ON the Beat | Lucinda Landing, Camerata Launching

By Josef Woodard Fri Sep 27, 2024 | 12:00pm

Any chance to catch the great Lucinda Williams — America’s anti-sweetheart/poet/twanger/rocker/-folk legend — should be seized upon, and we’ve had many chances in the past. The 805 Lucinda sighting list includes a long-ago show, a somehow tipsy one at the Gainey Vineyard; a powerful show at the Lobero Theatre (where she also appeared with Charles Lloyd’s “party band,” the Marvels); and Bowl shows opening for such male heroes as Willie Nelson and John Fogerty. Here she comes again, to the Arlington Theatre on Saturday, September 28, and the magnetic pull is strong as ever.

Williams’ last show at the Bowl came after a 2000 stroke left her stage mobility hampered but her vocals and presence unhindered. In fact, Williams’ indomitable spirit and prolific songwriter impulse (her father was famed poet Miller Williams) rattled against any implied chains post-stroke. Proof of her unflagging spirit came pouring forth, and drawing on the rock-ier, swampier side of her on the bold 2013 album Stories from a Rock and Roll Heart.

As she told Rolling Stone upon its release, “I wanted to write more rock and roll songs, à la Tom Petty. That’s been a desire of mine, but they’re harder to write. When I sit down with my guitar, I go into ballad mode. That’s from my folk days, I guess … We got through the pandemic. Let’s get back together, have some drinks and stay up all night.”

The Petty connection, given an anointment when she opened for the rock icon just before his 2017 death, runs hot at the moment, and at the Arlington, where she will headline a show also featuring Petty’s longstanding bandmates in the band Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs. The Knobs, who have played SOhO many times, are riding high with the release of Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits, featuring a ripe Williams cameo on the song “Hell or High Water.”

Rock and roll heart notwithstanding, Williams’ unique luster and rugged spirit is also rooted in her uncanny poetic instincts as a writer. Her 2017 Lobero show came on the heels of her album Ghosts of Highway 20, dedicated to her father, who passed two years earlier. In an interview before that show, she talked about her ability to say much with economic means.

“Yeah, that’s from my dad,” the longtime SoCal resident said in the Louisiana accent she never tried to lose. “I learned that from him. When you look at his poems, especially his later ones, he was a great editor. I learned that from him, going back and streamlining and trimming the fat, all of that. Well, you know. As a journalist, you have to do that.”

True, except journalists work in an ephemeral stream, whereas artists like Williams leave a lasting legacy. And the legacy keeps going for Williams, now 71. She also spoke about a trove of fragments waiting for her muse to call: “I have a lot of ‘em. Everything. If I haven’t used it yet, I keep it. I’m always writing lines down and taking notes and things. I’ll write ‘em down in various little notepads. Eventually, I’ll tear them out of the little notebooks and make sure they’re all in this folder that I have. I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff that is still not finished.”

We thank the gods and muses for that.

Chamber Music Triumph, at Middle Age

From left, Paul Huang, Gilles Vonsttel, and Santiago Cañón-Valencia | Courtesy Camerata Pacifica

I bumped into Camerata Pacifica’s (CamPac) founder-director-ringleader Adrian Spence outside Hahn Hall last Friday before his chamber music series had its Santa Barbara component in motion. I asked about the age of his brainchild by now. “This is the 35th,” he grinned, with mock amazement and a face slap. Despite the modest display of surprise over the success and longevity of this SoCal chamber music stalwart, it’s apparent that Spence’s tenacity and long haul vision, not to mention programming balancing feats and audience-friendly booster-ist spirit, has given CamPac such sturdy and lasting legs.

Friday’s program, a tasty and technically awesome French menu of Debussy (Images, Book II) framed by two Ravel works (“Sonata for Violin and Cello,” “Piano Trio in A Minor for Violin, Piano and Cello”), got the 35th season off to a rousing and duly sensitive start. To these ears, the best came first, as the commanding protagonists — violinist Paul Huang and cellist Santiago Cañón-Valencia — owned the intricate discourse and linear traffic of Ravel’s gripping duo work. Voices intersect, swap lines, slalom through moments both exhilarating and reflective over the three movements.

Given the rhythm, harmonic, and behavioral aspects of a Ravel piece such as this, we can understand why jazz musicians often cite Ravel as a favorite among classical composers.

With requisite dazzling color and restraint, pianist Gilles Vonsattel brought the dynamic level down and led us into the dreamily sumptuous realm of Debussy’s Images piano writing. The composer famously balked at being called an “impressionist.” But, considering the melodic forms morphing and drifting like fleeting ideas in the wind in Images, if that’s not impressionism, give us another name for it.

The three musicians culled for the finale of Ravel’s engaging Piano Trio thicket, with a performance at once taut and relaxed. In the right measure, the Trio is more informed by a post-romantic heating element than his leaner, left-of-impressionist music, but boasts a beautiful solemn passacaglia movement before the garish rush to the big finish.

CamPac is looking good and raring to go, at 35.

TO-DOINGS:

‘Eastwood Symphonic,’ Kyle Eastwood’s tribute to his father Clint’s film music | Photo: Francis Vernhet

It’s a big week for music around town, between Lucinda Williams, hot-ticket Lobero shows by Hot Tuna (September 30) and the return of Cat Power’s spectacular Bob Dylan tribute (October 1) and, on the classical front, the sure lure of New York Phil harpsichordist Paolo Bordignon starting up the Santa Ynez Valley Concert Series, in Los Olivos’ St. Marks-in-the-Valley Church on Friday night.

And for jazz fans of any degree of passion or curiosity, all ears and GPS coordinates should be aimed northward towards the grand Monterey Jazz Festival (MJF), Friday through Sunday. Now in its 66th year — making it the world’s oldest continuous jazz fest — the MJF has hired on only its third director, Darin Atwater, to replace the inspired leader Tim Jackson, who retired after leading the festival into a lofty and artistically vaulted status in the festival world.

The dense roster of acts this year, on multiple stages, includes artist-in-residence Jason Moran, Stanley Clarke, Samara Joy, Mavis Staples, Hiromi (the latter two headed to S.B. on October 8 and April 25, respectively), Robert Glasper, Kyle Eastwood’s tribute to father Clint’s film music, Joshua Redman, Harriet Tubman, Tarbaby, James Brandon Lewis (who we heard recently at Ojai’s Deer Lodge), and the proverbial many more.

What is jazz in 2024? Monterey, this weekend, is one place to find reasonable answers to the nagging question.