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Bonnie Raitt Tackles Occupy Wall Street, Personal Tragedy on New Album
Dylan covers, wild solos on first LP for singer-guitarist’s own label

on January 23, 2012 No comments
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By David Browne

By the time Bonnie Raitt entered producer Joe Henry’s studio in late 2010, she’d been through what she calls “a heavy time.” Her parents had passed away in quick succession, and she took a long break from music to help care for her brother Steve, who died of brain cancer in April 2009. “I hadn’t had time to process it all,” she says. “I wanted to get off that treadmill.”

To ease her way back into music, she took up Henry’s offer to record at his basement studio in South Pasadena, California. Working with top-tier players such as guitarist Bill Frisell, they quickly cut four of the tunes – including killer, bluesy takes on Bob Dylan‘s “Million Miles” and “Standing in the Doorway” – for Slipstream, Raitt’s first album since 2005 (due April 10th). “The sessions were so inspiring that I fell back in love with music and got my appetite for it back again,” she says. “It was healing.”

“Her voice has lost none of its power,” Henry adds. “But it has extra smoke and nuance and life experience in there.”

Raitt recorded the other eight songs on Slipstream with her longtime touring band, including a reggae-tinged cover of Gerry Rafferty’s “Right Down the Line” and a funked-up spin on Randall Bramblett’s “Used to Rule the World.” “To me, that song is about the Occupy movement,” Raitt says of the latter. “It’s about the kind of hubris America has had, as if there are no consequences.”

Raitt, who parted ways with Capitol in 2006, will release the album on her newly formed Redwing Records. “I’ve been wanting to do my own label for a long time,” she says. One key benefit of recording without a major label? More of Raitt’s trademark slide guitar. “We let the guitar jams go,” she says. “That’s something I haven’t really done in the past. We left in the solos we would have normally cut out for singles. We just went for it.”

This story is from the February 2nd, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone.


Source: © Copyright Rolling Stone But wait, there's more!

Bruce Springsteen Returns: Joins Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne For Christic Benefit
Springsteen performs two emotionally charged acoustic sets for the public-interest organization

on January 10, 1991 No comments
By Anthony DeCurtis

When everybody starts believing those big illusions,” said Bruce Springsteen from the stage of the Shrine Auditorium, in Los Angeles, “you end up with a government like the one we’ve had for the past decade.” The occasion was the second of two benefit concerts given by Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne on November 16th and 17th for the Christic Institute, an organization that is pursuing a lawsuit against a group of United States-sponsored covert operatives for allegedly bombing a press conference in Nicaragua in 1984. The song Springsteen was introducing was “Reason to Believe,” from Nebraska, and the specific illusion he referred to was the American government’s belief in its inalienable right to police the world and shape the destiny of other sovereign nations.

Springsteen’s endorsement of the Christic Institute and its conviction that an ongoing conspiracy of government officials and former military and intelligence officers has played a major role in American foreign policy over the past three decades represents a far more radical stance than he has ever before taken. In his characteristic fashion, however, Springsteen managed to put a human face on the array of complex, far-ranging political issues the Christic Institute lawsuit addresses. His two masterful solo acoustic sets – his first live appearances since the close of the Amnesty International Human Rights Now! world tour in October of 1988 – were breathtakingly moving explorations of how self-deceit, romantic illusions and fantasies of control corrupt the bedroom and the boardroom, personal as well as political affairs, and poison human experience. With remarkable emotional sophistication, Springsteen was able to dramatize both the damage such illusions inflict and the difficulty and pain involved in giving them up for a real world that is far from a utopia.

The first evening’s show was more taut and gripping, if less relaxed, than the second. Walking out of the wings to center stage without an introduction, his hair grown long and swept back, Springsteen was clearly tense. Strumming an acoustic guitar, he mentioned not having “done this in a while” and told the audience, “If you’re moved to clap along, don’t – it’ll mess me up.” He then set the tone for the night with a stark, intense – and simply spectacular – reading of “Brilliant Disguise,” a song about the virtual impossibility of understanding your own emotions, let alone another person’s. His singing strong and supple, Springsteen incited howls of excitement with the subtlest gestures, such as sliding his voice into a fragile falsetto on certain line endings. “Is it me, baby, or just a brilliant disguise?” Springsteen nearly whispered to the crowd of 6200 people witnessing his return to the public eye. The question seemed far from innocent a little later when, after a fan screamed, “We love you, Bruce,” Springsteen responded, without a shred of irony, “But you don’t really know me.”

A modified arrangement of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” was somewhat less successful – it would work far more effectively the next night – but a haunted “Mansion on the Hill,” with Springsteen providing a plaintive harmonica solo, proved riveting. The singer bemoaned how “over the past decade the country’s been sold an illusion of itself” and praised the Christic Institute for “trying to make us grow up” by way of leading into “Reason to Believe,” which he souped up with a chilling slide-guitar part.

The set took an amusing turn when Springsteen – obviously in a 2 Live Bruce mood – hauled out a song he’d written the night before called “Redheaded Woman,” which he dedicated to “my two favorite redheads”: Bonnie Raitt and, of course, Patti Scialfa. “Well, now, listen up, stud, your life’s been wasted,” Springsteen wailed over a propulsive rockabilly beat, “till you been down on your knees and tasted a redheaded woman.” In “57 Channels,” another funny new song with a rockabilly feel, Springsteen described shooting out his television Elvis style because “there’s fifty-seven channels, man, and nothing on.”

The fun halted with a heart-stopping version of “My Father’s House,” which Springsteen prefaced with a wrenching description of how, “three or four times a week,” late at night, by himself, he used to drive past the houses in which he grew up with his parents. Concerned, he consulted a psychiatrist, who explained that “something went wrong” in those houses, something broke down, and that Springsteen was driven to return to the scene in a desperate, compulsive effort to “make it right.” “But,” the psychiatrist concluded, “you can’t.” The song ends: “My father’s house shines hard and bright/It stands like a beacon calling me in the night/Calling and calling so cold and alone/Shining across this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned.”

Bruce Springsteen-Highway 61 w/ Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt (Christic Shows, November 16, 1990)

Across The Borderline-Bruce Springsteen,Jackson Browne,Bonnie Raitt(16-11-1990 Shrine Auditorium,LA)

Bruce Springsteen – Red Headed Woman (Acoustic Live 1990-11-17)

Christic Institute Benefit News Coverage

The Christic Institute: Heart Of The Matter BBC 1987

The degree to which Springsteen’s tangled feelings about his parents have been reactivated – possibly by his having a child of his own – was evident the following night, when he replaced “My Father’s House” with “The Wish,” a poignant song about his mother. “If pa’s eyes were windows into a world so deadly and true,” he sang, accompanying himself on guitar. “You couldn’t stop me from looking, but you kept me from crawling through.” While Springsteen’s struggle with his tormented feelings about his father fuels his greatest art – “My Father’s House” is, significantly, a far more compelling song than “The Wish” – his feelings about his mother account for the sweeter, more vulnerable aspects of his personality.

On Friday night, Springsteen moved over to the piano after “My Father’s House” for “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” Despite the raw energy of Springsteen’s R&B-flavored rendition, that song – along with the spellbinding, introspective version of “Thunder Road” he performed later, also at the piano – essentially served as an elegy for the E Street Band. Hearing Springsteen belt out a line like “When the change was made uptown/And the Big Man joined the band” as he sat alone on the large, dark stage was a powerful moment. “I’m all alone, I’m on my own,” he sang. “And I can’t find my way home.”

Brilliant, spare versions of “Atlantic City” and “Nebraska” framed Friday night’s biggest surprise: the rarely performed “Wild Billy’s Circus Story,” from The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. A new song called “When the Lights Go Out” – about deception, corruption of spirit and the darker elements within us – followed “Nebraska.” “Thunder Road” – which Springsteen stopped midsong because he forgot the lyrics, shaking his head and saying, “I knew this would happen” – came next, and a stunning, mournful “My Hometown,” performed on piano, closed the set proper.

For his encore, Springsteen played a new song at the piano, a stirring ballad called “Real World,” which he co-wrote with E Street Band pianist Roy Bittan and dedicated on Saturday night to Patti Scialfa, who was backstage with their new baby, Evan James. A bracing, hymnlike love song, “Real World” is about abandoning fairy-tale fantasies and accepting the limits and delights of the possible. “Ain’t no church bells ringing, ain’t no flags unfurled,” sang the man whose storybook marriage ended bitterly and whose most popular tour became an orgy of flag-waving. “Just me, you and the love we’re bringing into the real world.”

Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt – whose opening sets were strong but, unfortunately, entirely overwhelmed by Springsteen’s performance – then joined Springsteen for a rousing cover of Bob Dylan‘s “Highway 61 Revisited.” The trio alternated lead vocals and harmonized on the choruses. Browne’s driving acoustic rhythm guitar – Springsteen played harmonica and Raitt rattled a tambourine – turned Dylan’s blackly humorous tale of profit frenzy and war fever into an insinuating boogie workout With Browne playing piano, Springsteen playing acoustic guitar and Bonnie Raitt playing slide guitar, the night ended with a feeling rendition of Ry Cooder‘s “Across the Borderline.” A song about Central and South American immigrants who come to Texas to find a “broken promised land,” it provided a touching multicultural complement to the domestic dislocation of Springsteen’s “My Hometown.”

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On Saturday night, in addition to substituting “The Wish” for “My Father’s House,” Springsteen deleted “Wild Billy’s Circus Story” and “Atlantic City” and added “State Trooper,” a stately, dignified reading of “Tougher Than the Rest” and a new song called “Soul Driver.” Taken together, the two shows – beginning with a “Brilliant Disguise” and ending in the “Real World” – demonstrated that Springsteen’s ability to seize the moment onstage and make palpable the meaning of potent emotional and social issues has not at all diminished. He continues to look deep inside himself and find a world there, a world we can enter to learn a bit about how a life proceeds, to learn a bit about ourselves and our own world.

“I built a shrine in my heart/It wasn’t pretty to see/Made out of fool’s gold, memory and tears cried,” Springsteen sang in “Real World.” “Well, now I’m heading over the rise.” It’s a necessary trip, and with as much conviction as ever, he’s taking us along with him.

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Source: © Copyright Rolling Stone
More info: The Christic Institute Archives
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John Prine Finally Gets the Send-Off He Deserved at Nashville’s Week of Tribute Concerts
"You Got Gold" shows delivered a stellar lineup of surprise guests, including Brandi Carlile, Bonnie Raitt, Margo Price, and Kacey Musgraves

on October 12, 2022 No comments
by Charlie Zaillian

TO LIVE IN Nashville is to love John Prine, so it never sat right how quarantine robbed the late singer, songwriter, and hometown hero of a proper in-person memorial when he died of Covid complications in April of 2020. Prine finally got the wake he deserved this week in Nashville with a string of celebratory concerts titled “You Got Gold,” which featured an all-star, cross-generational casts of admirers covering songs and exchanging anecdotes about the man.

On Sunday, performers and presenters remembered Prine’s generous spirit and the way he modeled being a decent human on top of his talents. “This is the type of songwriter you should be — this is the type of man you should be,” John Paul White recalled of his encounters with Prine, before turning in a solo acoustic rendition of “Far From Me.”

Elsewhere, Steve Earle offered a rowdy take on “That’s the Way the World Goes Round,” Lucius captivated with sublime harmonies on “You Got Gold,” Gillian Welch and David Rawlings chilled with “Hello in There,” and the inspired pairing of Valerie June and Nathaniel Rateliff rollicked their way through “In Spite of Ourselves.” Later in the night, R&B cult figure Swamp Dogg gave a sprawling, impassioned take on “Sam Stone” that included a spiel on homeless veterans, further driving home Prine’s original point about the vulnerability of those returning from war.

Kacey Musgraves performs at the John Prine tribute concert Oct. 10 in Nashville. © Emma Delevante

On Monday — what would have been Prine’s 75th birthday — standards like “Angel From Montgomery” off Prine’s eponymous 1971 debut (covered first by Bonnie Raitt on her 1974 LP Streetlights and performed again, with Brandi Carlile, to Monday night’s reverent standing-room audience) spoke to his music’s timelessness, while material from his 2018 sign-off Tree of Forgiveness evidenced its cross generational reach. “I Have Met My Love Today” was rendered as a duet between veteran crooner Chris Isaak and younger counterpart Nicole Atkins, and “Summer’s End” was tackled with aplomb by gifted New Orleanian singer and multi-instrumentalist Leyla McCalla.


One of Prine’s oldest friends and colleagues to perform was Bonnie Raitt, whom he had known since 1971. They both released their debut albums that year and Raitt has been performing “Angel From Montgomery” live ever since, calling it “a cornerstone of emotion for the audience and for me.”

Brandi Carlile and Bonnie Raitt with John’s band performing “Angel From Montgomery” at ‘You Got Gold’ Birthday Celebration for John Prine at The Ryman in Nashville – October 10, 2022 © Reeda Buresh 
'We started out together in the early '70s, Becky (Thatcher) and Tom Sawyer and Steve Goodman (singer-songwriter and longtime Prine collaborator) was Huck Finn,' Bonnie Raitt said before earning an ovation for 'Angel From Montgomery' with Carlile on harmonies. 'We tore it up all through the '70s. And we were just about to tear it up in our 70s.'

“For us all to come together in honor of him this week is so healing for us as well as for the Prine family,” Raitt said of the concerts. “It’s really the wake and the celebration we didn’t get to have yet.”


The amount of talent and heart gathered Monday at the Mother Church was, honestly, staggering. Upstarts included the charismatic Nashville staple Margo Price, red-hot Bluegrass Stater Tyler Childers, and pop-country maven Kacey Musgraves — an avowed super-fan who, early in her career, titled a song “Burn One With John Prine” and eventually got to perform said tune with its namesake — plus, from the West Coast, Milk Carton Kids, a duo whose harmonies on their rendition of Prine’s 1980 track “Storm Windows” induced goosebumps.

Allison Russell and Jeremy Lindsay perform in honor of John Prine at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. © Rett Rogers

Heavier in nature were performances by Lyle Lovett, Lucinda Williams, and others whose relationships with the revered songwriter were more peer-to-peer than teacher-and-understudy.

Yet as gifted as Prine proved himself to be at boiling down universal truths into pithy tunes over his long, fruitful career, it was the between-song anecdotes shared by Sunday and Monday’s performers — firsthand reflections of both his big heart, and subtle-yet-wicked sense of humor — that made his loss feel most pronounced and proved that Prine was a man not only gifted in writing about the human experience, but living it too.

The “You Got Gold” concerts wrap up Wednesday night with one last show at the Basement East in East Nashville.

Additional reporting by Jon Freeman.


Source: © Copyright Rolling Stone
See also: JamBase and Relix and The Tennessean and Live For Live Music

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