Bonnie Raitt at Vicar Street: a healing night of welcome warmth and real soul

Bonnie Raitt
Vicar Street
★★★★☆

“Ireland in any weather is beautiful to me.” Bonnie Raitt is telling Vicar Street about the nine-day break she took here, surrounded by sheep, before playing Belfast on Sunday night. The rest surely did her good because she’s in rare form tonight.

She hits an early highlight with the rattling, barrelhouse groove of Thing Called Love, a song originally on John Hiatt’s Bring The Family. That album featured the slide guitar of Ry Cooder but even he’d have to bow to Raitt’s playing as she tosses off an effortless swamp porch solo, knife blade sharp and smooth as molasses, from the battered Stratocaster she apparently bought for $120 back in 1969. And she’s got that voice to go with it.

Take Mabel John’s 1966 classic Your Good Thing (Is About To End). Raitt, brimming over with pleading soul, stretches out vowels, holds notes until her vibrato is on the verge of cracking, and when that voice has finally had enough of the uncaring man in the lyric, her slide guitar takes over to show him the door.

An almost supernaturally intuitive interpreter of songs, Raitt delivers an achingly beautiful take on Richard Thompson’s Dimming Of The Day, a called-for Angel Of Montgomery by John Prine (“Nobody cut through like John”), and twists Dylan’s Million Miles inside out with a glint in her eye as she implores her baby to “rock me for a couple of months”. Then she bests them all by bringing the house to its feet with the encore’s I Can’t Make You Love Me, a tale of broken love familiar to every knocked-about heart.

Raitt makes several bows to old friend Paul Brady, in the audience having the same good time as the rest of us. First she claims she’s nervous with him watching, then declares it an honour. When asked to sit in he allegedly replied, “You can’t afford me,” but with the greatest respect to the man from Strabane, she doesn’t need him as she commandeers his Not The Only One and Steal Your Heart Away, making them her own.

Raitt calls her show ‘a healing experience in this suffering, hard-assed world’ and that’s what it is

But Raitt also knows how to write a song. Nick Of Time, the title track from the 1989 album that finally made her an overnight success 18 years after her debut, is one thing with its great lyric about getting on a bit (“Those lines are pretty hard to take when they’re staring back at you”). Just Like That is something else entirely.

To the surprise of many, including the other nominees and Raitt herself, she won the Grammy for Song Of The Year with it a few years back but the judges were right, for once. A woman who lost her son is visited by the man who lives on thanks to her child’s transplanted heart. It’s moving on record but it’s devastating live. In that inexplicable way a song you’ve heard before can sneak back up on you, Raitt gets to the line where she lays her head on his chest and she’s with her boy again and you’re gutted by the lyric’s power. “They say Jesus brings you peace and grace, well he ain’t found me yet,” has a similar effect.

Raitt calls her show “a healing experience in this suffering, hard-assed world” and that’s what it is, whether she and her superlative four-piece band are transforming the room into a rambunctious roadhouse or a hushed confessional. A night of welcome warmth and real soul.
There aren’t many like her.

Live Report: Bonnie Raitt’s enduring talent and originality on full display at Vicar Street

In what was a marvellous show, the blues legend treated the sold-out crowd to a mix of iconic covers and classic originals…

When 13-time Grammy award-winner Bonnie Raitt walked on stage with her signature red hair, sharp stance and suave California drawl, she oozed the confidence of someone who’d been doing this for decades but still gets a kick out of every minute in front of a live audience.

She started things off with ‘Split Decision’, a gritty, blues-soaked track dedicated to longtime friend and collaborator Paul Brady. It would be one of many nods to the Strabane singer-songwriter during the night.

“I always say if I’d gotten along, I wouldn’t have a gig,” Raitt joked before playing the heart-wrenching ‘Angel from Montgomery’.

While Raitt is most closely associated with her iconic slide guitar work, her distinctive blues vibrato and folk-style fingerpicking were fully on display throughout the two-hour long set. Her solo on ‘Thing Called Love’ was simply otherworldly.

Yet the evening wasn’t just a showcase of guitar chops, it was a celebration of songcraft and soul. Her take on Mabel John’s ‘Your Good Thing Is About to End’ was sultry and aching, while her rendition of Richard Thompson’s ‘Dimming of the Day’ was delivered with a hush that could break hearts.

During ‘Just Like That’, a song inspired by the true story of a mother who meets the man who received her late son’s heart, you could hear a pin drop.

Raitt’s band was, in her words, “not suited for other jobs” – and thank God for that. Glenn Patscha on piano (introduced as “from the country that will remain Canada”), Duke Levine with his rootsy licks on guitar, long-time collaborator James Hutchinson on bass and Ricky Fataar on drums, were tight, intuitive and utterly in sync.

“I like to go dancing after doing a show, I promise you I can still shift my gears,” said the 75 year old before swinging effortlessly into the rollicking ‘Something to Talk About’, only to pull things back moments later with a heart-rending rendition of her classic hit ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’.

That’s Raitt’s power: she can hit the gas or slam the brakes, and either way, you’re along for the ride. “Now even the youngsters are digging my music,” she pointed out with a grin, referencing the recent Charli XCX remix of ‘Nick of Time’.

The set closed with ‘The Ones We Couldn’t Be’ featuring a slide solo so high and textured it felt transcendent. A surprise encore followed with the bluesy ‘Love Letter’, featuring Jimmy Vaughan.

“God bless you all. Pray for peace. We’ll keep working for some sanity on our side of the pond,” Raitt said before leaving the stage to a standing ovation.

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