The singer-songwriter icon took us from her days at the Main Point all the way up to present day in a stellar return to Philly.

On Friday night, Bonnie Raitt and her band brought their Just Like That… tour to The Met and reminded us why she is a rock legend.  Her set was a mix of old and new, with many cuts from her 2022 album including the touching Raitt-penned title track which moved the crowd to a standing ovation.  Raitt’s gift as an interpreter of others’ songs shone through as well, playing her reggae-tinged take on Gerry Rafferty’s “Right Down the Line” and of course her gorgeous version of John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery.”

She took us way back to her Philly roots, remembering The 2nd Fret and The Main Point with a scorching “Love Me Like A Man” from 1972’s Give It Up, and moved through her other eras as well, joking that this was in fact her Eras Tour.  She navigated her catalog seamlessly, one song a gorgeous ballad, the next a blues ripper. Throughout the night, she told stories talking about writing songs with her former husband, losing friends and coping with the losses, and she ended the night asking the crowd to remember those that came before, then launching into BB King’s “Never Make Your Move Too Soon,” complete with Raitt’s signature slide guitar solos.

Opener the James Hunter Six mesmerized the crowd with their rockabilly style and impressive solos. By the time Hunter tore into a cover of The 5 Royales’ “Baby Don’t Do It,” the Met was in the palm of the Six’s hand.

Check out a gallery of photos from the show below. Raitt and Hunter’s tour continues this week in New England, with gigs in Portland, Bridgeport, Boston and more. Full dates here.

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Maureen Walsh

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“Oh my gosh, what would we do without soul music!” said Bonnie Raitt, before singing her own soulful “Nick of Time” at her June 5 concert at Prudential Hall at NJPAC in Newark.

Testifying to the power of music itself was a constant theme of her between-song commentary during this show. After performing John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery,” for instance, she remembered how Phoebe Snow used to come to her New Jersey shows and how Snow would sit in with the band and “tear the roof off of that sucker right there. We’d do a Sam & Dave song, ‘I Thank You,’ and it was just … I fell over, you know.”

And about Prine himself, she said that when he died in 2020, it “was like losing a limb, for me.”

Raitt — who remains, at 74, a powerful vocalist and searing guitar player — said that just as her fans keep coming out to her shows, year after year, she keeps going to shows by people like Jackson Browne, Bruce Hornsby and Bruce Springsteen. “In these difficult times, this is what keeps us going,” she said. “It’s all I can do to get out of bed, a lot of days.”

The show was part of her Just Like That … Tour, which began back in March 2022 and will continue until at least November of this year. She included five songs from her 2022 Just Like That … album in her setlist and, as always, offered a tasteful mix of blues, roots and world music, with group of casually virtuosic musicians (guitarist Duke Levine, keyboardist Glenn Patscha, drummer Ricky Fataar and bassist James “Hutch” Hutchinson) behind her.

“This third year of touring behind this record, I’m pulling out some things that I’ve always wanted to work on,” she said before performing her second encore, Michael McDonald’s “Matters of the Heart,” which she released on her 1995 live album Road Tested but rarely has performed in concert since then.

She sang plenty of songs from her late-’80s/early-’90s commercial heyday (including “Something to Talk About,” “Love Letter” and the wrenchingly sad “I Can’t Make You Love Me”) but, in other parts of the show, roamed all over her catalog, with material ranging from “Never Make Your Move Too Soon” (which she performed with Ruth Brown and Charles Brown on Road Tested) to Bob Dylan’s “Million Miles” (recorded with a deep blues feeling on her 2012 album Slipstream). After “Million Miles,” she repeated a line from it, “Maybe in the next life I’ll be able to hear myself think,” as if to say, “What a great line!”

She dedicated “Livin’ for the Ones (Who Didn’t Make It)” to Prine, Snow, Jimmy Buffett, David Lindley, David Crosby, Toots Hibbert “and all the ones we lost too soon.” She paid tribute to the late Hibbert, of Toots & the Maytals fame (he’s “one of the greatest artists of any genre of music,” she said), before singing his “Love So Strong,” and the late Oliver Mtukudzi (“he’s just the greatest,” she said) before his “Hear Me Lord,” with Levine doing a great job of reproducing Andy Abad’s nimble lead guitar playing from Raitt’s recorded version.

After the “what would we do without soul music” comment quoted above, Raitt specifically mentioned Gamble & Huff, Thom Bell, The Stylistics and Al Green. And she lavished praise upon singer-songwriter Paul Brady before ending the pre-encore portion of the show with his “Steal Your Heart Away.’

Introducing the Just Like That … title track, which is about a woman who meets the person who received her deceased son’s heart in an organ-donation operation, Raitt said she was inspired to write it by Prine’s story-songs — “how he managed to get inside so many characters’ deepest soul in the fewest amount of words,” she said. “Just bring ’em to life, illuminate his own heart.”

She also said about Prine, “There will never be anyone like him. We’ll just keep him alive, playing his music.”

Since so many other artists who are older than her remain capable of being brilliant concert acts, she figures that she still has many years to keep doing that, herself.

“When I look at my elders, like Mick (Jagger) and Keith (Richards), and Bob (Dylan), and Willie (Nelson) … Mavis Staples, 85 years old … I feel like a youngster,” she said.

Opening the show was British singer-songwriter James Hunter and his sextet The James Hunter 6, which includes a two-piece horn section. Their set peaked with a hard-driving version of the Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown instrumental, “Okie Dokie Stomp.”

Here is Raitt’s setlist:

“I Sho Do”
“God Was in the Water”
“Made Up Mind”
“Love So Strong”
“Blame It on Me”
“Hear Me Lord”
“Million Miles”
“Just Like That”
“Something to Talk About”
“Love Letter”
“Nick of Time”
“Angel From Montgomery”
“Livin’ for the Ones”
“Steal Your Heart Away”

Encore:
“I Can’t Make You Love Me”
“Matters of the Heart”
“Never Make Your Move Too Soon”

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Jay Lustig

Founder

NJArts.net covers all forms of art, throughout NJ. It was created in 2014 by Jay Lustig, who has been covering the arts in NJ for 36 years.

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ALBANY — Bluesy legend Bonnie Raitt performed to an eager, busy crowd Tuesday at the Palace Theatre. The theater was packed, and the seats were filled with a wide spectrum of sweaty bodies on this roasty summer evening — everyone from a young girl wearing a rainbow-striped dress to the elderly man wearing an awesome Hawaiian shirt with Godzilla splashed both front and back, however, the latter age group was the most in attendance.

I think the age range of an audience says a lot about the ability of an artist to span generations, and it seems that Bonnie’s music had done just that — it was reaching the ears of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren the same way that, say, John Denver had done for me. It brings music lovers together.

Being a music photographer has its own perks, such as getting to listen to legends perform, but it also has its typical limitations as being the only ones allowed to bring a “big camera” into a concert. That’s typically being allowed to shoot three songs before the gear goes away. Usually, those three songs are directly in front of the stage in the “pit.” Sometimes they’re by the soundboard. That is to be expected.

However, it was disappointing to show up to see this legend being only allowed to shoot one song from as far back as you could get in the venue. I wasn’t the only one being restricted, and I suppose there is some sort of solace in that. Everyone was restricted. Upon walking into the venue was the sign that pretty much stated no cell phones of any kind were permitted. Not just during the show, but before as well. No calls. No texting. No social media “of any kind.” No photos. No videos. Was I in St. Peter’s Basilica about to watch the Pope deliver a benediction?

As a photographer of music, the ability to capture music is something I’m passionate about. And I got my start by pointing my phone at the stage and taking photos. It’s one thing to ban or restrict cell phone usage if you’re about to film a special or unreleased content. And I truly do understand wanting people to just be present in the moment. But this is a concert, and it bothers me that we’re policing how people want to enjoy the music they have paid money to see. Do I want to see my neighbor holding an iPad over their head? No. But if someone wants to video their favorite song to watch back later, why is that so bothersome? Most of the time, when I am recording a video of a concert, I’m recording it for me to remember the feeling of being there. That’s all to say, it felt draconian and curdled the vibe to me. It’s entirely possible I am alone in that belief, and that’s fine. But where this rule bothered me was particularly because of the average age of the audience, a demographic where having a phone on ICE is important.

But I suppose I should hop off my soapbox and write about the music itself, which was actually a great experience. The evening started off with The James Hunter Six, an English R&B band that was only in their fourth show on Raitt’s tour. I enjoyed watching them and listening to them play. Their stage presence, sound, and swagger made the Palace feel like a Music Row honky tonk, or a jazz club in Kansas City (in the best way!) for their lengthy 16-song set. They were a dynamic bunch, with beaming smiles and masterful control of their instruments.

The woman of the hour, Bonnie Raitt, entered the stage a few minutes later than anticipated, but that was only because she wanted a medical emergency to receive the necessary, timely attention it desired, but I am left wondering how this was at all affected by the cell phone ban. That said, the compassion and well wishes she made did not go unnoticed, and in a time where there is such rampant negativity, it was refreshing. When she actually began to play and sing, she had a majestic, painterly landscape illuminated behind her, colors shifting to fit the mood of the song.

Right from the get-go, as the band played, the spotlight shifted to whoever commanded the audience’s attention. This left Bonnie bathed in shadow while her talented and accomplished bandmates were showered in the white light. Bonnie’s ability to share the stage and literal spotlight was a wonderful thing I just don’t see too often — so many artists simply allow their company to get lost in the haze from the fog machine or in the shadows upstage. Not Bonnie. Bonnie let them shine.

Bonnie also made a somewhat surprise dedication of her song “Blame,” in which she informed us that fellow acclaimed singer Joan Osborne was in the audience. This was met by a gasp from a few rather excited audience members and a few “where!?” whispers.

Raitt’s iconic voice was smooth and gravely in all the right places, making for a fantastic vocal performance, one that was as imperfectly perfect as a voice like hers performing live could be. To elevate the show, the acoustics and sound mixing at the Palace did her really well. The vocals and instruments were incredibly balanced (at least to my ears) and the volume wasn’t too loud and ear-splitting.

Naturally, Bonnie closed out her set with her three-song encore of some of her most popular hits, including “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” a song which I will now be humming for the next few days.

Bonnie Raitt’s down-to-earth songwriting and approachable voice with singable songs makes it easy to understand why she is beloved by audiences of all ages. My personal gripes with the restrictions on what the audience (and photographer!) could or couldn’t do aside, I hope Bonnie’s music continues to reach the ears of music-lovers for generations to come. She may not be able to “make us love her,” but with a voice like hers, there’s no way her music doesn’t resonate and make us do just that.

About The Author

Elissa Ebersold

Elissa is an award-winning music photographer & graphic designer, and writer with a lot of mostly unsolicited, sarcastic opinions. She’s obsessed with orcas, and can often be found making a lot of really stupid jokes. She lives in Troy with her three cats, and isn’t good enough to have imposter syndrome.

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