March 30, 2016

It is always a special event when Bonnie Raitt comes home to play Boston, but Tuesday night’s love-fest at the Orpheum Theater was exceptional even by that standard. By the time Raitt and her backing quartet left the stage after two hours of music from all phases and eras of her career, the capacity crowd of 2,500 fans was roaring in its eighth standing ovation.

Raitt’s 17th studio album, “Dig in Deep,” was released in February and has rightfully earned plaudits, continuing her late career hot streak of outstanding work. Like her last six or eight albums, it’s a skillful pastiche of her trademark slide guitar blues licks, midtempo rock, and steamy rhythm and blues, with heartfelt lyrics that aim straight for your emotional core.

Tuesday night’s concert included half a dozen songs from the new album, but it also veered away from Raitt’s recent setlists, as she also added some of the basic blues from her formative years, when she had left Radcliffe College to play and sing at places like the long-gone Jack’s in Cambridge. There were numerous shout-outs, acknowledgements, and song dedications to local figures from that past, like the masterful Rhode Island acoustic bluesman Paul Geremia (who was in attendance) whom Raitt noted was an early musical mentor and helped her get one of her first gigs – subbing for him – at Jack’s.

At another point in the night, before performing a scintillating finger-picked acoustic guitar take on J.B. Lenoir’s “Round and Round,” Raitt mentioned that Geremia, Chris Smither, and John Hammond Jr., had been her musical icons during those first years, and she had been lucky enough to become friends with all of them. Introducing a rollicking rendition of “Give It Up or Let It Go,” Raitt dedicated it to “my first piano player, the late (Brookline native) David Maxwell.”

OK, reality intruded a bit in this warm and fuzzy homecoming, when Raitt noted that Tuesday’s chilly winds were a bit much “for a California girl,” but most of the night felt just like the intimate club setting she alluded to. Raitt, who’d performed on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” Monday night, and had absolutely torn it up when she joined the B.B. King tribute on this year’s Grammy Awards telecast, sounds and plays in vintage form, probably better than ever, in fact. And her quartet of veteran musicians is superb, with Hutch Hutchinson on bass, Ricky Fataar on drums, George Marinelli on guitar, and Mike Finnigan on keyboards.

So it is a quality presentation, with a star at the height of her powers, and it’s hard to go wrong with a show like that. But the extra ingredient Tuesday was the relaxed warmth and connection Raitt had with her audience, the eagerness to celebrate past times, and acknowledge that her journey started in Boston and Cambridge.

We all know that career has gone through multiple changes over the years since her 1971 debut album, and success wasn’t immediate. It was only with her 10th album, 1989′s “Nick of Time,” that Raitt’s popular success began to catch up to the talent critics had been raving about for years. Raitt herself would note that was also her first sober album, and that ability to admit and share her ups and downs has only endeared her even more to the home folks.

Four of the first five songs last night were from the new album, including two of the most interesting covers. Raitt took “Need You Tonight” from 1980s rockers INXS and shifted it into greasy r&b, while Los Lobos’ “Shakin’ Shakin’ Shakes” became perhaps even more of a roadhouse stomper. The soulful melancholy of “I Knew” makes it a really affecting ballad, and “Undone” featured the kind of vocal inflections that an artist like Raitt can use to utterly transform a song. In the midst of that stretch, Raitt did a version of “Used To Rule the World” that was almost a talking blues, as if the singer were too weary from love’s pitfalls to actually sing. But with Finnigan’s B-3 organ lines contrasting her own slide guitar, that tune was riveting and funky.

Raitt explained that she tires of always singing about love going wrong, and enjoys singing Gerry Rafferty’s ode to “abiding love,” and “Right Down the Line” rode an easy flowing tempo, which made Marinelli’s down and dirty guitar solo all the more invigorating.

After doing that J.B. Lenoir chestnut, Raitt stayed sitting on her stool with the acoustic guitar, and reached way back to salute Arlington’s Smither with his “I Feel the Same,” a tune she covered on her third album, in 1973. That deep blues was focused on her fingerpicking, but also boasted some barrelhouse piano, and Marinelli on electric slide guitar. Raitt went even further back after that, with a Sippie Wallace cover from her ’71 debut, bringing out a pair of the California Honeydrops for support. Wallace’s “Mighty Tight Woman” is enough of a visceral delight, full of double-entendre lyrics, but Lech Wierzynski’s suggestive trumpet lines made it an over-the-top romp, as if we were all in a time capsule, transported to a 1920s cathouse.

Raitt finished off her trilogy of chestnuts for Beantown with 1972′s “Give It Up or Let It Go,” noting that the band hadn’t done it in a while, and never with the Honeydrops horns, but “I like these high-risk things.” Raitt’s slide guitar led the way on that romp, but a dazzling trumpet solo from Wierzynski, followed by a sizzling clarinet solo from Johnny Bones, made it a real triumph. Raitt’s three-song detour to the early ’70s had all won spontaneous standing ovations from the crowd.

Raitt noted the “insanity” of current events, and pointed out that she’d penned the next song as a plea to reboot the political process, and the hard-rockin’ “The Comin’ Round Is Going Through” had some real bite, with lines like “You say it’s workin’, it’s tricklin’ down, yeah there’s a trick, ’cause the jobs ain’t around..”

The homestretch had several Raitt favorites, like “Something to Talk About,” a stark “Angel From Montgomery,” and the duet (done here with Finnigan) she’d done with Delbert McClinton, “Good Man, Good Woman.” Finnigan sang an incredible tribute to B.B. King, aping the master’s vocal swoops and glides expertly on “Don’t Answer the Door.” Raitt’s latest single, “The Gypsy In Me,” was a buoyant bit of rock imperative.

Raitt’s first encore was a wrenching and almost solo “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” and she never fails to make Mike Reid’s epic of romantic desolation into a heart-tugging, but ultimately soothing moment. Saying that after that one she needed “to pull my heart out of the trench,” Raitt then led a rousing, clap-along through “Love Sneakin’ Up On You,” before ending the night in a gospel sing-along, as if the throng of 2,500 was just a family gathering. Tuesday night, it was.

The California Honeydrops are a quintet of San Francisco Bay Area musicians who got their start busking, and are led by a singer/multi-instrumentalist from Warsaw, Poland, Lech Wierzynski. From a swinging “Green Green Grass of Home” to their own “Pumpkin Pie,” which featured Ben Malamont’s washboard solo, to their funky finish “Brokedown,” the Honeydrops’ opening set was charming and startlingly good. Before the Raitt tour resumes in New York City this weekend, the California Honeydrops have a gig Thursday night at The Met Cafe in Pawtucket: highly recommended.

Concert review: BONNIE RAITT with the California Honeydrops, Tuesday night at The Orpheum Theater, Boston.