Bettye LaVette's Lion In Winter Roar Comes To City Winery
By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 8, 2012 8:45PM
Bettye LaVette’s career took off at a time when those of her peers were beginning to wind down. Gifted with a voice equally adept at interpreting blues, soul, pop, country, jazz and standards that never lost power or tone, LaVette worked in obscurity for decades before finally striking gold with 2005’s I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise. A collection of expertly selected songs by the likes of Dolly Parton, Fiona Apple, Lucinda Williams, Sinéad O’Connor, Joan Armatrading and other female songwriters that LaVette turned into her own, that album turned heads, became a high water mark in her career, and established a template from which LaVette hasn’t veered from since.
Her subsequent albums have at the level or slightly less than the standard set by Hell: 2007’s The Scene of the Crime found the Drive-By Truckers as Lavette’s backing band and a devastating interpretation of the Elton John/Bernie Taupin-penned “Talking Old Soldiers.”
That song and a performance of The Who’s “Love Reign O’er Me” at the Kennedy Center Honors inspired 2010’s Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook which absolved the debt the early British rock acts owed American blues.
This year’s Thankful N’ Thoughtful finds the formula intact. LaVette covers songs from tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Sly and the Family Stone, The Pogues and, notably, turns The Black Keys’ “I’m Not the One” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” into slow-burning tales of self-resolve. She so dominates the latter that Cee Lo Green may want to consider paying her royalties— it’s that good.
In concert, LaVette is a consummate pro, delivering the goods to sold out audiences as earnestly as she did empty rooms in the 70s and 80. There are still tickets available to her Nov. 9 and Nov. 10 shows at City Winery Chicago, which has become one of our favorite new concert rooms in the city for its acoustics and intimacy. Buy them here.
City Winery is located at 1200 W. Randolph.