Going Up the Country With Willie and Lucinda

When Lucinda Williams told a boisterous, sold-out crowd, “It’s taken me 30 years to get from the street to Radio City Music Hall,” her claim might also have been a metaphor for how far she has traveled artistically.Touring in support of her acclaimed and commercially successful album “West,” a recording of contemplative songs that reveals a serenity and maturity acquired through decades of tumult in her personal life, the 53-year-old Ms Williams has shown how country artists, more so than performers in other genres, frequently become more compelling with age.Ms. Williams set the tone early during her Friday night performance, opening her 16-song set with “Rescue,” a quiet, ethereal song that concedes, without anger, that no man could save her from her own unhappiness. She sang it without accompanying herself on guitar, adding to the sense of exposure.And yet, in the liner notes for “West,” she credits her fiancé for making her happy. That happiness apparently helped a relaxed and talkative Ms. Williams give a more playful, easy-going performance than she did at the Beacon Theatre in 2005. She even got all dolled up and teased her hair for the occasion, her Radio City Music Hall debut. It’s as if some of the perspective she has gained has helped her let go of some of her legendary intensity. Not that that has made her mellow and boring.For all the talk of how cathartic the new album is, the songs are still full of pain and longing. She choked up as she introduced “Fancy Funeral,” about her mother’s memorial service. And lest her fans think she has gone soft, she sprinkled her set, made up almost exclusively of songs dating back to her seminal 1998 record, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” with some of her louder, angrier songs. Unfortunately, those included the low point on “West,” the sophomoric “Come On,” in which she excoriates a lover for his sexual ineptitude.The most moving song of the evening was “Everything Has Changed,” a melancholy song chronicling how age has numbed her to love and happiness, but imbued her with the knowledge gained through age that life and love disappoint. The gorgeous song, played with spare instrumentation, shows there are still enough demons in her head to keep her creative juices flowing.If the middle-aged Ms. Williams showed how maturity and experience can make an artist more vital and add depth to lyrics, fellow Nashville outcasts Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and Ray Price — who played a sold out Radio City Music Hall on Thursday in support of an album of classic country covers called “Last of the Breed” — showed how old legends can revive old classics.The record, released last Tuesday, was the pretext for the codgers’ lightning-quick tour of 15 cities in 17 days. It’s a collection of 20 covers of country classics, from “Heartaches by the Number” to “Please Don’t Leave Me Any More Darlin’,” from an era when country was unabashedly sentimental and lyrics took center stage. Though the songs are saccharine, they possess an authenticity that has allowed their longevity.In the hands of almost anyone else, these ballads would have been unbearable. And it is strange to hear such original outlaws as Messrs. Nelson and Haggard singing such sappy lyrics as, “I love you a thousand ways,” and odes of filial respect to parents.But these eminences, with their combined age of 205, have outlaw credentials — Mr. Nelson founded the outlaw movement, Mr. Haggard did hard time in jail, and even the gentlemanly Mr. Price was mentored by Hank Williams — and the credibility to pull it off, without worrying about being cool, as younger artists might. Their life experience helps them borrow a term from today’s parlance, “keep it real.”The album feels like a victory lap for three country legends, as evidenced by their charming cover of “My Life’s Been a Pleasure.” In a way, these artists have come full circle. They began their careers pushing the boundaries of country beyond what these songs represent. And now, well into their 70s and 80s, they are revisiting the music of their youth as its custodians, seeking to spark interest in the classics again for today’s generation.As the name of the album and the sunset motif on the cover art imply, they believe they are the last remaining artists who could do these songs justice. So it was a pity their Radio City concert featured so many songs from their individual catalogs and so few from “Last of the Breed.”If country music is the single most forgiving genre for aging artists, it is because storytelling is as important as steel guitars and mournful fiddle fills. Indeed, lyrics are so central to Ms. Williams’s oeuvre that she had a music stand next to her onstage so she wouldn’t flub her lines.And storytelling only gets better as one acquires wisdom, experience, and perspective. It’s no wonder that artists such as Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, along with Ms. Williams and the “Last of the Breed” crew, are in their 50s and older and producing some of the best music of their careers.Pop singers and rap stars should be so lucky.

Going Up the Country With Willie and Lucinda

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