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Story and photos by Gypsy Davey
Filling Turner Hall to capacity in a sold out show, Lucinda treated Milwaukee Wednesday evening to a solo intimate acoustic performance. Standing center stage and vulnerable, she filled the hall with her beautiful raspy warble, trailing her vibrato phrasing with a delicacy enhanced by the starkness of the unaccompanied act. Digging almost immediately into her instant classic Grammy award winning 1998 record Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, with "Jackson" and "Lake Charles," Lucinda set the tone elegantly. From there she went deeper with "Piñeola," from Sweet Old World (1998), and "Crescent City" off of her self-titled 1988 release.
The hall proved the perfect venue for caressing her voice. Kudos to the mixer for presenting a crisp clean vocal that neither overpowered her guitar, nor got drowned out by it. Suspended within the walls, she echoed throughout the evening gorgeously. Her new material was received warmly, and garnered plenty of cheers and ovation. Graceful even in her blunders, Lucinda, during her performance of "Ugly Truth," halted the second verse with a pronounced "Whoa;" then proceeded to capo the proper fret before beginning the song again.
One of the evening's two high points came during the back-to-back Car Wheels cuts of "Concrete And Barbed Wire," followed by "I Lost It," a song penned more than 30 years ago, yet sung with a passion as if written yesterday. The hall filled with raucous applause as she turned the lyric, "I don't want nothin' if I have to fake it." And the other was during her rendering of "Change The Locks," where she really stood out and shined. She not only changed the tempo of her set, but also truly changed the name of this town, along with the hearts of any disbelievers.
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