Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Ventura
2. Reason To Cry
3. Fruits Of My Labor
4. Out Of Touch
5. Sweet Side
6. Lonely Girls
7. Overtime
8. Blue
9. Change The Locks
10. Atonement

Disc 2:

1. I Lost It
2. Pineola
3. Righteously
4. Joy
5. Essence
6. Real Live Bleeding Fingers And Broken Guitar Strings
7. Are You Down
8. Those Three Days
9. American Dream
10. World Without Tears
11. Bus To Baton Rouge
12. Words Fell

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57403 in Music
• Released on: 2005-05-09
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: Live

Amazon.co.uk Review
Few artists take the sort of emotional risks that Lucinda Williams does. Pouring her all into songs of hurt, need, and desire, she turns every live performance into an adventure, as the first concert recording of her career attests. Coproduced by Williams, Live at the Fillmore showcases her raw wound of a voice and the rough edges of her band in all their unvarnished glory, as the music cuts across conventional categories of country, blues, folk, rock (and rap) to strike a distinctly personal chord. Even the pacing is risky. Whereas most artists plan their sets to hit hardest at the beginning and end, Williams inverts the dynamic, sustaining a mood of reflective melancholy for extended stretches that open and close the album, while building to an explosive climax in the middle. With the selection dominated by recent material, the first eight numbers are like a sweet ache, as the wistful country of "Ventura" and "Reason to Cry" and the folkish minimalism of "Lonely Girls" explore the fringes of emotional fragility. Then Williams and band flex their musical muscles, shifting into the bluesier side of her artistry on "Change the Locks" and "Atonement," extending the desperate intensity of "Joy" over almost eight minutes, and offering homage to Neil Young's Crazy Horse on "Righteously" and "Essence." Backed by the barbed-wire guitar of Doug Pettitbone over the bare-bones rhythms of bassist Taras Prodaniuk and drummer Jim Christie, Williams tells the crowd, "We got the mojo workin' tonight." --Don McLeese

CD Description
Never one to tread the expected path, Lucinda Williams followed her big breakthrough album, CAR WHEELS ON A GRAVEL ROAD, with a pair of low-key records full of sad, quiet, fragilesongs (interrupted by the occasional barn-burner). LIVE @ THE FILLMORE concentrates heavily on those latter two releases, unleashing all the intense, burning emotions that lay at their core, making plain the inherent frisson lurking below the surface of such ostensibly laconic tunes as "Lonely Girls" and "Righteously". Meanwhile, songs that already had plenty of bite in their studio versions are pumped up to an evenmore electrifying, visceral level (a bold, crunching "Changed the Locks;" the roaring, bluesy "Joy"). The debt Williamsand her band owe to Neil Young & Crazy Horse is illuminatedon "Are You Down", and, elsewhere, a spoken intro finds thesinger laying bare her affection for ZZ Top. Clearly, revelations of all kinds abound on this double-disc concert document.

Customer Reviews

New Songs
If you reject live albums because you already have the studio tracks, think differently. In the most important sense these are new songs in that Lucinda Williams and the band are playing them as they feel at that moment of performance. Listen to Essence and the mix of eroticism and sheer menace and then the studio version - you need both. This album is so compelling that you should seriously abuse anyone who says "At least it proves they can perform live". Incidently the quality of recording and the sensible suppression of audience noise is perfect.

The Lady Rocks
The Lady is usually listed in the country music section, but on this live album she sounds like a cross between Sheryl Crow and Janis Joplin, and you would swear Neil Young was playing guitar on most tracks. Its hard to pick out a highlight, as the whole album is brilliant, but "overtime" is a favourite.

A real treat
Someone recommended this to me so I read these reviews and bought it on spec. I have to say I agree with most people. This is a terrific album that really grows on you. The style sits on the edge of the country music genre where it meets Neil Young and Crazy Horse. I love the guitar work and the guts of the live band. It has become one of my favourite CD's in a very large collection.