Her t-shirt says ‘File Under Rock’: hell yeah, as one enraptured audience member was moved to proclaim at this mighty display. But Americana legend Lucinda Williams can also be filed under country, folk, blues, roots and I-can’t-believe-she’s-nearly-seventy. Williams owned her age proudly as she owns everything about her life: from the dark times which inspired many of her songs to the natural talents of her Buick 6 band, on to the stroke she suffered in 2020 which has left her with some mobility issues, unable to play her beloved guitar but otherwise musically unimpaired.

Her voice remains a thing of wonder: craggy, economical, articulate and utterly unmistakeable, not to mention tender, vulnerable and empathetic as required when honouring the ‘beautiful misfits’ throughout her set, from her thoughtful tribute to the West Memphis Three to her affinity to Tom Petty who covered her own ‘Changed The Locks’. Williams regards songwriting as catharsis. But she is also an exquisite painter of pictures, with her band providing the light and shade, from swamp rock strutting to resonant reggae inflections, burnished guitar in conversation with pedal steel, and stormy blowouts with Williams revelling in the eye of the hurricane.

^{Pictures: Stewart Fullerton}

Some of her very best vignettes featured across this magnificent two-hour set, from the bittersweet country ballad ‘Lake Charles’ to the comely ‘Fruits Of My Labor’. But she was also right at home in cover-versions corner, licking Memphis Minnie’s ‘You Can’t Rule Me’ (take that, Supreme Court), The Velvet Underground’s ‘Pale Blue Eyes’, and Neil Young’s ‘Rockin’ In The Free World’, rounded off with a righteous air punch. Lucinda, we second that emotion. 

Reviewed at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall as part of Celtic Connections.