.@lydia_loveless is such a badass. pic.twitter.com/g3Wf1I19q3
— Crypts Boo!-rlingame (@chrisburlingame) September 30, 2016
“This is a show I would like to go to,” Ohio singer-songwriter Lydia Loveless told the large crowd at the Showbox late in her early-starting set, “Because I’m an asshole.” She laughed off the self-effacing comment, but asshole or not, this was definitely a show I wanted to go to. Loveless has been a favorite of mine since I interviewed her when her 2011 Bloodshot Records debut Indestructible Machine was one of the best first-albums I heard in recent memory. And earlier in the day, I read an article about headliners Drive-By Truckers in Esquire, who said its newest release “just might be the most vital and important rock ‘n’ roll album of the year.”
the joys of not having actual hits :)
— Lydia Loveless (@lydia_loveless) October 2, 2016
I mostly wanted to see Lydia Loveless, to experience her live show and to hear songs from her excellent new album Real performed live. Working within the realm of country music, Loveless’ music continues the lineage and ideology of “outlaw” country artists like the late Merle Haggard or Willie Nelson but isn’t above the pop hook. I love her music for the same basic reasons that I love Miranda Lambert’s. Yet with Lydia Loveless, there’s a bleak, self-destructive streak that runs through a lot of her music that you wouldn’t hear from a Nashville superstar. I don’t like to throw around the word “authenticity” when discussing musicians, but with Loveless, you hear someone you believe has experienced not just real heartbreak, but real poverty, too.
Loveless and her band (that she called “Lydia Loveless” as a plural “we”) took the stage at 8:30pm on Thursday night, and people were filling into the Showbox throughout her set. She has a sizeable fan base, but it was fun to watch her crowd progressively get bigger throughout its 45 minutes. She had her own fans showing up for her, of course, but I liked watching the Drive-By Truckers’ merch guy directing what looked like dozens of people around the corner to Loveless’ smaller setup.
I was delighted when she played “Verlaine Shot Rimbaud,” with its brilliant line “I just wanna know that I’m the one that makes you write that shit.” With nine songs in 45 minutes, I suppose the standard for an opening act, it felt like it was exactly as good as I had hoped. There was a sense that her charm and humor were as big of factors as her excellent songs in winning over the crowd. She drew plenty of laughs when she described her attire as “like an old timey hooker.” “I definitely could have fucked Wyatt Earp, or something,” she quipped. When I found out later that her set would be about a third of DBT’s, it made me wistful for more, and anxious to see a headlining set in a venue of that size in the near future.
Drive By-Truckers took the stage at 9:45pm and the posted schedule said they’d play until 11:45. I would also consider myself a DBT fan, and generally agree with the consensus that their new album American Band is fucking fantastic (Metacritic shows exactly zero mixed and negative reviews right now). I love Patterson Hood’s love of his Southern roots and desire for a more progressive South (this essay in the New York Times Magazine about the Confederate flag is particularly good). I think it’s pretty heroic for Hood to tell Esquire “It is important that a band of middle-aged, southern rock dudes say, ‘Black Lives Matter.’ I’m going to say it proudly, and loudly, and if you don’t like it, fuck you.” I love that their songs are parables on sin and guilt and the South. More than any other band, I feel like I could drink beer and talk about Flannery O’Connor until the early morning hours with Drive-By Truckers.
Thursday night, they sounded good, and were touring behind a great new album. I loved that they played “Sink Hole” and I love the tons of guitars. I loved when it looked like Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley were alternating vocals for the first several songs. I loved that there were lots of “Cooley / Hood 2016” t-shirts in the crowd.
And yet.
And yet, I left the Showbox at 11:45 a little let down, though that letdown is mostly in myself for not being able to see the show through. I might not have been alone, though. From the back of the crowd, I watched the audience go from near capacity to a fraction of that over those two hours. While I love extended shows where the band and the crowd were feeding off of each other’s energy and no one was ready to go home, this didn’t feel that way. Instead, I left the Showbox thinking about what happens when a workman-like band comes up against the reality of an audience that had to be at work the next morning.
Lydia Loveless’ setlist:
- To Love Somebody
- Bilbao
- Midwestern Guys
- Heaven
- Real
- Out On Love
- Longer
- Verlaine Shot Rimbaud
- Same to You
