Lucinda Williams and Big Thief live at the Orpheum, Vancouver: a review

So that was quite the night. 

It was unclear until the day of the show -- and then only clear from an unofficial announcement from a friend on social media -- whether Lucinda Williams (who is kind of a living legend in roots music) or Big Thief (a talented but relatively new band unknown to me until shortly before this show was announced) were going to be headlining. I think I had seen the words "co-headlining" bandied about but most of the times I've encountered that phrase it's seemed kinda disingenuous. It did LOOK like Lu was going to be the first of the two acts, from the advertising (Big Thief's name was first), but that seemed kind of surprising, given her relative stature, so I had hopes that it would be otherwise up until the day of the show, or that at least the two bands would perform sets of similar length.

Neither of those scenarios came to pass.

Understand, Lu is the vastly bigger draw for both my wife and I; I've seen her thrice, she's seen her twice, and (counting the one I bought at the merch table last night) we have a whopping nineteen of her albums, in one format or the other (sometimes three different ones, vinyl, CD, and download!). We even that Lu's Jukebox Christmas one (which is really good!). By contrast, Big Thief has half a dozen songs I think are brilliant and quite a few more that, put it this way, have yet to grow on me. Somehow, tho', they seem to (maybe) have the bigger draw among young people (like the somewhat odd 20-something-year-old girl sitting next to us, who scrolled through her phone restlessly and ceaselessly during Lu's set but was up and dancing for much of Big Thief's). 

But "young" is not how I would describe the audience last night, overall. Are there a bunch of Big Thief fans in their 50s and 60s? They don't seem like the target demographic...

But even if more people who packed the Orpheum last night came out for Lu than Big Thief, most of them stuck around for both bands, and I bet most of them are glad they did. Plus there are factors to consider. As I guess everyone knows, Lucinda Williams had a stroke in 2020. Contrary what I thought I had seen on Youtube, she doesn't seem to be playing guitar anymore; her left hand was visibly still affected, and though she was able to hold the mic stand and clap, she did (sort of) apologize for (or at least note) the absence of a guitar in her hands, commenting -- some of it lost to crowd noise -- that she would normally be playing along with these guys, but...

In fact, she seems to have gotten off pretty lightly, given how devastating strokes can be: as followers of this blog will know, my Mom lived the last six years of her life with the effects of a stroke that permanently fried her language functions (Lu's are apparently fine) and slightly addled her brain, causing her to forget a ton of things she'd known how to do previously and making her a little bit of a hazard to herself in the kitchen (did I ever tell you about the unique method she attempted, that one time, for cooking bacon, draping it over the bars of the grate in her stove, like she was curing jerky or something? Luckily she still had the sense to put a pan under it to catch the drippings! I doubt Ms. Williams has had any stroke-borne innovative kitchen techniques to share). However, Mom's stroke damaged her mobility only slightly; Lu seems to be mostly left with a certain physical frailty, when meant she was led out onto the stage and off by crew members, mostly standing pretty much in place, and forsaking her guitar. It was telling enough of the toll said stroke took that you could sort of feel how remarkable it was to be seeing her at all, all things considered -- to be grateful for even a short set, which I was. 

It was a great set, mind you. Fans were thankful that the warmth and intelligence of her between-song patter was still intact, and her voice was as strong as ever, maybe even stronger than at that Commodore show I so enjoyed, a few years back, the year before the stroke, the year before COVID. I had wondered if Lu would be her somewhat chatty self and was happy to see that she was, as she commented between songs on the unlikelihood of working with Bruce Springsteen ("Rock 'n Roll Heart"), the privilege of sharing bills with Tom Petty for some of his final concerts (apropos of "Stolen Moments"), and even namechecking Kurt Cobain (as one of the other people besides Blaze Foley that "Drunken Angel" could go out to, also along with Gram Parsons and Townes van Zandt) and the Replacements (I forget what she said exactly, but it was something about their songwriting and "probably their behaviour, too" informing "Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings." Some recent setlists suggest she can still go the distance when headlining -- playing 19 songs at a show a couple of months ago in Minneapolis, say -- but yesterday we got less than half that. Vancouver's setlist isn't posted, as I write this, but it was something like:

Steal Your Love

Let's Get the Band Back Together

Rock 'n Roll Heart

Drunken Angel

Fruits of My Labor

Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings

Stolen Moments

You Can't Rule Me

Out of Touch

...there might have been one more song. But that was it; Lu was definitely OPENING for Big Thief, not even co-headlining. Which is not really what I'd hoped for, when I bought the tickets, but which I didn't really object to, all things considered.

...partially because Big Thief was terrific. I had been up to my usual tricks, in the weeks before the show, downloading a few dozen of their frequently played songs (based on Setlist FM research), finding the ones I loved, then (I swear!) buying the albums that those were on (Masterpiece, Two Hands, and Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, which I was hoping would suffice, but "Contact" from last night makes me think now that maybe I need UFOF, too). I still don't know the whole of those albums, because of my weird approach, but the songs that grabbed me on them ("Masterpiece," "Not," "Certainty," "Spud Infinity," "Flower of Blood," and the strange but compelling "Simulation Swarm") were all on the setlist, as were three great songs I do not know at all, the aforesaid "Contact" and the single "Vampire Empire," the set closer, and its "b-side" (or whatever those are called now), "Born for Loving You." I could see them becoming, like Screaming Females from a few months ago, one of those "new" bands -- new to a guy whose collection mostly spans the late 60s through the mid-90s -- that I take to and incorporate into my regular listening; I think I'd see them live again, even without Lu supporting them.

But there's tons I do not know or understand about Big Thief. The Genius website is uncharacteristically useful in its descriptions of some of Adrianne Lenker's lyrics (see "Spud Infinity" for example; it makes me want to delve deeper, convinces me that Lenker has a real poetic gift, that the work of thinking about her lyrics is actually worth undertaking). Their take on "Spud Infinity" last night was sans-jaw-harp but amply sped up and energetic, more of a rock workout than the studio version, and prefaced by Adrianne's joking about testing the "echo" in the Orpheum by shouting, for example, "echo," or yelping, or going "La-di-da-di-daaaa," which invited cheers from people who knew what was coming next. I knew from the albums that they COULD, CAN and DO rock out for some songs, but I did not expect the amount of distortion that their heavier songs invited (especially on "Not," "Masterpiece" and "Vampire Empire," the last two of which were the show closers after "Spud Infinity.") Even their greater alt-country-I-guess songs like "Certainty" do not leave you thinking they're going to evoke Sonic Youth with the song after. But the truly revelatory moment for me came during "Not," maybe their "most Crazy Horse" offering, when I realized that the guitar solos were being performed by Lenker. I'd seen people compliment her lyrics and delivery but not her solos. She kicks arse. 

She's funny, too -- she joked about Vancouver's floating gas station and seeing float planes, which are not part of her experience ("I'm from Minnesota; we have ice-fishing.") Like Lu, she also noted the beauty of the room, and also expressed her gratitude, more than once, for sharing a bill with an artist of Lucinda Williams' stature. I liked her, I liked her band, and I'm glad that Lucinda Williams (kinda) made me see them, which I would not have done otherwise.

As sometimes happens, though, the most memorable, interesting moment of the night had nothing to do with the performances at all, emerging from chatting with a local artist named Kevin, who was sitting in the row ahead of me. As is the rule for venues like the Orpheum, we all had to get up and clear aisle entry for latecomers, my wife and I getting up for the odd young girl with the cellphone addiction and Kevin having to stand so a party of men a bit older than us could take a seat. One of those men negotiating their way down the row in front of me was possibly in his 90s, moving slowly, with the help of a cane; normally I bristle with resentment at having my view obscured by some inconsiderate late arriver -- Lu was playing her second or third song of the night as he made his way to his seat -- but again, thoughts of the fragility of life and what Lu terms "stolen moments" made my wife and I just smile at each other, in a maybe slightly condescending but still fond way (we didn't know he was blockin' the view of one of maybe nine songs Lu would play!). As he got settled, I thought of bringing my Mom to see Kris Kristofferson on one of his final tours, and of how sweet it was to see Mom -- so reduced by her stroke -- nonetheless singing along to "Why Me, Lord," which is one of the sweetest moments I recall from her latter years. How can you begrudge these guys sharing the set with their Dad, I guessed he was, and/ or the Dad himself for needing a bit of time to make his way, cane and all, to his seat? I hope I'm going to concerts when I'm his age! And if I am, goddamn it, people can fuckin' WAIT for me to sit down! 

That is not the point of the story, though. Kevin, who interacted with the trio of men more than we did, informed us later that the Dad in question was actually a friend of Lucinda Williams' late father, a philosophy professor named Don Todd. He's mentioned in her memoir, around page 21; she met him after a show here in 2022, and he told her stories that she had no idea of about her grandfather, a Berrigan-esque priest who took scripture to radical, socially progressive ends (Todd would have been in his early 20s when Lucinda was born and knew both her grandfather and father). Maybe her set was a bit short -- speaking of stolen moments -- simply so she could catch up with him, backstage, for a bit longer, while she was in town? Because that's where the old guy and two members of his entourage disappeared to before Big Thief started. One of them (not Professor Todd) came back later and since I'd moved into one of the seats that had been vacated, for more leg room... I hadda get up again, but, y'know, it wasn't during one of the songs I liked, so whatever (Big Thief should feel flattered that between hanging out with Lu backstage and coming back out to see them he chose the latter!). 

Even though I wasn't involved in it, having read that part of Lu's book, I actually feel kinda lucky to have been part of that experience for her, even if it (maybe) meant a slightly shorter performance for us. Funny how that works. 

It was quite the night.