must, but that really happened, and you can’t take it away from us.

You can have your canned between-song patter, but I get Lucinda, who recorded her latest album in Minneapolis at Mastermix Studios with Tom Tucker co-producing, saying stuff like, “I am humbled,” and, “Minneapolis is the coolest city in the world. Y’all live here in the winter, and the summer. And it’s cold here. Y’all are committed to it. That’s loyal love.”

You could dismiss that as being sentimental pap from a showwoman plying the hometown crowd, but you’d be wrong.

You can have the entertainment monstrosity going up across the street from First Avenue, but I get Lucinda reminding everyone not to forget Koerner, Ray and Glover, and the cathartic “Drunken Angel,” which she said she wrote about a fallen musician friend but which has since evolved into an elegy for Townes Van Zandt and Kurt Cobain, and “2 Kool 2 Be Forgotten,” which she dedicated to Joey Ramone.

You can have all the pyrotechnics and special effects and semi-trailers in the world, but I get the bubbles somebody brought and started blowing up at the stage during “Lonely Girls,” and the slow-motion wax dripping off the candles that framed the stage.

You can have any break-up song playing on the radio at the moment, but I get Lucinda singing, “All I ask is don’t tell anybody the secrets I told you.”

You can have anything you want, but I get “Changed the Locks,” and the what-if-our-bus-blows-up-tonight guitar warfare of Lucinda Williams and the Tall Band. You can have the hired guns, the studio musicians, the pros and the players, and I will take the group chemistry of Lucinda Williams and the Tall Band.

You can have every other band that played in every honky-tonk, club, arena, bowling alley, dive or temple Tuesday, but I get Lucinda Williams and the Tall Band at First Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on a night that was hot and humid and 2 cool 2 be forgotten . . .

On July 30, Lucinda played at the House of Blues in West Hollywood:

Williams quartet erases humiliations
By Fred Shuster
Los Angeles Daily News Saturday, August 04, 2001

WEST HOLLYWOOD — Lucinda Williams already had two strikes against her before ambling coolly on stage recently at a sweltering House of Blues wearing a white Stetson and black leather jacket.

First, she arrived 45 minutes past the advertised time, which meant the crowd had been standing shoulder-to-shoulder emitting so much steam there was danger of rain.

Then there was the insufferable introduction inflicted by a nameless radio personality who rambled on about the Louisiana-bred country-rock singer-songwriter's music and lyrics as if the audience jammed into the poorly ventilated West Hollywood venue hadn't the slightest notion who was headlining.

It didn't take long, though, for Williams and her superb quartet to erase these humiliations. Opening with a restrained but rocking "Metal Firecracker" from her 1998 Grammy-winning breakthrough album, "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," Williams dispelled any lingering bad vibes with a tight, perfectly paced set of rootsy old favorites and extraordinary new tunes.

Williams is a class act with a casually sardonic stage manner that makes everyone feel included. She's also one of the best songwriters working, and numbers like the title track of "Essence," her recently issued sixth album, are as compelling as such decade-old gems as "Sweet Old World" and "Side of the Road."

Before moving on to the striking recent numbers "Reason to Cry" and "Lonely Girls," Williams gave a sensual reading of the gorgeous "Right in Time" from "Car Wheels," her weathered twang craggy and conversational.
Somehow, the 48-year-old Williams had the normally talkative House of Blues crowd quiet, perhaps because her band, anchored by excellent bassist Taras Prodaniuk, kept the volume low, forcing concentration and curtailing chat.

Among the night's most riveting moments came with "Essence," a rocky six-minute masterpiece with a haunting melody that makes you want to come back for more.

Great stuff. But next time, Lucinda, play the Wiltern.

Here is an e-mail I received from a fan in San Diego:

From: Ciaran Cronin
Subject: Lucinda in San Diego on August 2, 2001

Hi Barry
I look to your web pages as a source of info about Lucinda Williams - thanks for maintaining it.
I thought you might be interested in some notes about Lucinda's show here in San Diego on the 2 August 2001. First here's the setlist:

1. Metal Firecracker
2. Carwheels On A Gravel Road
3. Right In Time
4. Blue
5. Reason To Cry
6. Are You Down

Band Introductions

7. 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten
8. Out Of Touch
9. Drunken Angel
10. Changed The Locks
11. Essence
12. Joy

Encore:

13. Big Road Blues
14. Get Right With God

Encore 2:

15. Lonely Girls
16. Bus To Baton Rouge
17. Lake Charles
18. Come To Me Baby (Chester Burnett)

Encore 3:

19. Side Of The Road
20. Greenville1
21. Crescent City
22. Concrete And Barbed Wire

Encore 4:

23. Broken Butterflies
24. I Envy The Wind

As you can see, the number of encores was unusually long. The show lasted about 2 1/2 hours. Lucinda remarked that the sound system was particularly good at the venue ("4th and B") and was the main reason the set was so long, and that she was enjoying playing with the band. The line-up was:

Lucinda Williams - vocals/acoustic and electric guitar
Jim Lauderdale - harmony vocals
Doug Pettybone - electric guitar/electric mandolin/steel guitar
Bo Ramsay - electric guitar
Taras Prodaniuk - bass
Don Heffington - drums

Jim Lauderdale lended support vocals during some of the encore songs only. She sang a fine version of "Broken Butterflies" as the penultimate song, which was superior to the album version in my opinion for pure committment. The show was taped for a future radio broadcast.

I don't know the writer of "Big Road Blues" - if you know I'd appreciate learning who it is. [Ed. Tommy Johnson]
Cheers
Ciaran Cronin

Here is the review of the Denver, Colorado gig:
 
Lucinda Williams gives stellar, if subdued, concert
By John Moore
Denver Post Staff Writer

Thursday, August 09, 2001 - For years, Louisiana-bred songwriter Lucinda Williams has refused to be pigeonholed. Is she alt-country? Folk? Rock? Pop?

Denver Post/Heather Ainsworth

By the end of Tuesday's concert at the Fillmore Auditorium, which simmered slowly and finally cooked to a boil, Williams proved she ain't nothing but the blues, baby.

Swaying alone to the seductive blues of guitarist Bo Ramsey ("Come to Me, Baby"), oblivious to the six good old boys surrounding her onstage and a crowd of 1,500, Williams looked like the last person left dancing in front of the jukebox at closing time inany of a thousand smoky saloons. Williams has proven over the years she can hold her own in either place.

It was a triumphant end to a subdued but stellar performance, during which she gradually seduced the audience with her haunting melodies and disarmingly honest confessional songs. Williams has lived a hard life, been hurt and made her share of mistakes. They are chronicled throughout her discography:

"I changed the number on my phone so you can't call me up at home. And you can't say those things to me that make me fall down on my knees."

Williams was recently proclaimed America's best songwriter by Time magazine, even though she has made only six records in 22 years and has had just two radio hits ("Passionate Kisses" and "Can't Let Go"), neither of which she performs live. But she has repeatedly taken her own gravel road, much to the consternation of the record industry, and at times, her own fans. To love Lucinda, you must also love that she answers to no one.

Williams took to the stage looking more like a young Deborah Harry, with platinum blond hair, form-fitting leather pants, a sleeveless top and a sparkling necklace. But as soon as she opened her world-weary eyes and her versatile, powerfully textured voice, it was clear that 48 years of ups and downs have gone into every vocal nuance.

Her 100-minute, 17-song set came almost exclusively from her two latest records, "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," which went gold and earned a Grammy, and the new "Essence," a more sparse and impressionistic effort.
She opened with "Metal Firecracker," "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" and "Right in Time," all from her 1998 landmark record, before shifting downward for three powerfully soft new songs, "Blue," "Reason to Cry," and "Are You Down?" the last of which captures perfectly her hard-earned conclusion that what's done is done:
"Can't put the rain back in the sky once it falls down ... Can't force the river upstream when it goes south."'

Williams was genial but somber onstage, and not as talkative as usual. Ironically, it was when she began dedicating songs to her favorite dead musicians that the pace picked up. "2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten" was sung for punk pioneer Joey Ramone. "Drunken Angel" (written after what she called the senseless death of Austin, Texas, songwriter Blaze Foley, who was murdered protecting an elderly friend's pension checks) "could just easily be for Townes Van Zandt or Kurt Cobain," she said. Her first encore, a passionate blues improv with Ramsey, was devoted to John Lee Hooker.

A crowd favorite was the last song of the first encore, "Get Right With God," the lone uptempo song on "Essence." But the high point of the night was "Come to Me, Baby."

Some left grumbling that Williams denied fans her two most popular songs. But seeing her drifting like a chanteuse during "Come to Me Baby" must have done them a world of good. Alone with the blues, for the first time all night she was smiling without looking the least bit sad.

Lucinda played The Backyard in Austin on August 11.  The following article appeared in the Austin Chronicle prior to that gig:
 
Lucinda Williams Bares All!
Spit Out the Seeds
BY MARGARET MOSER
Austin Chronicle, August 10, 2001

Lovely Lu at the Austin Music Awards, 2001
photo by John Carrico

She likes the Moody Blues and champions Sade. Some of her fans listen to N'Sync. Her own songs are so emotionally charged they make her cry. This is Lucinda Williams, Time magazine's Best Songwriter in America? You betcha.

With Essence, another critically acclaimed LP under her silver-and-leather belt, the current Nashville dweller is shouldering a heavy touring schedule that includes this Saturday's gig in her former hometown. Two days after playing The Tonight Show, Williams called from Phoenix to play catch-up.

Austin Chronicle: Your songs are so personal. Do people know you if they know your music?
Lucinda Williams: I don't think so, I'm not sure how I'm portrayed through them. It would be interesting to know how they do see me.

AC: Mandy Mercier and I both know you well, so we're often approached by fans wanting to know what you're like. The question I get asked most is, how's your sex life?
LW: [Laughing] Really? With this record, there seems to be a lot more attention paid to that. In The New York Times, the reviewer called me a sex symbol for the intellectual crowd. One guy in Europe said it sounded like I was lying in bed with the microphone when I recorded Essence. Another guy there said, "You sound pretty heated up, this is a horny record." They're a lot looser over there in Europe, you know.

AC: Sexuality is such an up-front part of your songs, and for those of us well past the first rush of hormones and humping, it's a gratifying portrayal.
LW: Yay! I am glad I am doing that! I grew up in an interesting household. There was family tradition and a politically liberal environment, a fairly feminist kind of upbringing. I wasn't brought up to get married and have babies, I was brought up to pick a career.

AC: Did you get that from your mother or father?
LW: My mom didn't pursue music professionally, but it's a combination of them both. There was a lot of interchange and discussion. Sexuality was talked about in an open, healthy way. Certainly it came from my stepmother too. She was younger and brought in a different dynamic.

AC: I remember seeing a collage you did as a teenager, in which you had cut out pictures from magazines. Sex seemed to be the dominant theme.
LW: That's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I still have that collage, which is a real testament to the way I grew up. I had a lot of creative freedom growing up. I collaged the bathroom at my parents house when I was home for summer one year. That's how much free time I had back then.

AC: Was sexuality a theme in that collage too?
LW: Big time! Naked women from Playboy mixed with political figures of the day, pictures of the Beatles and demonstrations, peace symbols, anti-war images -- just a collage of the times. There was no hint of "I can't put that on there," no censorship. I learned early on I didn't have to censor myself.

This makes me think of stuff I haven't realized had a lot to do with how I grew as a writer and how I approach my own art. I approach my music like art. Like any real artist, you don't censor yourself. I grew up around poetry, and you can't censor yourself writing poetry, whether it's a cat sleeping in the window or a wreck you saw on the highway or sex. It's part of life. That's the outlook I grew up with.

AC: Did you write poetry when you were young?
LW: I didn't really get into it. I dabbled and read, but I just didn't go in that direction. It's really a different craft. [Pauses] My dad and I kinda get up about it; he doesn't like songs, and I don't like poetry.

AC: Does he critique your lyrics?
LW: If he thinks a line doesn't work or doesn't make sense, he'll tell me and tell me why. That's how I learn. I show him everything, it's like having a built-in creative writing class. Over the years, he's had to tell me less and less, and that's how I knew I was getting better. Everyone needs a mentor who's better than they are, otherwise it's just you and your art. You need some sort of gauge, and I was fortunate.

AC: How do you stay sane during the touring?
LW: I bring all my mail with me and do correspondence. I'm a big letter writer, and I love greeting cards. I bring all my favorite music. I have my own private bus now. and it's made all the difference in the world. Just my tour manager and me, my home on wheels. I've got an actual bedroom where I sit and listen to music and write letters.

AC: What are you listening to right now?
LW: I have different kinds of music for different times of day. In the morning I like Judy Collins' Wildflowers and Jackson Browne's Saturate Before Using. Then any Nick Drake or Kate Wolf or Sandy Denny. I've really been into Brazilian music lately -- Antonio Carlos Jobim, Astrud Gilberto, and Virginia Rodriguez -- and I love Sade's new CD, Lover's Rock. A lot of people underestimate the content of her music. Some of her music is very serious political statement about poverty.

AC: Any guilty pleasures?
LW: Not really. The Moody Blues, maybe. A lot of people go, "Moody Blues!", but I like them. Quicksilver Messenger Service and It's a Beautiful Day. ZZ Top always, I love their stuff.

AC: You'll carry around a half-written song for a long time, won't you?
LW: Yeah, "Baton Rouge" was like that -- an idea I had years and years ago.

AC: That song struck me as more of a Car Wheels song than part of Essence.
LW: It was written before Car Wheels. I had some of the lyrics as far back as 10 years ago. Like I first wrote "Out of Touch" in 1981 when I moved back to Austin with Clyde. I have it on an old demo tape that far back. It went through all these different incarnations and rewrites. I was almost going to put it on Car Wheels, but I'm glad I didn't.

AC: When I first heard "Out of Touch," I interpreted it as a soundtrack for meeting an old love. Another reviewer said it was about Gurf Morlix.
LW: I wasn't thinking about the ex-lover thing as much as the plight of the human condition. That awkwardness, being out of touch. The ones I wrote about Gurf were "Reason to Cry" and "Broken Butterflies." That anger ...
I tell you I don't know where that song came from, completely out of my subconscious. Sometimes when I get these things it's in a dreamlike state. "Swallow the manna from heaven and spit out the seeds." What the fuck was that about? I don't know how I came up with that! I remember using the Biblical imagery, getting [ex-boyfriend] Richard [Price] to help me because he knew the Bible. I was using Biblical characters to define what I was trying to get across.

"Broken Butterflies" was the last song I wrote for Essence [and the LP's original title], and it all fell together in that flurry of writing. I sang it for the first time live last night, and I swear to God I got offstage and broke down. I started sobbing. Something happened, singing it live like that -- the band played real sparsely and it was just --

AC: Cathartic?
LW: Yes. It felt very spiritual.

AC: Besides sexuality, catharsis is one of your underlying themes. Is it in fact good therapy to write through the bad times?
LW: Oh yes! I know when I've hit on something because when I'm writing, I'll start crying. With "Lake Charles" I did that. Every time I sang it, I would cry. It took me back to that place. I wrote a song for my sister that didn't end up on the record, and I sobbed like a baby through it, because it was about her illness and how much I love her. She's been really sick with pancreatitis. It's a serious illness with no cure, and it's been debilitating for her.
But yes, it's very cathartic, and I think that's what people pick up on. It's interesting to meet the different artists who like your music, like Joey Ramone. I did a Writers in the Round with him at the Bottom Line. He produced a record with Ronnie Spector and asked me for songs for her to sing, just a couple years ago before he got so sick. He sent me a tape of a song he started and wanted me to work on.

AC: You're very fortunate to have an intelligent older audience, although you seem to hit well with the younger crowd too.
LW: My audience is real mixed. It's the really young kids getting into it that I like. They don't understand it anymore than I did Bob Dylan at age 12, but I was still drawn to his music. It was that powerful. Maybe it's the simplicity of the melodies.

A couple sent me a tape of their 11-year-old daughter, just learning to play guitar, and she'd learned all my songs and recorded them. It touched me so much I cried. It reminded me of me. She was just a year younger than I was when I started playing guitar and learning Dylan songs. And to hear this 11-year-old sing "Changed the Locks" and "Drunken Angel" with her little girl voice and imperfect phrasing was so endearing.

Some kids came up to me after a festival I played recently. They were about 6, 7, and 10, and I asked them what music they listened to. "N'Sync," they said. "You, them, and me?" I thought that was just adorable.

Lucinda Williams plays the Backyard Saturday, Aug. 11. Jim Lauderdale opens.

Here is a review of Lucinda's gig in Houston, which was the very next night after Austin:

Aug. 14, 2001, 1:29AM
MUSIC REVIEW
Williams in fine form in concert at Aerial
By MICHAEL D. CLARK
Copyright 2001 Houston Chronicle

"I loved Loretta Lynn and Hank Williams, but also Bob Dylan and the Doors and Jimi Hendrix. I don't see anything wrong with loving all kinds of music."
-- Lucinda Williams, from the biographical/history page on www.lucindawilliams.com.

Men, corporate record labels, consumers ... they all keep taking Lucinda Williams' joy, but every couple of years she returns to take it back.

Through two decades of songwriting, Williams has drowned her sorrows in notes borrowed from Bob Dylan and Townes Van Zandt, basking in the artistic glow of being emotionally bereft. On the recently released Essence, however, she has devised a new therapy for a broken heart: sex appeal and perseverance.

The Williams who showed up Sunday night at the Aerial Theater was a changed woman from the dowdy one who won a best contemporary folk Grammy for her last album, 1998's Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Her makeover was illustrated with form-fitting leather pants and doused with a shock of ratted, bottle-blond, metal-chick hair.
The transformation is not just physical. Throughout a 15-song, 95-minute set, Williams offered flashes of the familiar hopeless troubadour. She would quickly cut it with the shoulder shake of a more confident, content woman who finds it possible -- yet still painful -- to move on from heartbreak.

With alluring three-pronged candelabra burning on each side of the stage, the opening moments of the performance looked set for the new album, Essence. Instead, Williams warmed the crowd with a trio of weepers from Car Wheels.

Metal Firecracker burned with the kickback exhaust of the beloved motor home referred to in the title. The elastic mandolin and tom-tom beat of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road was a prelude to the construction of flat notes that formed Right in Time. As a trilogy, the songs are about physically and emotionally hitting the bricks.

By comparison, the song stream of Essence is a more dignified depression. When Williams utters that "blue is the color of life" against the gentle strum of her acoustic guitar in Blue, it stirs up images of sophisticate Joni Mitchell or cool Miles Davis.

Williams is a Lake Charles, La., native, but has learned the tunes of Texas well in her adult residency in the state (including a stay in Houston in the '70s). Reason to Cry is weary in a Patsy Cline sort of way, but first and foremost is pure Lone Star country. It's one of the few songs from Essence that would feel at home on the Car Wheels set.
Her set started gathering modern steam when guitarists Doug Pettibone and Bo Ramsey upped the tempo on the Tom Petty gator-rock of Out of Touch. She followed it shortly after with Changed the Locks, a tune Petty covered for the She's the One soundtrack in 1996. These two were the only songs from her first four albums in the set.
It's hard to know exactly when the show stretched beyond the boundaries of what most live performances offer. For some it might have been Drunken Angel, a misty ballad originally written about the senseless death of Austin songwriter Blaze Foley that Williams now extends to Van Zandt and Kurt Cobain.

For others it was Joy, which found Williams hitting a beautiful Emmylou Harris flutter, only to follow it with a gin-soaked Janis Joplin rasp.

For me, it was the two-guitar assault between her and Ramsey for an encore Delta blues jam on Down the Big Road Blues.

The collection of them all made up a gratifying snapshot of Williams' essence.

Songwriter Jim Lauderdale's opening set offered a different interpretation of alt-country. Adhering to his vast songwriting spectrum, which has found him penning folk confessionals for Kathy Mattea, bluegrass for Ralph Stanley and compositions covering all points in between, Lauderdale switched genres in four-minute intervals.
Always on the Outside was country-swamp rock amplified just enough to parallel John Fogerty's early post-Creedence Clearwater Revival singles like The Old Man Down the Road. And when he closed by rocking out, rebelliously howling, "I need a girl like that like I need a hole in the head," he made the Killer, Jerry Lee Lewis, proud. Even Williams, an originator of such postmortem sentiments, had to be envious that song wasn't hers.

After Houston, Wichita, Kansas was the next stop:

Country rocker Lucinda Williams casts powerful spell at Orpheum
By Chris Shull
The Wichita Eagle , August 16, 2001

Lucinda Williams is powerful in a quiet kind of way. She is strong but not boisterous, open but not naive, angry but never out of control.

Her music is a striking amalgam of hard country and contemporary folk and good old rock 'n' roll; her lyrics are stunning in their simplicity, directness and honesty.

Williams delivered a knockout performance on Tuesday night at the Orpheum, not so much rocking the house as casting a poignant spell.

The singer-songwriter and her four-piece backing band were masters of the slow boil on Tuesday. "Out of Touch" built from a whisper to a screaming twang, the guitar heightening the tension with taut, one-note filler that was heady in its directness.

A spare, moody atmosphere was created on "Blue" from her latest CD "Essence" -- Williams' wonderfully sad lyrics parting wafting curtains of guitar and steel guitar.

Williams also drew from her breakthrough CD "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," delivering the title song with an edge that at times growled like a passing hot rod.

Much of Williams' power in songwriting comes from the way her descriptions of everyday events are somehow transformed into the transitional. In "Car Wheels," "Right in Time" and "Too Cool to Be Forgotten," her lyrics read like lists that become manifests of life's journey.

Her remembrances of lost places and long-gone lovers are never painted in the soft hues of nostalgia. Her songs ring with hardness and strength; they convey the clear-eyed convictions earned, not by avoiding confrontation and heartbreak, but by confronting it head-on.

The bent and folded straw cowboy hat scrunched on her head was not affectation. "Reason to Cry" scooted along with a comfortable twang, but it is Williams' distinctive take on the classic-country narrative that kept her audience rapt on Tuesday.

Singer-songwriter Jim Lauderdale has a unique take on Nashville country, too, and his opening solo set was filled with songs of hard-luck lovin' that often took a wry lyrical twist.

Songs such as "You'll Know When It's Right" and "If I Were You" are sublimely crafted, but their strengths would have been better conveyed with a full backing band to create the honky-tonk mood.

The last regular show of this leg of the tour was in Kansas City on Aug. 16.  Lucinda did a record industry showcase in Boulder, Colorado two days later on August 18.  Here is the review of the Kansas City gig:

CONCERT REVIEW:
Williams was a joy, but song list could have been much better
By TIMOTHY FINN
The Kansas City Star
Published: Friday, Aug 17, 2001

The good news was that Thursday's performance at the Uptown Theater was the final show of a five-week tour, so Lucinda Williams and her band were in the mood to celebrate and add a few extra tunes to the agenda. Thus the four encores, which meant the show ended just before midnight and way past the two-hour mark.

The rest of the news, though, was bit mixed. Williams sounded great, especially on her signature gutbucket blues anthems like "Joy," "Change the Locks" and "Can't Let Go"; and her band was superb, especially guitarist Bo Ramsey, who can resemble everyone from Mark Knopfler to Elmore James, depending on what song he's embellishing or embroidering.

And for the most part, the sound was fine in this cavernous theater, although throughout the show the drums sounded distant, as if they were coming from the next room.

But if they'd handed out set lists before the show and revealed that Williams would play nothing from "Sweet Old World," her best album, or only "Change the Locks," from "Lucinda Williams," her breakthrough record, you can bet a chunk of the crowd would have been disappointed.

Instead, she focused almost entirely on her two most recent albums. She opened with three songs from "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," the Grammy-winning record that made her nearly as rich as she had been famous among critics and a large cult of Americana fans who'd been digging her music for many years. They were the poppy love tune "Metal Firecracker," "Car Wheels" and then "Right in Time," the most erogenous love ballad this side of Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby."

From there the set list jumped back and forth between "Car Wheels" and her new record, "Essence," which accented only a few of the similarities between the two albums. "Blue," a depressive ballad about solitude and alienation, sounded especially luminous; and Ramsey colored "Reason to Cry" with some elegant guitar licks.
Shortly after that, Williams dedicated "2 Kool to Be 4 Gotten," a soft country-blues ballad, to the late Joey Ramone, and after a version of "Joy" that was as potent as bootleg gin, she dedicated "Drunken Angel" to three long-gone songwriters: Blaze Foley, Townes Van Zandt and Kurt Cobain.

She followed that with "Get Right With God," a visceral blast of electric blues and then the title track from "Essence," which finally prompted the crowd in front to rise from the excruciatingly uncomfortable plastic-folding chairs and sway with the music.

The show ended with four encores, including a long cover of a Howlin' Wolf song -- by then Ramsey's impressive tricks were becoming redundant -- and two of her radiant country blues ballads, "Lake Charles" and "Bus to Baton Rouge," that neither altered the mood nor delivered a big treat (which a cut like "Sweet Old World" would have done).

It's tough to complain about the set list on a night when the performance was so good, but it reminds me of what an economics professor at Mizzou used to preach: "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative," meaning the real expense of any transaction was whatever the other options were. So when Williams spent this evening solely on the best parts of her past two albums, the real expense was the better parts of her illustrious past, which wasn't a great bargain.

The next portion of the tour starts on September 7 in Philadelphia.  The day before that, Sep. 6, Lucinda is scheduled to appear on the Charlie Rose PBS show.

UPCOMING CDs with LUCINDA

BLACK AND BLUE AMERICA - Chip Taylor (Train Wreck) – “Could I Live With This”; “The Ship”
POET: A TRIBUTE TO TOWNES VAN ZANDT – Sep. 9 release – Lucinda sings “Nothin’”
TIMELESS - Hank Williams Tribute (Lost Highway) – Sep. 25 - Lucinda sings “Cold Cold Heart”
CLINCH MOUNTAIN SWEETHEARTS –Ralph Stanley (Rebel) – Sep. 25 release
BRICKWALLS & BARRICADES – Kasey Chambers – Nov. 6 release
Greg Brown Tribute (Red House)