As I morphed into a preteen and began forming my own taste in music — which meant anything that my family did not love — Bonnie Raitt was one of the few artists I could never turn off. Her songs would play on my grandpa’s classic-rock station, and the slick sound of her guitar playing, the rasp of her singing voice, and the sheer fact that I was hearing a woman on that station in the first place kept me tuned in. Her Luck of the Draw hits “Something to Talk About” and “I Can’t Make You Love Me” are still etched in my brain, and these songs formed the basis of the rock nerd I became.
On Raitt’s 20th album, Dig in Deep, out now, the iconic guitarist and singer still sounds as fresh as ever, thanks to her continuously inventive covers of songs by the likes of INXS and Los Lobos as well as her incisive originals. The 66-year-old Raitt reopens wounds of heartbreak and loss while getting her “groove” back, as she refers to it, following a string of deaths that altered her life in the early millennium. “I look at Mick and Keith and go, ‘Hey, man. These guys aren’t slowing down,'” she says. “This, in many ways, is the most fun and vital time of my life.”
Raitt spoke with Lenny about what it means to keep living life in the face of so much death, the catharsis of singing songs about heartbreak, and her support for Bernie Sanders.
Brittany Spanos: It’s been so much fun to listen to Dig in Deep. This is the largest number of original songs you’ve had on an album in 18 years. What brought out this resurgence of new material?
Bonnie Raitt: It was mostly a practical consideration. I did two albums in 2003 and another one in 2006 and toured two years behind those. With the prep and the promo and all that, it was really a four-year cycle. In the midst of that decade, my older brother developed brain cancer early on and fought for about eight years. My parents both got ill sequentially and passed away in 2003 and 2004. My brother passed away in 2009, and a very good friend died a month later from his cancer battle. I literally did not have one minute or emotional space to think about writing songs while dealing with that during two album cycles.
By 2010, I’d decided to pull back and take a sabbatical. I wanted to experience all the sorrow and the grief and deal with it off the treadmill of running my own company and promoting records and being on tour. That was a real blessing. I had a lot of time to process without looking over my shoulder about what my next songs were going to be.
When it was time for that to come to an end, I was excited to work with [songwriter] Joe Henry. We did some sessions that spring-loaded the album, and I knew I was going to do most of the record producing it with my live band, which I did. My guitarist George Marinelli sent me a song, but the lyrics didn’t relate to me, so I sat down and wrote some lyrics. That greased the wheels, and I remembered how much fun it was to write. Then the Slipstream tour and the album had such great response. We won a Grammy for Americana Album of the Year, and we were one of the top three independent sellers with my first one on my own record label.
The two-year tour was such a rejuvenation after all that grief and loss, and I came back home after the two-year tour and just said, “You know what? I’m going to add some of these grooves I’ve been really missing on the live show.”
No one sounds like Bonnie Raitt. No one ever has, no one ever will.
Bonnie Raitt Dig In Deep Redwing [Download Here | Stream Below]
Across her five decades long career, the combination of Raitt’s soulful, crystalline voice, virtuoso slide guitar prowess, and steadfast devotion to the blues has remained truly unique, rendering any and all comparisons to her singular style and sound futile. With an unparalleled dedication to her craft that, quite remarkably, intensifies with time, Raitt is an ageless, peerless wonder who has always embodied the power of music to move hearts, souls and minds.
Granted, in the past twenty years, Raitt hasn’t returned to the impressive commercial heights she scaled with the successive multi-platinum triumphs of Nick of Time (1989), Luck of the Draw (1991) and Longing in Their Hearts (1994). Nevertheless, she has continued to deliver albums and songs of the highest caliber, racking up Grammy Award nods along the way, while cementing her legacy as one of the most dynamic live performers ever to grace the stage.
So as Raitt releases her seventeenth studio album, Dig In Deep, one may reasonably wonder what motivates her to continue making new music, when she has seemingly achieved it all. “I was only interested in doing this if I could continue to grow—find new songs and new combinations of ways to play things,” Raitt explains in a recent Entertainment Weekly interview. “My role models were old R&B and blues artists, Tony Bennett and my dad; artists who’ve gone into their older years growing richer. I’m modeling myself after them. People only get more interesting and deeper as they get older.” Even the most cursory of listens to Dig In Deep, the second album she has released through her own Redwing Records, reveals that the latter statement describes the 66 year-old Raitt to a tee.
With her signature mix of sophisticated swagger and raw emotion fully intact, Dig In Deep is arguably one of Raitt’s most rewarding albums to date, replete with buoyant grooves and propulsive stompers, balanced with more stripped-down, evocative fare. Long revered for her masterful interpretations of other songwriters’ compositions, most notably John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery,” the late Allen Toussaint’s “What is Success,” John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love,” and Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” Raitt offers seven renditions of others’ work across the album’s twelve tracks. Most enjoyable among these are the rollicking rhythm of Los Lobos’ “Shakin’ Shakin’ Shakes,” the plaintive beauty of Bonnie Bishop’s “Undone,” the acoustic balladry of Joe Henry’s “You’ve Changed My Mind, and the intriguing reworking of INXS’ 1988 hit “Need You Tonight.”
Bonnie Raitt has just released her 20th album, the spirited, engaging Dig in Deep. Her follow-up to 2012’s Grammy-winning Slipstream, Dig in Deep captures the vibrant, joyous energy of Raitt’s touring band and directly reflects her outlook through five original songs, which is the most she has written for an album since 1998’s Fundamental. Raitt issued Dig in Deep on her independent Redwing label and has long maintained an active role in the business side of her career.
You contributed five songs to Dig in Deep. Can you talk about how your songwriting has evolved over the years?
I’m not naturally a songwriter. I come up with songs intermittently if I am inspired, usually for a kind of music that I’m missing in my show because I’m basically a touring artist, not a recording artist. Over the years, I have either been so moved by being loved—or by being hurt by love or some kind of inspiration— that I will sit at the piano. I tend to write more of the deep, personal songs on the piano, and the guitar ones tend to be a little more on the bluesy or reggae side, or a jam kind of thing.
I hadn’t written in a long time before this last set of five songs I contributed to Dig in Deep, primarily because I was dealing with illness and the loss of both of my parents, and the eight-year brain cancer fight of my brother, who eventually succumbed in 2009. I was just so depleted. I really needed to take a break and not think about my next record or supporting my band and crew, or what I was going to do next. So I took a muchneeded sabbatical in 2010. I still went to see music, but never to check out what the bass strings sounded like from a particular amp. I didn’t think about whether I would cover a song or not. It was really refreshing.
Then, after the two-year Slipstream tour, I was really excited about a couple of grooves that were missing in my set. The song that’s probably most important to me is “The Ones We Couldn’t Be.” It’s about someone in my family I had a rough time with, who is now gone. While I was writing it, I also knew it had something to do with some previous relationships as well. I looked back and realized that it takes two people to make a relationship work, and it’s often two people that make it fall apart. Ultimately, once you see the ways that you hurt each other or couldn’t be there for each other, it just becomes very sad, no matter how hard you tried. You just couldn’t be the ones that you each wanted the other to be.
Your version of “I Need You Tonight” on Dig in Deep is quite striking. How do you balance honoring a song and making it your own?
Sometimes, I’ll be playing something at a soundcheck or in the studio, and the chord changes will remind me of another song, or I will start singing another song and I will put my own spin on it. Other times, I will just do an out-and-out cover like “Burning Down the House” and, of course, it’s going to sound different than Talking Heads because I play slide guitar and I’m a woman and singing in a different key. Intrinsically, it’s going to sound different when I cover a song done by a male band, but because I am a blues-rock-influenced person, that is the window that I’m looking through.
I have thought about doing that INXS song ever since I first heard it. I knew it would be such a great tune to play slide on when there is that stop and it says, “You’re one of my kind…” I heard that whole arrangement that you hear on this record, and my guitar player, George Marinelli, came up with the killer slashing licks in the beginning.
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Bonnie has contributed a new recording of "Prison Bound Blues" written by Leroy Carr to a project called Better Than Jail, an extraordinary new album benefiting Free Hearts and Equal Justice USA. Better Than Jail is available everywhere today and features covers of iconic prison songs from Steve Earle, Taj Mahal,Margo Price, The War and Treaty and many more. The album seeks to raise awareness and support for the urgent need to reduce the harm of the criminal justice system. https://found.ee/BetterThanJail.
I'm so proud to have joined in with so many illustrious artists in creating this very special album in support of rural prison reform. Overlooked for far too long, this issue cuts across all cultural and political divides and deserves all our focused attention to finally bring about some swift and meaningful action. Better Than Jail is one of the most inspired and heartfelt albums I've been blessed to be a part of and I hope it sets a fire in hearts far and wide to join in our efforts." ~ Bonnie Raitt
Released on: 2024-10-04 Executive Producer: Brian Hunt Producer: Kenny Greenberg Producer: Wally Wilson Producer: Bonnie Raitt Recording Engineer: Jason Lehning at Sound Emporium Mastering Engineer: Alex McCollough at True East Mastering Production Assistant: Shannon Finnegan Mixer: Justin Niebank at Hounds Ear Music Publisher: Universal Music Corp. Composer, Lyricist: Leroy Carr ℗ Believe Entertainment Group and Wyatt Road Records
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The Fabulous Thunderbirds - Nothing in Rambling Ft. Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal, Keb' Mo' & Mick Fleetwood
In celebration of the band’s 50th Anniversary, The Fabulous Thunderbirds have just released Struck Down, their first studio album in eight years on Stony Plain Records. The ten-track album includes a wonderful cover of Memphis Minnie’s “Nothing in Rambling,” featuring longtime friends, T-Birds founding member Kim Wilson, along with Bonnie, Keb’ Mo’, Taj Mahal and Mick Fleetwood. — BRHQ
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Little Feat - Long Distance Call
“I’ve always loved Little Feat and this new incarnation of the band is bringing some serious heat, cred and new blood to their enduring legacy. Every Feat fan loves us some Sam. I’m so glad he’s now gotten a chance to step out front and center and put his spin on these wonderful blues songs. I loved singing "Long Distance Call" with him, always one of my favorites, and Scott slayed on slide. Know you’ll enjoy hanging out with us at Sam’s Place!" -- Bonnie Raitt
“Long Distance Call” was written by blues legend, Muddy Waters. It has Sam Clayton and Bonnie Raitt on vocals, Scott Sharrard on Dobro, Fred Tackett on acoustic guitar, Tony Leone on drums, and Michael “The Bull” LoBue on harmonica. The album also features Bill Payne on piano and Kenny Gradney on bass.
Little Feat have composed an album that’s their love letter to the blues entitled, ‘Sam’s Place.’ “Long Distance Call” plus many other blues classics are on this album. You can stream and order ‘Sam’s Place’ here: https://orcd.co/samsplace
Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine, Vol. 2, the anticipated new John Prine tribute record from Oh Boy Records, is out today. Stream/purchase HERE.
Created as a celebration of Prine’s life and career, the album features new renditions of some of Prine’s most beloved songs performed by Brandi Carlile (“I Remember Everything”), Tyler Childers (“Yes I Guess They Oughta Name A Drink After You”), Iris DeMent (“One Red Rose”), Emmylou Harris (“Hello In There”), Jason Isbell (“Souvenirs”), Valerie June (“Summer’s End”), Margo Price (“Sweet Revenge”), Bonnie Raitt (“Angel From Montgomery”), Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats (“Pretty Good”), Amanda Shires (“Saddle in the Rain”), Sturgill Simpson(“Paradise”) and John Paul White (“Sam Stone”). Proceeds from the album will benefit twelve different non-profit organizations, one selected by each of the featured artists.
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Bonnie Raitt - Write Me a Few of Your Lines/Kokomo Blues
60 years anniversary celebration of Arhoolie
December 10, 2020
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Arhoolie Foundation celebrates it's 60th anniversary (1960-2020) with an online broadcast.
Bonnie Raitt - Shadow of Doubt
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival
October 3, 2020
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass celebrates it's 20th anniversary with an online broadcast titled “Let The Music Play On”.
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Bonnie Raitt & Boz Scaggs - You Don't Know Like I Know
Farm Aid 2020 On the Road
Sam & Dave classic written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter.
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Sheryl Crow & Bonnie Raitt - Everything Is Broken
[Eric Clapton’s Crossroads 2019]
Eric Clapton, one of the world’s pre-eminent blues/rock guitarists, once again summoned an all-star team of six-string heroes for his fifth Crossroads Guitar Festival in 2019. Held at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas, the two-day concert event raised funds for the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, the chemical dependency treatment and education facility that Clapton founded in 1998.
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'A Tribute To Mose Allison'
Celebrates The Music Of An Exciting Jazz Master
Raitt contributed to a new album, If You're Going To The City: A Tribute To Mose Allison, which celebrates the late singer and pianist, who famously blended the rough-edged blues of the Mississippi Delta with the 1950s jazz of New York City.
NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks to Bonnie Raitt about her friendship with the Mose Allison. They're also joined by Amy Allison — his daughter, who executive produced the album — about selecting an unexpected list of artists to contribute songs to the album.
Recorded on tour June 3, 2017 - Centennial Hall, London - Ontario Canada