Lucinda Williams - Shepherd's Bush Empire
Shortly after arriving at the show I noticed Frank Bruno the guitarist, Charles Giordano accordion/keyboards and backing vocalist Curtis King from Springsteen's current Seeger Sessions band in the bar. I’d just returned from the Birmingham show on the train in the morning - so I congratulated the guys on last night's show and told them how much I thought the Seeger Sessions band had gained in stature since the initial UK shows earlier in the year. They were very gracious about me approaching them, and Frank quickly asked what I thought of the new arrangement of "Blinded By The Light". I told him I liked it, and it took me a few lines to register what song they were actually playing. I mentioned how I thought they were playing a cover of Bob Dylan's "I Want You" when they started the new arrangement of "Bobby Jean" - and Charles said that's what he bases his performance on. I also congratulated Frank on the duet arrangement of "Ghost Of Tom Joad", explaining I thought his sweet country lilt brought a new musical color to the song, and he seemed genuinely flattered. Although I might have over done it when I compared his voice to John Denver – in a really good way - but they were still polite.
As you can imagine I was going home pretty happy at this point – meeting some of the Seeger sessions band, and finally seeing Lucinda Williams in concert. To put things in context - this was the third attempt at this Lucinda Williams London show (the tickets were originally for a July 2005 show, later re-scheduled to Dec 2005, and then re-scheduled again to 11 Nov 2006) so there was already an air of anticipation in the crowd.
Kicking off with “Ventura”, Lucinda and her three-piece band played a great set of material that was very heavy on her more recent albums ‘Car Wheels on A Gravel Road’, ‘Essence’ and ‘World Without Tears’. Highlights included “Right In Time”, “Essense” and “2 Kool 2 B 4-gotten”; together with new material “Where is My Love?”, “Rescue” and the show-closing title track from her Feb 2007 due ‘West’ album.
Towards the end of the main set Lucinda nervously announced a special guest, and that performing with him would be one of the highlights of her career. She then welcomed to the stage "Mr Bruce Springsteen", to which the capacity 2,000 person crowd erupted. Bruce was pretty low key – wearing a dark shirt and jeans, he didn't talk to the crowd or take to the mic at all, but strapped on one of guitarist Doug Pettibone’s extra guitars, an orange/red Gibson, and took a spot in the far stage-left corner behind bass player Paul Bryan.
He played some rhythm guitar and a couple of solos on their bluesy cover of Lil' Son Jackson's “Disgusted” - covered by Lucinda on her 1979 'Ramblin' debut album. It didn’t seem as though he knew the song because Lucinda appeared to demonstrate the basic chords as he took the guitar. It was great to hear Bruce playing the electric guitar again and he seemed to really enjoy letting rip some blues riffing.
Surprisingly, after the song was finished Bruce stayed onstage and Lucinda announced they'd close the set with "Joy" (from her awesome 'Car Wheels On A Gravel Road' album). In her introduction to the song Lucinda talked about making sure you don’t let the government or anyone take your joy. This prompted her to announce how they were celebrating a victory in the recent US election - which got a great cheer from the crowd and Bruce pumped his fist in encouragement. 
Lucinda and the band returned for a single encore, "West" the title track of her new album which she announced is due for release in Feb 2007 - but despite it being a fantastic song, it was kind of an anti-climax after a guest appearance from Bruce.
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