Towards the end of a series of sell out arena shows supporting Paul Kelly, Lucinda Williams gets a victory of her own when she and her band performed on Sunday night at the Sydney Opera House for the very first time.
A near sell-out crowd waited in anticipation as the four-piece band took their positions and Williams, who is recovering from a 2020 stroke that paralysed her left side, walked aided to a chair and greeted the audience in that famous raspy drawl.
We knew we were in for something different from the usual star performance when she went into a long preamble about why she was doing the show. We were entering into her sacred space of Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets aided by her life memoirs and cinematic experience and deeply personal home movies and images.
The show would unfold in a chronological order of her life that includes her first musical influence being the blues of the South, and in particular that of Blind Pearly Brown who performed on the streets of her town.
Surprisingly we learn that her first two albums, which would include the song Blind Pearly Brown, were recorded for Folkways, a label dedicated to roots blues and folk music, which was represented by her rendition of Elizabeth Cotton’s folk standard Freight Train.
By now we are in awe of the crack band the Buick 6 supporting Williams’ voice, which even though she is sitting, fills the concert hall with its strength and clarity.
When Car Wheels On A Dirt Road is introduced and supported by images of a 1950’s Cadillac and an endless dirt road, the audience is right behind her, as they are with Bus to Baton Rouge which expresses her peripatetic upbringing.
On a deeply personal note she dives into her family with a screen shot of her brother Robert when introducing Little Angel, Little Brother.
One by one other family members are connected to songs such as Dust, for her father, Miller Williams, and Heaven Blues about her mother, Lucille Day, as we are privy to home movie footage of the family on holidays and moving to new locations.
Images and spoken word introduce an ex-boyfriend who gives Lake Charles as resonance beyond just hearing it, as with Drunken Angel that refers to Austin songwriter Blaze Foley, who was killed in a bar leaving a legacy unfulfilled.
By the three quarter mark of the show its flaws are also becoming apparent in that Williams’ long introduction to each song is impeding the flow and is not letting this incredible band loose.
Just how good they are is apparent is their blistering interplay on the spiritual Get Right With God from the 2001 album Essence.
The Buick 6 for this tour are long term band member Doug Pettibone (guitar), Mark Ford (guitar), David Sutton (bass) and Brady Blade (drums).
While my feelings about this show might be mixed, it wins in the end by Williams’ opening her life to give added depth to herself and the songs that we thought we knew for so long.
It certainly shines a light into a woman who knows the dark side of life.
Lucinda Williams: Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets
Concert Hall – Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point, Sydney
Performance: Sunday 31 August 2025
Information: www.lucindawilliams.com and www.frontiertouring.com
Image: Lucinda Williams – photo by Danny Clinch
Review: John Moyle