Here are my reviews of the two discs of the Lu's Jukebox series that I was sent:

LUCINDA WILLIAMS
****
Runnin' Down a Dream: A Tribute to Tom Petty
(HIGHWAY 20 RECORDS) www.lucindawilliams.com

Runnin’ Down A Dream: A Tribute to Tom Petty is Volume One of Lu’s Jukebox, a series of six live recordings Lucinda Williams made at Nashville’s Room & Board Studios during the US’s lockdown, with a portion of the ticket revenue assisting venues hit by Covid closure.

In a sleeve that’s a mock-up of Full Moon Fever, songs from Petty’s forty-one year output feature, but it’s only on listening that one is reminded of the common musical ground that Williams and Petty shared, in approach, phrasing, accompaniment, and attitude. These takes remain fairly true to Petty’s originals but, not unexpectedly, are given new *****ity by Williams’s audible respect and affection, stressing how uncannily she can live out a lyric in a three or four-minute drama. A flawless live band sound has been captured by Ray Kennedy.

It’s sad that such a tribute has had to be recorded, and to muse that if only Tom was around to reciprocate with an album of Lu’s songs, ‘Righteously’ or ‘Metal Firecracker’ would have been stellar.

‘Stolen Moments’ closes the album, Williams’s own heartfelt homage to her friend, ‘…in stolen moments you're riding with me again’.
57vintage

LUCINDA WILLIAMS
*****
Lu’s Jukebox Vol 3. Bob’s Back Pages: A Night Of Bob Dylan Songs
(HIGHWAY 20 RECORDS) www.lucindawilliams.com

Sharing a pleasing and worthy disdain for conventional lyrical content, phrasing and diction, taking on Bob Dylan songs in this, the third volume of Williams’s promised Jukebox series, seems like an obvious step for her after the beautifully-judged Volume One Tom Petty tribute. Of the three volumes released so far, this might just be the best.

Eleven tracks are drawn from five albums - if ‘Blind Willie McTell’ is considered an Infidels outtake - from Highway 61 Revisited through Blood On The Tracks to Time Out Of Mind, each flawlessly interpreted, from the rough and tumble of ‘It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry’, to the existential near-crisis of ‘Tryin’ To Get To Heaven’, and the act of courage required to battle with the splenetic behemoth ‘Idiot Wind’.

And talking of courage, how about an ovation for the boys in the band? Surefootedly prompting and powering every Lu vocal, Messrs Eltringham, Mackey, Mathis, Grange, and Lauer respectfully but uniquely follow Kooper, Bloomfield, The Band, Knopfler, and a couple of hundred semi-legendary others in creating empathetic canvases on which Lu paints her Dylan masterpieces.

57vintage

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