BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — She gave Birmingham something to talk about.
On Wednesday night, a day after the 10-time Grammy winner turned 73, Bonnie Raitt brought the blues to the Magic City. And she brought a lot more, too.
During the show, Raitt and her band showcased their decades of experience, performing numbers from across the musical spectrum — from Bob Dylan’s “Million Miles” to Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House” — with a funk and fervor made all the more enjoyable by Raitt’s sultry, experienced vocal.
Raitt and her band performed in front of a simple cloud backdrop, but dramatic colored lighting made the staging seem dynamic. For “Nick of Time,” Raitt switched from her guitar (played expertly with a slide) to a keyboard, the clouds behind her shifting to a deep, intimate purple as she sang the story of a woman “scared to run out of time.”
The crowd, which nearly filled the BJCC’s concert hall to capacity, adored Raitt.
“Angel from Montgomery,” one woman yelled from the crowd midway through the concert.
“I already sang that one,” Raitt said as the audience laughed. “Maybe she’s just calling me an angel from Montgomery.”
Early on, Raitt referenced the midterm elections, which — like her birthday — had taken place the day before her Birmingham performance. She was glad she wouldn’t have to see any more political ads on television, she said.
“Imagine what that money could’ve gone to,” Raitt said. “I turned off the TV yesterday. That was my birthday present.”
Still, issues of the day simmered to the surface throughout the night.
For the duration of her performances, a Ukrainian flag sat on stage not far behind Raitt.
“They will need our help for a long time,” Raitt said. “So let’s help take care of them.”
Raitt also emphasized the need to fight to protect the environment, at one point in the concert plugging local advocacy group GASP, the Greater Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution, which tabled in the concert hall’s lobby.
GASP’s executive director Michael Hansen said he grew up in Memphis listening to artists like Bonnie Raitt. Her mention of the advocacy organization, he said, provided the group exposure to folks they may not necessarily have been able to reach without her help.
“I’m over the moon about it,” Hansen said. “She’s a music legend and an advocate for environmental causes, racial justice, and so many things we care about. So being there and knowing she talked about our work from the stage is amazing.
More than once during Wednesday’s show, Raitt spoke about the loss of fellow singer-songwriter John Prine, who died in 2020.
“It was one of the greatest pains of my life,” she said of Prine’s death. Then, with the audience on the edges of their seats, Raitt performed “Angel from Montgomery,” a song Prine had written and she had elevated to the highest of musical heights. Some in the crowd wept.
“It was an honor to sing that in Alabama,” she said.
Prine, she explained, had a way of writing with authenticity from another person’s perspective. It was something she’d always admired. She thought of Prine when she wrote “Just Like That,” she told the crowd.
She’d seen a human interest story on the evening news — “They show those to make up for everything they just told you” — about a mother who went to meet the man who’d received her son’s heart through organ donation. The story moved her. She channeled Prine, she said, and wrote “Just Like That.” BJCC’s concert hall was silent as she sang the ballad.
“I lay my head upon his chest,” she sang. “And I was with my boy again.”
The crowd at the BJCC was most excited, of course, when Raitt sang her hits, including “Let’s Give ‘Em Something to Talk About” and “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” which came as her first encore.
But it was Raitt’s calm, experienced musicality that made Wednesday night’s Birmingham performance special. Whether a blues number, a steady-rocking cover, or a straight-to-the-heart ballad, Raitt’s performances only got better. And that’s something to talk about.
Lee Hedgepeth is a digital investigative reporter at CBS 42.
Lee grew up in Grand Bay, Alabama, a small town in south Mobile County. Lee holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of South Alabama, as well as master’s degrees in journalism and political development from the University of Alabama and Tulane University, respectively.
An experienced political journalist, Lee has worked for outlets including Alabama Political Reporter, Lagniappe Weekly, and the Anniston Star, covering events ranging from impeachments to executions. His work has been cited by outlets like the New York Times and US News and World Report.
Bonnie Raitt - on World Cafe with Raina Douris and Stephen Kallao 10-7-2022
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Bonnie Raitt joins host Raina Douris
Bonnie Raitt has been releasing albums for over half a century. But thanks to something she learned from her father, who was a famous theater actor and singer, when Bonnie’s onstage, she never performs like she’s been doing it for 50 years. But whether she’s singing stories she wrote herself or ones written by other people, Bonnie is a brilliant storyteller. Her new album, Just Like That, is a combination of both. In this session, Bonnie joins me for a wide-ranging conversation about the making of the album, about storytelling, and what it was like getting back on the road for her current tour.
You’ll also find out what kinds of stories and characters Bonnie likes to inhabit the most when performing. And you’ll hear her perform live, songs from Just Like That as well as an old favorite.
Playlist
Bonnie Raitt “Just Like That” Just Like That… Original Broadway Cast “Soliloquy” Carousel Bonnie Raitt “I Can’t Make You Love Me” Luck of the Draw The Isley Brothers “Twist & Shout” Twist & Shout The Rolling Stones “Start Me Up” Tattoo You The Bros. Landreth “Made Up Mind” Let It Lie Bonnie Raitt “Made Up Mind” Recorded Live for the World Café Bonnie Raitt “Love Letter” Recorded Live for the World Café Bonnie Raitt “Love So Strong” Just Like That Bonnie Raitt “Living For The Ones” Recorded Live For The World Café
For more than 30 years, World Cafe has been the place where public radio audiences get their first “before they were famous” look at emerging musicians and connect deeply with legendary performers. A celebrated music tastemaker, World Cafe spans an array of genres including singer-songwriter, classic rock, indie rock, Americana, alt-country, blues, world music, R&B and soul.
World Cafe host Raina Douris and contributing host Kallao present a carefully curated music mix along with the central element of each daily show: an intimate conversation with an artist focusing on their craft, songwriting, and inspirations, combined with an exclusive musical performance.
There is nothing outwardly professorial in appearance or demeanor about Bonnie Raitt and Mavis Staples, whose joint 2022 tour concluded Tuesday night in San Diego with a sold-out concert at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park.
But the vibrant performances by these supremely skilled artists were a master class in musical excellence, emotional fervor and the art of simultaneously entertaining and uplifting an audience.
It was also a life-affirming celebration of blues, gospel, funk, soul, rock and other homegrown American music styles that sizzled and soared, thanks to Raitt, Staples and their superb bands.
And it was a welcome testimonial to the durability and enduring vitality of these two long-acclaimed artists — both are Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees, Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award-winners and unwaveringly devoted social activists.
Early in her set, Raitt pointed out the Ukrainian flag she had draped in solidarity on the stage. At the end of the night, she implored her audience: “Don’t forget to vote!”
Staples, who marched and performed at landmark civil rights events in the 1950s and ‘60s, spoke out against voter suppression, political brinksmanship that treats refugees as pawns, and about the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning a woman’s right to choose.
“We need to get our house in order,” she declared to cheers. “I think I’ll run for president myself. Vote for me!” Later in the evening, Staples earned a high-profile endorsement. “I’d vote for Mavis,” Raitt said.
That neither Raitt nor Staples is the retiring type, literally or figuratively, was handily reaffirmed during their respective performances before a loudly enthusiastic audience of 4,700.
Staples, 83, sang for 50 minutes with her two-woman, three-man band, while Raitt, 72, was on stage for just under 100 minutes with her five-man band. Each clearly relished the opportunity to be back in action, after seeing multiple 2020 and 2021 tour dates fall through because of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown of live events.
“This is our 50th year on the road — those (last) two-and-a-half years of ‘house arrest’ were really rough,” Raitt said, following her fourth selection, “Blame It On Me,” an intensely bluesy new ballad.
“We made it!” Staples exulted after belting out “Handwriting on the Wall.”
Vocal legend Mavis Staples set to fire up San Diego Blues Festival audience
Vocal dynamo Mavis Staples’ musical partners over the years have ranged from Prince, Ray Charles, Arcade Fire and Gorillaz to Mahalia Jackson, George Jones, Van Morrison and Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy.
It was the fourth of the nine selections the diminutive Chicago vocal fireball did during her rousing opening set. She began with “Come Go With Me” and ended with an extended version of “I’ll Take You There,” which featured Staples exuberantly singing charged call-and-response vocal exchanges with the audience and with her band members’ concise instrumental solos.
After mistakenly referring to San Diego as San Francisco, she said teasingly: “I’m old!”
At 83, Staples is — undeniably — a senior citizen and she sometimes glanced at a small screen attached to her microphone stand to help her remember an errant song lyric. But she performed with an ardor that talented vocalists half or a quarter her age would be thrilled to achieve.
Granted, Staples conserved her energy at times. But she did so by design, the better to then unleash a might roar that could make the most secular of listeners contemplate divine inspiration anew. And Staples happily sang Raitt’s praises, at one point joking that she had “adopted” Raitt 40 years ago.
Wonderfully impassioned
In turn, Raitt extolled Staples several times from the stage. Their mutual admiration society made it somewhat surprising that the two opted not to do a song together, as they did on their previous joint tour a decade ago. But that did not detract from the pleasure of hearing them perform separately Tuesday.
Raitt opened her set with “Made Up Mind,” the percolating, midtempo number that kicks off “Just Like That …”, her splendid new album.
She concluded, 15 songs later, with a joyously rocking version of The Fabulous Thunderbirds’ 1981 rave-up, “I Believe I’m in Love With You.” It featured blazing six-string work by Raitt, her two guitarists — George Marinelli and Duke Levine — and Rick Holmstrom, the fleet-fingered guitarist in Staples’ band.
Raitt’s expertly paced set equally showcased her wonderfully impassioned singing and tart guitar work. Depending on the song, she sounded tender and reflective, playful and boisterous, wise or wide-eyed.
She excelled whether gently essaying her haunting ballad, “Nick of Time,” romping through the John Hiatt-penned “No Business,” or exploring new musical terrain on the jazz-funk-fueled “Waiting For You to Blow,” one of five standout songs she performed Tuesday from her latest album.
Just as good was hard-rocking “Livin’ for the Ones,” which boasted one of the best Rolling Stones’ riffs not written by the Stones. Raitt’s lyrics thoughtfully paid tribute to lost loved ones, including her late brother, while also expressing gratitude for being alive.
“ ‘Living for the Ones’ is the one song on my new album that I wrote during the pandemic,” Raitt noted in a Union-Tribune interview earlier this year.
““That’s how I started feeling when I lost my brother in 2009 and he couldn’t walk or see in last six months of his life. Whenever you’re living with somebody who is losing the ability to live, you very quickly stop complaining about your own pains. So I had a lot of practice (for the pandemic).”
Another song from her new album, the exquisite title track of “Just Like That…,” also examined issues of mortality and redemption. But it did so from the perspective of a heart transplant recipient meeting the mother of the dead young man whose heart now beat anew in the transplant recipient’s body.
Raitt’s remarkably tender vocals were delivered with a grace befitting the stirring subject matter. The wordless refrain she sang evoked an age-old Celtic ballad. It was a standout moment, even in a concert that had an ample number of moving moments.
There was also levity, including Raitt’s sly aside that she likes a “big bottom” (her reference was to the low end in her onstage sound mix). She gave fond shout-outs to family members and friends in the audience, as well as to two musical pals who were present — San Diego troubadour Joel Rafael and former Honk and Funky Kings band mainstay Richard Stekol.
Standing Rock benefit a labor of love for Joel Rafael, Jason Mraz, Bonnie Raitt & Jackson Browne
San Diego singer-songwriters Joel Rafael and Jason Mraz have often sung out for causes they support.
Raitt and Staples each performed Tuesday with vigor and a palpable generosity of spirit. They treated their newest and oldest songs as living, breathing vehicles of artistic expression, not rote, paint-by-numbers exercises. They each dug deep to inject fresh verve and welcome musical twists into classics they have performed for decades.
Witness Raitt’s sublime versions of “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and “Angel from Montgomery.” She sang both with an aching tenderness that brought some concertgoers to tears. While she stayed true to the essence of both — the latter written by her longtime friend, John Prine, who succumbed to COVID two years ago — Raitt’s nuanced vocal phrasing and instrumental arrangements added welcome new dimensions to songs she and her fans know inside out.
‘I’ll be back!’
And witness the husky-voiced Staples’ ebullient renditions of “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There,” two gems she first recorded in the early 1970s as a member of her storied family’s gospel-music group, The Staple Singers. She was just 11 when she became a member in 1950.
“I’ve been taking you there for 74 years and I ain’t tired!” Staples proudly declared. “I ain’t going nowhere! I’ll be back!”
Shortly before the conclusion of her set, Raitt pointed to Staples as a role model for longevity, saying: “If Mavis can do it at 83 …”
Messages from James “Hutch” Hutchinson (brbassman)
(A public service message to the four concertgoers seated directly to the right of table 1517 in the Bayview section Tuesday night: The fact that Bonnie Raitt performed “Something to Talk About” was not an invitation for you to loudly yammer as she sang it. Then again, your blabbing almost non-stop throughout the concert indicates you had plenty to talk about, no matter how rude or distracting your high-decibel chatter fest was to other attendees.)
San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first-prize winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”
Bandana Blues is and will always be a labor of love. Please help Spinner deal with the costs of hosting & bandwidth. Visit www.bandanablues.com and hit the tipjar. Any amount is much appreciated, no matter how small. Thank you.
Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine, Vol. 2, the anticipated new John Prine tribute record from Oh Boy Records, is out today. Stream/purchase HERE.
Created as a celebration of Prine’s life and career, the album features new renditions of some of Prine’s most beloved songs performed by Brandi Carlile (“I Remember Everything”), Tyler Childers (“Yes I Guess They Oughta Name A Drink After You”), Iris DeMent (“One Red Rose”), Emmylou Harris (“Hello In There”), Jason Isbell (“Souvenirs”), Valerie June (“Summer’s End”), Margo Price (“Sweet Revenge”), Bonnie Raitt (“Angel From Montgomery”), Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats (“Pretty Good”), Amanda Shires (“Saddle in the Rain”), Sturgill Simpson(“Paradise”) and John Paul White (“Sam Stone”). Proceeds from the album will benefit twelve different non-profit organizations, one selected by each of the featured artists.
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Bonnie Raitt - Write Me a Few of Your Lines/Kokomo Blues
60 years anniversary celebration of Arhoolie
December 10, 2020
Arhoolie Foundation celebrates it's 60th anniversary (1960-2020) with an online broadcast.
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Bonnie Raitt - Shadow of Doubt
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival
October 3, 2020
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass celebrates it's 20th anniversary with an online broadcast titled “Let The Music Play On”.
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Bonnie Raitt & Boz Scaggs - You Don't Know Like I Know
Farm Aid 2020 On the Road
Sam & Dave classic written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter.
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Sheryl Crow & Bonnie Raitt - Everything Is Broken
[Eric Clapton’s Crossroads 2019]
Eric Clapton, one of the world’s pre-eminent blues/rock guitarists, once again summoned an all-star team of six-string heroes for his fifth Crossroads Guitar Festival in 2019. Held at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas, the two-day concert event raised funds for the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, the chemical dependency treatment and education facility that Clapton founded in 1998.
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'A Tribute To Mose Allison'
Celebrates The Music Of An Exciting Jazz Master
Raitt contributed to a new album, If You're Going To The City: A Tribute To Mose Allison, which celebrates the late singer and pianist, who famously blended the rough-edged blues of the Mississippi Delta with the 1950s jazz of New York City.
NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks to Bonnie Raitt about her friendship with the Mose Allison. They're also joined by Amy Allison — his daughter, who executive produced the album — about selecting an unexpected list of artists to contribute songs to the album.
Recorded on tour June 3, 2017 - Centennial Hall, London - Ontario Canada