Review Stevie Nicks and The Pretenders Live in Uniondale April 6, 2017

Review: Stevie Nicks magical at Nassau Coliseum for '24 Karat Gold' tour
Uniondale - On April 6, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Stevie Nicks headlined the new Nassau Colisem, as part of her "24 Karat Gold Tour."
by Markos Papadatos
Digital Journal

Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders served as her opening act, and they were able to warm up the stage for Nicks.

Nicks opened her set with "Gold and Braid" and it was followed by "If Anyone Falls." Thank you. This is a night of storytelling," she said. "It's so much fun for me."

She told the audience the story behind "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," and brought back Chrissie Hynde on stage to sing the Tom Petty-penned tune as a duet with her, which was a nonchalant yet powerful collaboration. Nicks noted that thanks to success of "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," it helped propel her Bella Donna album straight into the stratosphere.

For the follow-up song, "Belle Fleur," the stage was decorated in an elaborate set and a neat backdrop, as she brought her tambourine with her on stage and showcased her timeless outfit. She took the crowd on a trip down memory lane with "Gypsy" as a rain backdrop graced the stage.

She subsequently described "Wild Heart" as a song that was more crazy, while "Bella Donna" was more focused, and she delivered memorable versions of both songs. "Wild Heart" was an important song for Nicks since it proved to her that her solo career was not a fluke, and rightfully so.

One of the most poignant songs in the set was "New Orleans," which she wrote about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which has optimistic vibes to it.

The rock queen noted that the song "Starshine" originated in Tom Petty's basement, and she sang an upbeat and rocking version, which had that vintage Tom Petty touch to it.

After an outfit change, she took her fans on a vocal voyage to "Moonlight (A Vampire's Dream)," which had a neat orchestral arrangement to it, that was reminiscent of a scene in a Twilight film, featuring Nicks' expressive vocals. She noted that she wrote the song in 2009 at a time when she was super-disturbed with the Internet world. "At my age, I'm writing music just for me," she said, and the audience concurred with that statement, since Nicks proved that it is all about the quality of music.

One of the highlight moments of the night, and this journalist's personal favorite performance was "Stand Back," where she got the crowd on their feet. The best was when she did her signature spinning move midway through the song, which resonated well with the audience, garnering her a standing ovation.

After "Crying in the Night" and "If You Were My Love," she concluded her show with "Gold Dust Woman" and her Grammy-nominated "Edge of Seventeen." For her encore, Nicks performed two beloved Fleetwood Mac classics, "Rhiannon" and "Landslide."

The Verdict

Overall, Stevie Nicks gave Nassau Coliseum a nostalgic night of music to remember, which was a blend of her solo material, Fleetwood Mac songs and even newer songs that she had written. She proved to be one true song stylist, and was able to share her insights with her audience about the origins of some of her songs. The crowd was aware of the fact that they were in the presence of a rock and roll countess. Her "24 Karat Gold" tour stop at Nassau Coliseum earned an A rating.

Review Stevie Nicks Live in Charlottesville March 25, 2017

Stevie Nicks As Good as ‘Gold’ In Charlottesville
by Muktaru Jalloh
Commonwealthtimes

Currently on her second leg of the 24K Karat Gold Tour, legendary singer Stevie Nicks performed for a crowd of nearly 15,000 at University of Virginia Jean Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville on March 25.  

Known for her work with band Fleetwood Mac and her solo career, Nicks has been regarded by many pubs as the Queen of Rock & Roll, with more than 140 millions records sold and 8 Grammys. This tour is a celebration of her most recent album, the 2014 release of  “24 Karat Gold: Songs From The Vault.”

Originally scheduled for a start time of 7p.m., the venue announced last-minute show’s openers, The Pretenders, would not be performing due to illness. While some fans asked for refunds at ticket booths, many decided Nicks was still worth the night.

A predominantly older crowd, many came dressed to the nines with life-long fans opted to take a page out of their wardrobe from back in the day. Nicks, a mainstay of Rock & Roll music in the 1970s, was a major influence with her style and fashion as much as her music. Thus, many fans dressed in her likeness, sporting Nick’s’ trademark shawl fabrics, big hair and celestial pendants.

A little after 8 p.m., Nick’s’ band appeared on stage to roaring applause from the crowd. Once each band member was set, Nicks gracefully walked onstage and wasted no time getting the show started, opening with “Gold and Braid,” an unreleased song from her 1981 debut solo platinum-selling album, “Bella Donna.”

The album served as affirmation of her decision to leave the success of Fleetwood Mac and embark on her own career.  

After performing the song, Nicks spoke about the creation and legacy of the album, citing collaborators Tom Petty and Jimmy Lovine as instrumental to its success. She continued to perform carefully-selected songs from her early solo albums, including “If Anyone Falls” and“Stop Draggin”.

At certain parts of the night, Nicks chose to perform fan favorites from her work with Fleetwood Mac, performing “Gyspy” to a resounding response from the crowd. Like the album, the nearly three-hour-long highlighted various unreleased songs Nicks chose to perform for the first time.

For each song, she detailed its own unique background story and origin. To the audience’s pleasure, Nicks spoke with much candor and wit in her recollections. In addition, never-before-seen photos appeared on a large LCD screen behind her correlating with each story and song.

When she performed “Stand Back,” she spoke of her close friendship with Prince, who passed away last year. She detailed her first encounter with the legend, citing his purple camaro and his attire as personal memories that still stand out to her to  this day. Nicks revealed that the song was a play on Prince’s classic, “Little Red Corvette” and said that she feels his presence every time she performs the record.  

Nicks closed the set with her famous, “Edge of Seventeen” with her guitarist doing his best Jimi Hendrix impression during his solo. When the crowd pleaded that she sing one more, she gladly obliged performing “Rhiannon” and “Landslide” as encores.

An intriguing yet inspiring element to the show was the perspective in which Nicks spoke about her past and present. She spoke as someone who is at peace with her youth, prime and career. Most importantly, Nicks genuinely looked happy on stage to share these obscure songs that maybe one point in time she was too afraid to perform in the past. 

A show filled with nostalgia and remembrance, Nicks’s presence was also one of contentment and joy. With her voice as strong and cool as ever, Stevie is still as good as Gold.

Review Stevie Nicks Live in Baltimore March 26, 2017

Wild Heart: On Stevie Nicks and her dogged tenderness
Rebekah Kirkman
City Papers

At Royal Farms Arena a couple weeks ago, CP's Performing Arts Editor Maura Callahan and I are standing among a swarm of people who all look like vaguely different amalgamations of a certain type of person I have known throughout my life—people I grew up going to church with, people I worked for, the friends, parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts of my peers and myself. A lot of these people are disappointed: The Pretenders, who are supposed to open for Stevie Nicks, had to cancel because singer Chrissie Hynde is sick.

As we wait in line at will call to pick up our press passes, where everyone else is clamoring for a refund—because they had already seen Stevie Nicks a million times and Fleetwood Mac a million times, and what if she sings songs that they don't know so well, and they were really looking forward to hearing 'Back on the Chain Gang' again only this time a little more rough around the edges maybe—an angry white woman behind us says to a Royal Farms Arena worker who is trying to help her, "I know it's not your fault, but this really SUCKS!" It's a bummer to be around all these joyless folks—I was bummed to miss The Pretenders too—but I'm able to transcend my temporary discomfort: We're about to see Stevie Nicks live for the first time, instead of sitting at home watching old recordings on YouTube, which is what Maura and I usually do.

We get into our seats—to the right of the stage, kinda close to the floor seats, and sandwiched between two old-dad-like dudes, one of whom keeps creepily looking over and gesturing at Maura. Soon Stevie and her eight-piece backing band emerge onto the stage, and after a rousing performance of 'Gold and Braid,' she greets the audience and tells us what we've gotten ourselves into.

"It's going to be different than you've seen before," she says, fingering the thick black and silver tassels tied to her mic stand. "I just had to do something for myself." So she went back into her "gothic trunk of lost songs" and pulled some of her lesser known and unreleased songs she wrote throughout her nearly 50-year career as a solo artist, a member of Fleetwood Mac, and as one half of the pre-Fleetwood Mac duo Buckingham Nicks. And then she sequenced them for this tour with the crowd favorites, including 'Gold Dust Woman,' 'Edge of Seventeen,' and 'Landslide,' among others.

Her set is peppered with anecdotes about how certain songs and collaborations came to be. Her stories are lengthy and comprehensive, and it feels as if we're all her grandchildren, as Maura observes, and we ought to listen to her. The second best story is about Prince, who she met in the late '70s at a party. (The best one is about how her song 'Moonlight [A Vampire's Dream]' is "Twilight" fanfiction; Bella was "eclipsed" by Edward—and who hasn't felt that way in a relationship before, she asked. Ugh, you're right.) Stevie's initial meeting with Prince was pretty unremarkable—she told him he needed to talk more, and then she fluttered away. She didn't hear anything else about him until 1983, when she was in a car with her new husband Kim Anderson (who had introduced her to Prince at that party), and 'Little Red Corvette' came on the radio. She started riffing on it in her head while listening to it, and they pulled over so she could write it down. After recording the song in a Los Angeles studio, she said, "Does anyone know how to get in touch with Prince?" (when Stevie gets to this part in the story, Maura shouts "Oh my god, she's gonna do a seance.")

So she called up Prince, and he happened to be in town. He came to the studio decked out in purple and velvet, she recalls. She played the song for him, and he liked it, so he played some synthesizers and guitar. "And then he was like, 'Well I'm out of here, people to see, places to go.'" The song was 'Stand Back.'

For the whole set, with only a minor hiccup here or there, she and her band sound incredible. It doesn't matter that she doesn't really hit the high notes anymore; she's adapted, and her performance is graceful—the crowd goes nuts when she twirls around in her black drapey dress and beaded and tasseled shawls (there are several shawl changes throughout the set).

Her stories between songs craft a scene of furious dedication; how she built on the momentum of her past work to keep going and making more. After the success of her 1981 debut solo album, "Bella Donna," for example, she went back to make more music and tour with Fleetwood Mac, and then put out "The Wild Heart" two years later, as an almost manic response to her fear of becoming a one-hit-solo-record-wonder.

As she introduces 'Belle Fleur,' which was released in her 2014 album "24 Karat Gold," Stevie describes it as a song that "could be written by Chrissie Hynde or Stevie Nicks or any other girl in rock 'n' roll" in the 1970s—it's about how getting more famous and "successful" meant first-class tickets and shiny limousines, which she realized were both literally and figuratively carrying her away from the comforts of home, stability, love, and her idea of who she really was. "I missed my Toyota," she says.

"This is no ticket for dreamland/ A garden for fevers to grow in/ As I run through the door of the long black car," she sings on 'Belle Fleur.'

At the heart of some of these explorations and disillusioned views of fame is a woman working it out. "I have no fear, I have only love," she sings with dogged tenderness on 'Gypsy.' And that's where her music hits me, a young woman in my 20s who feels occasionally, almost melodramatically, lost and confused about who and where I am in my life. Maybe that's true for a lot of the women and girls present tonight—and it makes me feel vaguely hopeful and idealistic that there exists some kind of intergenerational knowledge that women have and can use to support and show up for each other.

All of my current troubles have layers, and they co-mingle with one another, but perhaps my most obvious one—the one that's certainly wrapped up in all of the others—is that I'm currently about six months into grieving my dad's death, which happened a few days after my 25th birthday (he would've been bummed for me that the Pretenders canceled, but would've been jealous that I got to see Stevie Nicks). I asked my mom recently if being in your mid-20s is supposed to feel like a second puberty (shout-out to Mitski, whose 2016 album "Puberty 2" I've had in constant rotation since it came out). My mom reminded me that she had already had two babies by the time she was in her mid-20s (she had me when she was in her late 20s), and she did what she thought she needed to do to make things good for me and my siblings. "I did, learned, regrouped, and did," she told me.

And that's a thread I pick up in much of Stevie's music: so many songs about women who are younger, older, wise, lost, and figuring it out all at the same time. And tonight, the teenage girl a couple rows in front of me wearing a sweater with a skull on it is having just as much fun dancing and singing along with her friends as the gray-haired older women in our row who joyously, drunkenly slur to one another, "It's 'Landslide!'" when guitarist Waddy Wachtel starts strumming his guitar.

And at 68 years old, Stevie Nicks is still figuring it out, too. In the very last song of the night which is, of course, 'Landslide,' which she wrote when she was 25 years old, she adjusts a line from the original: "And can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life? Uh-uh, I don't know, oh, still don't know."

Review Stevie Nicks with The Pretenders April 2, 2017 - Newark, NJ

Review: Stevie Nicks and the Pretenders find 'lost songs'
Jay Lustig, Special to The Record
NorthJersey.com

Stevie Nicks brought her “dark gothic trunk of lost songs” with her to the Prudential Center in Newark on Sunday night. It wasn’t a literal chest, of course, but she used this phrase, several times, to refer to the little-known material that made up much of the setlist.

This show was part of Nicks’ 24 Karat Gold Tour, which follows the 2014 release of her album, “24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault,” featuring new versions of previously unreleased songs she had written at various phases of her career. Nicks sang three of those songs (“Starshine,” “Belle Fleur” and “If You Were My Love”) in Newark, and built on the theme by also including rarities like “Crying in the Night” (from her 1973 album with Lindsey Buckingham, “Buckingham Nicks”) and “New Orleans” (her uplifting response to Hurricane Katrina, released on her 2011 album, “In Your Dreams”).

Nicks, 68, also talked a lot about the songs, especially the obscure ones, and told stories about what her life was like at the time they were written. As anyone who has heard her being interviewed knows, she’s a great raconteur — open and honest and always ready to delve into some fascinating tangent — and the stories made up a big portion of Sunday’s set. She was on stage for two hours and 20 minutes, and at least a half hour of that time was devoted to the stories.

There was still plenty of room in the show, of course, for hits, from both her solo career (“Edge of Seventeen,” “Stand Back”) and her albums with Fleetwood Mac (“Rhiannon,” “Gypsy”). She brought out Chrissie Hynde — who had opened the show with her band the Pretenders — to duet with her on “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.” “Landslide” was the low-key, soulful show-closer. “Gold Dust Woman” was stretched out into a cathartic epic, as was the “In Your Dreams” track, “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream).”

Nicks — who also performs at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., on Thursday — was in good voice throughout, and her eight-piece band, anchored by the guitarist Waddy Wachtel (a friend and associate of Nicks since her Buckingham Nicks days), played flawlessly. Artful, intricately detailed video projections were used on many songs.

One of Nicks’ most memorable stories was about how hearing Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” on a car stereo inspired her to write “Stand Back,” and how she got Prince himself to play on the song. She also explained why the “long black car” in “Belle Fleur” symbolizes a relationship-destroying force, and how the upbeat “Starshine” came to be recorded, nearly 40 years ago, with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers — though it didn’t surface until “24 Karat Gold” simply because neither Nicks nor Petty was working on an album at the time.

Opening the show, the Pretenders began with two songs from their 2016 album “Alone” (“Gotta Wait” and the title track) before playing a dozen older tunes, almost all of which were hits. Hynde, like Nicks, has a distinctive voice, and it has held up well over the years. It’s worth noting, too, that “Gotta Wait” sounded as raw and urgent as any of the older songs. Maybe even more so.

The idea of a Nicks/Pretenders tour may not have made sense in 1980, when The Pretenders were lean, mean new-wave upstarts, and Fleetwood Mac was showing signs of superstar bloat with their “Tusk” album and tour. But somehow, it seems perfectly right in 2017, and when Nicks and Hynde sang together, on “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” they seemed like kindred spirits, totally comfortable with each other.

Review Stevie Nicks and The Pretenders Live in Pittsburgh March 31, 2017

Concert review: Stevie Nicks, Pretenders set the gold standard in Pittsburgh
SCOTT MERVIS
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Rebecca Droke/Post-Gazette

Wasn't Stevie Nicks one of the quiet ones in Fleetwood Mac?

She isn't now. All that stage banter saved up over the decades is spilling out on the 24 Karat Gold Tour, where she talks for 24 minutes between songs.

Ok, not really. I kid the diva (at my own peril!). It’s more like four minutes, and despite her bewitching image, she's not a diva at all, in the negative sense. We hesitate to apply the term “down to earth” to Stevie Nicks, because she seems to be hovering above it, but she's actually very sweet (I spoke with her on the phone years ago and she’s the kind of person who asks YOU questions about yourself).

This tour, which began in October and hit the PPG Paints Arena Friday on its second leg, is very much about her and how she came to be a star in and out of Fleetwood Mac. It's a “storytellers” tour without using that word, and on Friday night it was being filmed for posterity, giving it the feel of a live documentary in the making.

The odd thing about that is that usually people do the storyteller thing in an intimate theater setting, not a packed arena, here on a Girls’ Night Out Friday.

For starters, she brought along an old friend in Chrissie Hynde, the tough rocker from Akron, Ohio, fronting the latest version of the Pretenders, a band that emerged in the punk era of the late ‘70s as a counter-punch to the FM-friendly likes of Fleetwood Mac.

Clearly, the two Rock and Roll Hall of Famers love each other now, and Hynde even said “I love you, Stevie” after dedicating a beautiful version of the feminist ballad “Hymn to Her” to the headliner, along with all the rest of the songs in the set. The musical bond would jell even more later.

This concert was well placed on the calendar because over the last week Hynde has been canceling shows with a respiratory ailment, but in Pittsburgh (which she praised as a city that’s held on to its past) she seemed to be feeling no ill effects. The 65-year-old’s voice is still a wonder to behold — rich, sexy, forceful — and she cut a sharp figure in tight pants, boots and a sleeveless Recycled Records T-shirt. For this occasion, she settled on the nicer, mid-tempo Pretenders songs like “Back on the Chain Gang,” “Talk of the Town” and “Message of Love,” rather than such punk ragers as “Precious” and “The Wait.”

She actually seemed to care if Stevie’s fans liked her, and most did, but far too many were flooding in the aisles, just getting to their seats or getting up for beers, and with no real urgency.

Backed by one original Pretender in drummer Martin Chambers (Brits Pete Farndon and James Honeyman-Scott tragically died young) they added a pair of songs from new album “Alone” (including the bluesy, fuzzed-out title track) and finished with a solid run of “Stop Your Sobbing,” “My City Was Gone,” “Middle of the Road” and a typically sassy “Brass in Pocket.” Along the way, James Walbourne, of Pernice Brothers and Son Volt fame, provided the best guitar heroics of the whole night.

Stevie did not follow that by strutting out with one of her radio warhorses. She arrived in black lacy dress, cape and fingerless gloves, offset by her golden hair, on a gorgeously illuminated stage with deep cut “Gold and Braid,” setting the tone for a concert culled from what she described as the “dark Gothic trunk of lost songs.”

After following that with ‘80s synth-rocker “If Anyone Falls,” she said, “This is not the same Stevie Nicks show you’ve seen a million times, because I’m not the same Stevie Nicks you've seen a million times.”

In the good ways she is, though, because she is remarkably well preserved at 68, including that beguiling voice that can be at once lovely and dissonant.

The storyline centered on balancing her solo career with her day job in Fleetwood Mac. Being one of three singer-songwriters in that superstar band (with former flame Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie), there was, and is, the Beatles-like dilemma of getting your songs on the album.

When she decided in late 1980 to go solo with “Bella Donna,” “I wasn’t going to be like Beyoncé and break up my band,” she said, wisely appending that statement with praise and respect for the Queen. “I got Fleetwood Mac in a room and said, ‘Fleetwood Mac, I want to do a solo album, but it won't hurt us at all. It will only keep us in the spotlight while you're on vacation.’ ”

Providing some of the spark for that was Tom Petty handing her the smash single “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” a contender for best rock duet of all time, and on the PPG stage, her sidekick guitarist Waddy Wachtel had to be pinching himself to be in a threesome with Stevie and Chrissie, singing, “I know you BOTH wanna be your own girl.” It was one of those thrilling concert moments you can talk about for years, punctuated with a high-five photo op at the end.

Nicks continued with trunk songs from 2014’s “24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault,” like the bright Petty-and-the-Heartbreakers-assisted rocker “Starshine” and the seductive “Belle Fleur,” interspersed with hits like “Gypsy,” ending with one of her signature spins that drive fans wild.

With each song came a long story, about recording with Fleetwood Mac in an old French castle with no ice, or calling Prince for help on “Stand Back,” a song inspired by hearing “Little Red Corvette.” It took an hour to get his number and, because he was in LA not Minneapolis, it took less than that for His Purple Majesty to show up at the studio and add keys and guitar to the future hit.

She climaxed the 2 1/2-hour set with an enchanting “Gold Dust Woman,” complete with a frantic dance in the full-moon backdrop, and an electrifying “Edge of Seventeen,” with the guitars rumbling like propellers and Nicks spreading her vintage black cape like a nightbird.

She encored with the double Mac pleasure of a “Rhiannon” that rocked and a “Landslide” that displayed her tender touch with a ballad. For the purposes of the film, they returned to recut “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with just Stevie and Waddy.

The 24 Karat format, and her occasional exits from the stage, surely interrupted the flow of the music (and there are bound to be complaints), but Stevie Nicks is still the gold standard, and her faithful fans got to know her a little better on Friday night.

In the end, she thanked them profusely for sitting through the stories and trunk songs, like the diva she is not.

STEVIE NICKS SET LIST

Gold and Braid
If Anyone Falls
Stop Draggin' My Heart Around
Belle Fleur
Gypsy
Wild Heart
Bella Donna
Enchanted
New Orleans
Starshine
Moonlight (A Vampire's Dream)
Stand Back
Crying in the Night
If You Were My Love
Gold Dust Woman
Edge of Seventeen
Encore:
Rhiannon
Landslide
Stop Draggin' My Heart Around

Pittsburgh Photos[Link]

Reviews Stevie Nicks with The Pretenders Live in New Orleans March 15, 2017

Stevie Nicks digs deep to deliver a personal show at the Smoothie King Center
by fox8live.com
Photo: Chris Granger

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) -
Expectations were high and should be when two iconic singers hit the same stage on the same night. Stevie Nicks and Chrissie Hynde, leading Pretenders, know where that bar is and each hit it Wednesday night at the nearly sold out Smoothie King Center.

The Gold Dust Woman took her adoring fans on a trip through her entire catalog. Stevie dug deep to her beginnings in Buckingham Nicks to Fleetwood Mac and on through her more than three-decade solo career.

Nicks pulled out classics and reached into what she calls her “gothic box of lost songs” to deliver a deeply personal show. Nicks is quite the storyteller and dropped golden nuggets of her musical history.

“It’s a journey, it’s a trip, come with me,” Nicks encouraged the crowd.

While she opened with Gold and Braid, a track she recorded but didn’t use on her enormous solo debut Bella Donna, Nicks quickly dished out some fan favorites.

If Anyone Falls from her 1983 “Wild Heart” album followed before she described what it was like to cut a solo album as Fleetwood Mac became the biggest band in the world in the late 70‘s.

Nicks promised not to break up Mac as she pursued a solo career with Atlantic Records while trying to figure out how to “make a girl Tom Petty record.”

Her producer and then boyfriend Jimmy Iovine brought her a song from Petty and it catapulted Nicks solo career.

“Stop Dragging My Heart Around” fired up the crowd and when Chrissie Hynde stepped in to fill Petty’s vocals on the duet, it was a special moment to watch the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers perform together.

The fifth song of the night was finally a Nicks-penned Mac hit, “Gypsy” from their “Mirage” album. Fans jumped up and danced like it was 1982 while Nicks did her signature spin.

Her sense of humor firmly intact, Nicks then joked after her solo success she “went back to make a record with, who were they? Oh Fleetwood Mac.”

Determined to make sure no one would say her solo career was a fluke Nicks said she wrote a lot of songs while touring with Fleetwood Mac for “Mirage.” When the tour ended, she went back into the studio to cut “The Wild Heart,” which became her second multi-million selling solo smash.

“I was not going to be a one-hit wonder,” she said.

Nicks voice was strong as she worked her way through “Wild Heart,” “Bella Donna” and “Enchanted.”

Then Nicks dove into the story of her next song as she sat in her living room in 2005 drawing while the news on the TV kept going back and forth to the massive hurricane bearing down on New Orleans. She said as a writer “you’re like a news reporter,” and began writing a poem about what she saw happening here.

“I’m going to write a story about someone who lives in the city and loves the city.  People will survive, they will rise to the occasion because they are a great city.” The result is the heartfelt New Orleans from her 2011 album In Your Dreams. It was a moving tribute to the city.

The best was saved for last as Nicks and her talented and accomplished 8-piece band knocked out Stand Back, the lead single from The Wild Heart. When the song ended a graphic showing Prince and Nicks together was revealed. Nicks said. “Prince and I were friends.”

She said one day she heard a Prince song and basically wrote and recorded “Stand Back” over it. Nicks said that they couldn’t go any further with it though until she got in touch with Prince to get his approval. He just happened to be in L.A. and dropped by the studio. Nicks said he loved it, played on the record and wished her good luck. The song she was listening to when she wrote the song was “Little Red Corvette.”

All night Nicks proved her sing and songwriting chops take second place to no one and while up to this point she only performed one Mac hit, she would finish the night with a Fleetwood flourish.

Nicks rolled out a powerful version of “Gold Dust Woman” from the all world hit “Rumours” as the band found one of its many highlights of the night.

After a much too long band introduction, she closed out the set with “Edge of Seventeen” while more of a tribute to Prince played out on the screen.

The enthusiastic crowd wouldn’t leave until they got a little more and Nicks delivered with “Rhiannon” as longtime friend, guitarist and musical director Waddy Wachtel led the way.

A Nicks concert though could never end without one more song, one she wrote in Aspen, Colorado in 1973.

A little song that she says took her “band to the top”, “Landslide.”

With Wachtel on acoustic by her side, Nicks was nearly pitch perfect on her signature song. It’s a simple song that tends to fill her fans with great emotion, bringing some to tears like the sweet woman sitting two seats away.

She wiped her eyes as Stevie said good night and a good night it was.


Stevie Nicks and the Pretenders teamed up for the best kind of nostalgia at New Orleans concert
by: Keith Spera
The Advocate
Photo: J.T. Blatty

The focus of Stevie Nicks’ current solo tour, she explained Wednesday at a nearly full Smoothie King Center, is “songs that I love to sing, not that I have to sing.” With that intention, she did herself, and her fans, a favor.

Her most fervent fans cheer whenever she so much as twirls around; they do not need to be force-fed a program of hits. Thus, her nearly two-and-a-half hour trip down memory lane, which included lengthy but charming and revealing stories, drew heavily from a cache of compositions that lingered for years in her “box of lost songs.”

Most of them deserved to be let out, especially by her full-bodied band led by Waddy Wachtel, the go-to session guitarist for the likes of James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Keith Richards, Warren Zevon, and, in the early 1970s, a then-unknown duo called Buckingham Nicks.

Nicks may well have been the beautiful, doe-eyed hippie-witch that every '70s male rock star wanted to date, but she was also relentlessly ambitious, determined to build a solo career independent of Fleetwood Mac. She wrote songs while on tour with the band; when her Mac-mates went on vacation, she went into a recording studio.

Unable to actually join Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, she settled for working with Heartbreakers producer Jimmy Iovine. The result was her multi-million-selling 1981 solo debut, “Bella Donna.”

That album’s lead single was the Petty duet “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” which he wrote with his guitarist, Mike Campbell. On Wednesday, Chrissie Hynde returned to the stage following her thrilling opening set with the Pretenders to share “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with Nicks. Their connection and mutual respect felt genuine.

While making the follow-up to “Bella Donna,” Nicks was “more famous, a little more spoiled, not as focused.” Still, she was determined not to be a one-hit-wonder. The success of “The Wild Heart” confirmed she wasn't. She recounted how that album’s hit “Stand Back” is based on the melody of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette”; he came to the studio to approve her innovation and play on it.

Iconic Stevie Nicks performs in New Orleans, pays homage to the city
by Corrine Pritchett
Isunow.com

Rock and roll legend Stevie Nicks touched the hearts of many audience members Wednesday night at her New Orleans performance.

This performance was particularly special when Nicks told the backstory of her song “New Orleans.” She wrote the song during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

She said the hurricane had a “huge effect” on her and she found herself trapped in front of the TV screen, staying up to date on every aspect of the Katrina story.

It devastated her that an entire city and everyone who lived there had to go through the hardships of a natural disaster, especially an atrocity like Katrina.

She said she knew she had to write about it, but didn’t want it to just tell a tragic story; she wanted to inspire. She wanted to express that the city would make it through tough times.

“The people hope that their lives will get better,” Nicks sang. “I wanna get back to New Orleans, I wanna sing out in the streets of the French Quarter.”

It was clear that the crowd was thankful and emotional toward Nicks’ heartwarming performance of “New Orleans.” People were standing and cheering more than they had for any other song.

Aside from the moving “New Orleans” performance, she put on an all-around beautiful show. Her sets were different from others on past tours. She featured images of her artwork on the backdrop and shined bright, vibrant colors into the crowd and onto the stage.

Her unique voice was untouched by the effects of aging and as always, she had her iconic blue shawl and classic twirl.

She twirls to the beat of the melody as if the music takes her over. Audience members joined in with her, twirling their arms and dancing to the beat.

She crooned famous songs such as “Stand Back” and “Landslide.”

“Stand Back” was written after she heard a Prince song on the radio. She spent hours writing lyrics to the sound of his music. She joked on stage about how strange and nerve-wracking it was when she called Prince out of the blue.

She told him about the song and he came over within the hour. He was laid-back the entire time, and when she asked him if he wanted to record the piano and guitar part of the song, he managed it in under an hour.

“I walked him out to his car, and I believe he was driving a purple Camaro,” Nicks said at the concert, raising her arms above her head. “How perfect?”

She wrote “Landslide” in Aspen, Colorado, in 1973. It was there that she was visiting with Lindsey Buckingham, with whom she collaborated on her first ever album, “Buckingham Nicks.” She went out on the balcony, looked out at the snowy hilltops and wrote music. The words and meaning of the song came to her easily.

However, it wasn’t released until two years later, on the Fleetwood Mac album.

Nicks’ 24 Karat Gold tour was completely different from anything she had ever done by being personal and wonderfully unique.

Toward the end of the show, Nicks said, “It will never be me singing ‘New Orleans’ to New Orleans again,” and the crowd was overcome with emotional cheers. She closed the show with a breathtaking performance of “Rhiannon” followed by “Landslide.” At the very end, she inspired the crowd once more by saying, “Do what you want; follow your dreams.”

Stevie Nicks shared her Katrina story at a sold-out New Orleans show
by Justin Mitchell
Sunherald.com

I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the only person under 55 on the Gulf Coast who doesn’t get overly excited about live music or going to a concert.

Sure, I don’t mind going to a concert or two if I love the artist, but you won’t catch my diva self trekking through mud at a festival or standing in the sun all day to get stomped on by drunk people and smell patchouli and nachos while waiting for the headliner who is 45 minutes late.

It’s just not my thing.

My boyfriend, Alec, loves Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac. Like, he really loves them. Me? I love singing “Landslide” in my car and recently learned the words to “Rhiannon” because Alec plays it about once or seven times a day.

When his parents got him tickets to see Stevie in New Orleans, I knew it was going to be a concert he’d remember forever. So I wanted to make it special for him.

And by special I mean I wanted to be on my best behavior to make sure he had a good experience.

“I know this isn’t your thing, so if you could just dance when I ask you to dance and record when I tell you to record, that would be great,” he told me as we were parking. Miraculously, we made it to New Orleans and parked with minutes to spare before Stevie’s opener, The Pretenders, took the stage, and we didn’t murder each other. Praise be.

I got Alec a beer and myself a Diet Pepsi and waited for Stevie to take the stage. The faint smell of pot (and a little bit of body odor, courtesy of the drunk dude sitting behind us) wafted through the air.

My phone was in my hand, ready for Alec’s command to hit record.

Stevie, whose voice is undeniably haunting, gravelly and beautiful, came out in one of her famous capes, and the lighters came out and people started to scream.

I watched Alec’s eyes get big. It seemed a magnet had pulled his entire body more toward the stage.

I was waiting for a tear or two to fall, but it was me who began to get emotional as Stevie told us a story about what she was doing as Hurricane Katrina barreled toward the Gulf Coast in 2005.

She was not working at the time, she said, and she loved to draw and make art when she wasn’t recording an album. Stevie liked to play the television while she drew, for background noise, but she rarely watched it. But when she saw Katrina, she said she became mesmerized and watched the hurricane’s track as it got closer and closer to the Mississippi Coast and New Orleans.

The storm moved her. She felt an immediate connection with her fans in the South. Then and there, she finished a drawing she’d started in the ’80s. It was her image of Hurricane Katrina. She had never shared it with anyone until the concert Wednesday.

I was going to take a picture to share, but I decided the memory was more important than the photograph.

Then, she played a song about New Orleans she had recorded in 2010 and stored away in what she called her “Gothic box of lost songs.”

The crowd got teary-eyed and watched as Stevie sang about Mardi Gras, balconies, beads and daiquiris.

As she sang, I was reminded of my life-changing Katrina experience, when my junior and senior English teacher told a class of scared, confused juniors that things were going to be OK after the hurricane ravaged Hancock County.

Remember, Kay Lovelace Palombo told us, home is going to be fine because the birds have returned to the trees and they are chirping. It was at that moment I knew things were going to be OK.

And when Stevie was singing Wednesday, that feeling came back again.

Review Stevie Nicks with The Pretenders Live in Columbus, Ohio March 17, 2017

Concert review: Stevie Nicks shares inspiring stories through and outside of music
by Hannah Herner
The Lantern
Photo: Jack Westerheide

Stevie Nicks is exactly what I wanted her to be, but I know she doesn’t care what anyone wants her to be. When the 68-year-old rock star took the stage at Nationwide Arena on Friday night, clad in a black lace dress and crazy-tall boots with a tambourine in hand, I knew it was going to be a night to remember.

As she told the crowd, this show was for her. She went through her catalog of songs and picked some of her favorites as well as some that hadn’t seen the light of the stage, for a show unlike the thousands shes done during her more than 40 year career.

Unsurprisingly, as a 21-year-old, I was much younger than most of the audience. Like, I’m sure, many of the young people there, I discovered Stevie Nicks through my grandfather. After he died, my dad and I were putting together a playlist for the reception, and he had me buy Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors” album since it was my grandfather’s favorite. I never knew this before he died, but I’ve tried to make up for it by listening to the tracks and trying to see what he saw in them.

The best part of a concert is when an artist speaks directly to the audience, and does more than just awkwardly asking “How are you feeling tonight?” Nicks delivered with an anecdote for every single song throughout the night, plus some stories about her bandmates and clothing items she wore on stage —including the original Bella Donna cape! The concert lasted two hours and 15 minutes and by the end the crowd was chanting for her to just sing, but I live for personal anecdotes.  

The stories she told of working with Prince seemed to get the most response from the audience. She said she actually wrote my personal favorite of the night, “Stand Back” while listening to Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” in a limousine. She called him and he came over to approve his influence on the song and help her lay down the track before speeding off in a purple Camaro.

A surprising anecdote went along with “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream).” She said she was disheartened that people do not buy as much music in the age of the internet, so she didn’t want to make new music anymore. But the “Twilight” saga, of all things, pulled her out of a hiatus in 2011 as she wrote a song inspired by the movie and Bella and Edward’s love affair. I just love that Stevie Nicks loves “Twilight.” Amazing. 

Nicks also did a bit of motivational speaking, as many artists tend to do when they take the stage. She told audience members that, regardless of their ages, they should follow their dreams. A personally inspiring story was when she talked about wearing her one expensive outfit and strutting across campus when she was enrolled at San Jose State University in California, causing people to move out of the way. She that through her “vibe,” she convinced people by her “vibe” she was important, and she convinced herself that she was going to be a big rock star one day.

Nicks faked it until she made it, and she definitely made it.

Concert review | Stevie Nicks/Pretenders: Fans wait to hear old favorites held until late in show

By Curtis Schieber 

For The Columbus Dispatch

Photo: Eric Albrecht

About 20 minutes into her two hour-plus set last night in the Nationwide Arena, Stevie Nicks finally delivered one of her trademark spins. Remaining in place, she went once around, slowly. The packed house, especially the vocal diehard fans, went wild.

It seemed a long wait for those outside the cult of Stevie Nicks to get a little something that related to the gypsy-like, often self-obsessed Fleetwood Mac singer of lore. The current tour is not a review of her hits, with Mac and on her own, but a book and music tour without the publication of a book.

Some of the material came from her newest release, 2014's "24 Karat Gold: Songs From The Vault," a collection of unreleased compositions dating back to 1969. It dovetails, with the recent extended reissues of her first two solo albums, 1981's "Bella Donna" and 1983's "The Wild Heart."

Nicks has taken the opportunity to focus on a selection of her material deeper than just the hits and, more importantly, to tell the stories behind most of them.

It was, perhaps, too much information. While for a time at the beginning, the finely detailed chronology of songs such as "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" were interesting—who knew that she was such an admirer of Tom Petty that she sought out their producer, Jimmy Iovine for her first solo album, "Bella Donna." Or that "Stop Draggin'" was borrowed from Petty after Iovine didn't hear a hit on that collection?

That one and the Prince story that explained the inspiration for the 1983 dance hit "Stand Back," were keepers. Turns out Nicks heard "Little Red Corvette" on the radio, composed "Stand Back" based on it and eventually enlisted Prince's help finishing it.

Many of the other stories became tedious as the set wore on, at least to most, other than the fanatics.

Though a few songs such as "Gypsy," the newly recorded vintage composition "Starshine" and the raving dance number "Stand Back" not only fed the legend but provided memorable performances, it wasn't until "Gold Dust Woman," late in the show, that the Stevie Nicks we've come to expect came around. Building the mystery from the start, the singer ended fairly convulsing, as if possessed by the characters in the song.

The contrast between the storytelling and the Pretenders, who opened the evening, couldn't have been greater. Chrissie Hynde and her newest incarnation—which, after 37 years still includes founding drummer Martin Chambers—delivered a vibrant hour-long set that felt as comfortable as an old pair of shoes but didn't rely on nostalgia for its appeal.

Old faves including "Back On The Chain Gang," "Stop Your Sobbing," "Brass In Pocket," and the smoldering reggae-based "Private Life" proved that, at 65 Hynde can still deliver the goods with no-nonsense and fevered rock-and-roll.

Review Stevie Nicks Live with The Pretenders Memphis March 8, 2017

Stevie Nicks, Chrissie Hynde in fine form on double bill

It was a fitting close to International Women’s Day as two of rock’s iconic female figures, Stevie Nicks and the Chrissie Hynde, took the stage of FedExForum on Wednesday. Appearing with her solo band, Fleetwood Mac star Nicks was the ostensible headliner, but it was Hynde and her group The Pretenders who stole the show, with both women presenting district and distinctly different visions of musical and personal empowerment.

Resuming her work with the Pretenders last summer after a four-year break, Hynde and the band — which includes founding drummer Martin Chambers and new-era additions James Walbourne on guitar, Nick Wilkinson on bass and Eric Heywood on pedal steel — sounded sharp and inspired during a 15-song set that covered the expected hits as well as material from the band’s recent album, “Alone.”

Hynde was in classically cantankerous form early on, rightfully berating a couple of audience members down front who were popping off cell phone camera flashes in her face. After apologizing — on their behalf — Hynde settled down and found both the aggression and nuance of songs like “My City Was Gone” and “Stop Your Sobbing.”

Thirty-five years after the implosion of the original Pretenders lineup — following the death of guitarist James Honeyman Scott and the firing and subsequent death of bassist Pete Farndon — Hynde and Chambers have somehow managed to keep the group a compelling force, with the new members, particularly flash guitarist Walbourne, providing a fresh spark.

One of rock’s most stylish singers, Hynde also showed a depth of emotional range on the spare ballad “I’ll Stand by You,” while one of her rare solo songs, “Down the Wrong Way,” seemed to take on new life in the Pretenders context.

Ohio native Hynde took the opportunity to rave about Memphis, having visited several local haunts — Graceland, Shangri-La Records and Imagine Vegan Café — on a day off before the concert. She noted that she skipped a return to the local jail, where she stayed during the Pretenders' first tour on disorderly conduct charges after kicking out the windows of a police car. “They didn’t want me back,” she quipped.

After a brief break, Nicks and her big band — which included longtime guitarist/musical director Waddy Wachtel on guitar — emerged, sounding strong, if somewhat measured during their 18-song performance.

Nicks presented the set as part storyteller’s session, part deep dive into her catalog. Vocally, she was in fine form, but the somewhat awkward pacing — songs broken up by Nicks’ long  narrative interludes — meant that musical momentum was hard to sustain.

Still, Nicks’ tremendous personal charm — part girl next door, part witchy woman, part mother figure — was hard to resist, and the crowd of devotees were held rapt by her, expressing their devotion vocally and visually, with many dressing in homage to her (sartorially speaking, the audience at a Nicks concert could double for a renaissance fair crowd).

The liveliest moment of Nicks' set came during an early version of the Tom Petty-penned “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” as Hynde emerged from the wings and the women, along with Wachtel, presented the song as a three-way romantic drama.

Ultimately, amid all the stories and banter, Nicks managed to cover all the expected ground, delivering strong versions of her solo hits (“Stand Back,” “Edge of Seventeen”) and closing with a flourish of Fleetwood Mac favorites (“Rhiannon,” “Gold Dust Woman,” “Landslide”) that were impossible to resist.

- Bob Mehr
The Commercial Appeal

Review: A Night of Nostalgia with Stevie Nicks
POSTED BY JOSHUA CANNON
Memphis Flyer

"We've followed her for seven cities now," a man 20-years-my-senior told me midway through Stevie Nicks' 18-song set. "Amazing, after all these years, she's still got it." 

She never lost it. Backed by a multi-piece band that included a pianist, hammond organist, two backup vocalists, a drummer, bassist, and longtime musical director and guitarist Waddy Wachtel, Nicks' brought a storied discography to life — a "gothic trunk of lost songs." Tracks she wrote over the span of 40 plus years; deep cuts from albums that seldom or never got the live treatment. The audience didn't mind, an eclectic bunch: mothers and daughters, married couples and young couples, a man in a top hat hopelessly waving a bouquet of white roses in Nicks' direction, a pack of gypsies who led me to my seat. 

The energy was palpable, though, when Nicks and co. rolled through Fleetwood favorites like Gypsy, a moment when anyone still sitting found their feet; Gold Dust Woman, made bigger than ever by her band; Rhiannon, the alcohol had taken hold by this one, there was lots of aisle-dancing; and Landslide, the stripped down closer, during which there was lots of hugging and audible disappointment that the show would soon end. 

Nicks, donning a black dress with flowing sleeves, a sequined shawl, black fingerless gloves, and, for "Bella Donna," the original silk chiffon scarf ($2,000 when purchased, "ah, shit, that's a lot of money, Stevie," said a concerned person behind me) draped over her in the 1981 promos, paused briefly after her first song and scanned the Fedex Forum. 

"You have to let us, for a minute, sink into your Memphis-ness," she said. "You know this is a very special city. This is on that list of cities — Los Angeles, San Francisco, Nashville, Memphis, New York — where you come into the city knowing those are the important shows. I'm extremely happy to be here in your musical city that has so much history." 

Each song came with a story, a bit of nostalgia about who she was and where she was when they were written. Stand Back was born after Nicks heard Prince's Little Red Corvette on the radio and wrote lyrics around his melody. After getting his approval, Prince visited her in the studio, where he played on the track, and the two played a game of basketball. A montage of photos of Prince would later appear on screen behind her, a source of motivation for Nicks. 

"The sad thing is now he's gone," Nicks said. "But when I sing Stand Back, he's here. When I'm nervous, I say, 'Prince, walk with me.' And he does." 

Nicks' storytelling broke up what could have been a traditional arena rock production. "I could do this until I'm 90 years old," Nicks said. "Because I have fans who are kind enough to listen." Her diving into the details brought a closeness to the audience, removing a wall. We could have been in her living room. When she went into Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, which she wrote with Tom Petty as their friendship blossomed, show opener Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders appeared from the darkness to sing. 

Earlier in the evening, The Pretenders' bare-bones band — drums, bass, guitar, pedal steel — showcased Hynde's magnetism. On "I'll Stand By You," Hynde's vocals were as powerful as they've ever been. Wearing a Shangri-La Records T-shirt, Hynde said the band had a better experience in Memphis this go around, visiting Graceland and Imagine Vegan instead of the jail where she was once held overnight for disorderly conduct. 

"Memphis is progressing in the right way," Hynde said. "But I didn't go to the jail where I was held overnight for kicking out the windows of a police car. They didn't want me back." 

Closing the show, Nicks revisited 1973, when she lived for three months in Aspen, Colorado on $250. One evening while home alone in a condominium where she was renting a room, Nicks' wrote Landslide on an acoustic guitar, finding the lyrics as they came to her. 

"I was a little girl, and I wrote this little song, and this little song took all of us to the top," Nicks said. "Did I ever dream I'd be in Memphis playing for you?" 

Review Stevie Nicks Live in Tulas, Oklahoma March 6, 2017

Stevie Nicks revisits storied career at BOK Center
By JIMMIE TRAMEL
Tulsa World

PHOTO: CORY YOUNG

Stevie Nicks has it. And she gets it.

Some folks are blessed with “it,” a difficult-to-describe quality that helps make a person remarkable.

“It” is a gift, really. You can’t teach it. You can’t buy it. You just have it, or you don’t.

Nicks has “it.” This was evident the second she arrived on stage Monday night at the BOK Center.

Between Nicks’ aura (swear you can almost see the glow) and that hypnotic voice (Homer’s sirens should take lessons from her), it was reinforced during a two-hour, 15-minute set that this person is a singular, special talent. Good luck finding another one like her.

And, as mentioned up high, Nicks “gets it” — she gets that she can make a concert experience more meaningful, more personal, by engaging a crowd in conversation rather than hurriedly plowing through a set list and saying “goodbye, Tulsa.”

Nicks performed, encore included, 17 songs. Before almost every song, she told a story related to the song. And, in rare instances when she went immediately from one song to another with no chit chat in between, she “back-splained” the tunes she had just sang.

I don’t know how the majority of attendees felt about Nicks shifting back and forth between sing gear and talk gear, but why in the heck wouldn’t you want a concert to be a one-of-a-kind experience with artist commentary? If all you want is song after song with no elaboration, maybe a greatest hits album should be your next adventure. Here’s to more artists using the Nicks concert format instead of being mute or predictable.

One of the first stories Nicks told was a recollection of her desire to take a break from Fleetwood Mac and record a solo album. While making her first solo album, she was told the album didn’t have a single. Thankfully, longtime pal Tom Petty had a song ready to go. He teamed with her for “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.” Nicks said the song kicked her album “right up into the stratosphere,” and a solo career was successfully launched.

Because of Petty, Tulsa has a six-degrees-of-Kevin Bacon connection to Nicks. When Petty was a pup, he lurked about Tulsa during the Leon Russell/Shelter Records era. “A lot of people used to think Petty was from Tulsa,” Dwight Twilley, who was in the Shelter Records stable, told the Tulsa World in 2010.

Petty and the Heartbreakers received the Legend Award at the 2003 Radio Music Awards in Las Vegas. The presenter was Nicks, who said at that time, “(Petty) not only started out as my greatest musical influence, but today he’s still my greatest musical influence.”

Nicks’ BOK set included a song (“Starshine”) she recorded with Petty and the Heartbreakers many years ago.

“It was really such a good track that, if either one of us had been doing a record, it would have gone on one of those records,” she said. “But neither of us was doing a record, so it went into what I like to call the gothic trunk of lost songs and there it stayed until now.”

The song is a track on Nicks’ new album, “24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault.”

Nicks’ set was a mix of new and old, of solo works and Fleetwood Mac songs (“Rumours,” the monster Fleetwood Mac album that everybody — everybody — owned turned 40 last month). Hits revisited during the show included “If Anyone Falls,” “Gypsy,” “Stand Back,” “Gold Dust Woman,” “Edge of Seventeen,” “Rhiannon” and “Landslide.”

Nicks’ told a story about how the Prince song “Little Red Corvette” inspired her to write “Stand Back.” She said she feels like Prince is standing beside her when she performs the song now.

Early in the show, Nicks sang “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and the crowd cheered when she was joined on stage by Chrissie Hynde, lead singer of the opening act, the Pretenders. Hynde said during the Pretenders’ gig that she used her spare time in Tulsa to visit the Woody Guthrie Museum.

Near the end of the show, Nicks, 68, expressed appreciation for the crowd and said she feels like she could do this for another 10 years. She’s got “it” on her side.

Review Stevie Nicks and The Pretenders - San Diego March 2, 2017

Review Stevie Nicks and her stories at Viejas Arena
by Leslie Hackett
The San Diego Union Tribune

Photo: Leslie Hackett

There’s a fine line that separates telling stories between songs and letting the music speak for itself. Last night at Viejas Arena, Stevie Nicks was on the wrong side of that line.

Sure, it’s fun to hear that “Every time that big black limo came to pick me up (to go out on tour), that would be the end of a relationship.” Or that one of her first Bella Donna-era shawls cost her a fortune, but at least, according to her frugal mother, she bought silk chiffon, which would last forever (as was proven when Nicks put it on mid-show).

but, when you go to a Stevie Nicks concert, it’s her captivating, raspy singing voice — the one that has been reeling in fans for nearly 50 years — you want to hear most of all. And that’s not what happened Thursday night.

The highlight of the night turned out to be the opening act. The Pretenders — with Chrissie Hynde, one of the two remaining survivors of the original Pretenders, at the helm — rocked the arena. The band took the stage at 7:15 p.m. and roared through 15 songs in its hour-and-15-minute set.

As for stories in between songs? There was just one.

Hynde told the audience that she and the band took a bus from their hotel to Hillcrest (which was met with a roar of applause). “I always like to get on the bus to see if there’s someone who can recognize me,” she said.

Hynde and the band members stopped in to pick up some vinyl at Record City (“Because vinyl is final!” she shouted), and she was particularly impressed by the healthy juice bars and vegetarian restaurant offerings in the area. “But it’s still not as great as my hometown — Akron, Ohio,” she said with a laugh.

While The Pretenders were the opening act, they aren’t just any opening act. The Pretenders, like Nicks, is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee band, and from opening song “Alone” to “I’ll Stand by You” to set-closer “Brass In Pocket,” they held true to the fact that they’re “gonna make you, make you, make you notice.”

As for Nicks’ musical performance, she stated from the beginning that it wasn’t going to be the traditional show she’s done a million times. Her 18-song set, which started at 8:45 p.m. and ended at 11 p.m., was mostly music from her solo albums, peppered with some Fleetwood Mac favorites, including the two encore songs of “Rhiannon” and “Landslide.” Many of those Nicks played came from what she called her “gothic trunk of lost songs.”

Probably the most powerful of the night was “Stand Back,” a song Nicks wrote to the melody of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” and for which he played some of the musical track for on the 1983 “The Wild Heart” album version.

But, of course, it was an acoustic guitar and “Landslide” that pulled the whole show together. A song Nicks said she has tried over and over to walk away from the stage without playing remains a continual fan favorite, it continues to be a part of every show. Arms locking together and warm embraces could be seen among the diverse, multi-generational audience members — a sign that Nicks, even with all of her stories, can unite an audience and end on a high note.

Review Stevie Nicks with The Pretenders Live in Portland February 28, 2017

Stevie Nicks in Portland: Fleetwood Mac hits and gold dust memories
by David Greenwald
Oregonlive.com

Photo: David Greenwald - Check out the 45 photos in the gallery

"This is a journey," Stevie Nicks said on Tuesday night. "This is a trip. I'm just asking you to come with me."

From the days of "Fleetwood Mac," Nicks has had fans who would follow her anywhere. But at her Moda Center tour stop, she was looking for indulgence: an evening of storytelling and memories accompanying rare, revived tracks from across her band and solo career, some gathered on 2014's "24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault."

"This is a journey," Stevie Nicks said on Tuesday night. "This is a trip. I'm just asking you to come with me."

From the days of "Fleetwood Mac," Nicks has had fans who would follow her anywhere. But at her Moda Center tour stop, she was looking for indulgence: an evening of storytelling and memories accompanying rare, revived tracks from across her band and solo career, some gathered on 2014's "24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault."

Nicks didn't skimp on the hits, including Fleetwood Mac staples: "Gypsy," "Gold Dust Woman," "Rhiannon" and finally, "Landslide." But she was more excited to share songs such as "Crying in the Night," a soaring, harmony-bright Buckingham/Nicks track she hadn't performed ever until this tour. It would've been a No. 1 hit if she'd given it to the Eagles.

Nearly every song came with the background behind it, and the storytelling was as compelling as the music. Nicks has always deeply inhabited the characters in her songs, and along with her indelibly witchy popular image, perhaps been too convincing as a bohemian spell-caster. The minutes with Nicks, human being, were surprising and often hilarious: she lacks, say, Cher's comic timing, but she was nearly as amusing--and much more sincere.

"I used to drop by his house, only after calling, of course," she said of politely visiting Tom Petty, whose work inspired her solo debut, "Bella Donna." "I wanted to make a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers record, from a woman's perspective."

She picked up Petty duet "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" after their mutual producer, Jimmy Iovine, got serious and told her she didn't have a single. Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde, who delivered a ferociously punk opening set, took the stage with visible joy to step into Petty's shoes for the song, and the two singers barely made it through without laughing at each other's moves.

And Nicks remembered the pre-fame days she spent waitressing and waiting for her musical breakthrough: it came for her and Lindsey Buckingham with Fleetwood Mac, and she sang "Belle Fleur" about the about the black limousine that whisked her away to rock fame and fortune. Making "Bella Donna" on her own a few years later meant convincing Fleetwood Mac she wasn't going to break up the band.

"Get it through your head!" she said, remembering the conversation.

She also paid tribute to the late Prince: after his "Little Red Corvette" inspired Nicks to write "Stand Back," she called him up for his blessing and 15 minutes later, he was at the studio to help record. On Tuesday night, the result--like so much of Prince's work--was remarkably current, a pulsing synth-rock freight-train that might've graced (or just inspired) 2011's '80s-reviving "Drive" soundtrack.

"Every time I sing that song, Prince is standing right there with me," she said.

On "Edge of Seventeen," she showcased his image on the video projections behind her, the song concluding with a nod to Prince's "When Doves Cry."

Hearing the Fleetwood Mac material apart from the band's gravity let it orbit in intriguing directions: "Gold Dust Woman" went through the heaviest transformation, gaining psychedelic weight to the point of stoner-metal. As the band went into a guitar break, Nicks head-banged, and a puff of cannabis smoke floated through section 122.

Among other revelations: it took the "Twilight" movies and their inspirational (!) teen vampire romance to lead Nicks back to the music industry after almost a decade away. She sang "Moonlight (A Vampire's Dream)" with a visual of rippling water and a full moon behind her--if this music thing doesn't work out, Nicks has a future in fantasy screensavers.

But for every behind-the-scenes moment, Nicks also gave us the comforting familiar: costume changes, tambourines and spin moves, and the captivating voice whose quivering wisdom the 68-year-old Nicks has only grown into.

"You have to believe in your heart," she advised. On Tuesday, it was easy to believe in hers.

Reviews - Stevie Nicks with The Pretenders Salt Lake City, Utah Feb 25, 2017

'Talk to Me': Stevie Nicks chats up Vivint Arena in memorable SLC return
Doug Fox Daily Herald

Photo by: Sammy Jo Hester, Daily Herald - VIEW MORE

Stevie Nicks was in a chatty mood Saturday night at Vivint Smart Home Arena.

Maybe it was because the rock icon was back in her onetime hometown of Salt Lake City. Maybe it was because she was excited to return to the road for the bonus round of her "24 Karat Gold Tour," with this show being just the second in a 20-date tour extension that kicked off Thursday in Reno following a two-month break. Maybe it was a side effect of the Gold Dust Woman's desire to sprinkle intimate insight and detail into the background of nearly every tune in her 18-song set.

Whatever the reason, Nicks split her two hours and 15 minutes on stage between singing and sharing stories from behind the music of her illustrious 44-year recording career. And you know what? Give us more shows like this -- ones where it's as if the artist is standing in your living room and carrying on a musical conversation at their own relaxed pace rather than punching some imaginary time clock monitoring exactly when they need to be off stage.

Nicks even joked about her gift of gab late in the performance.

"There's too many stories in my life," she said, before laughingly considering what her concerts might morph into another five or six years down the road. "Pretty soon, there won't be any music. It'll just be me sitting in a chair talking. It will be the cheapest show ever. I won't even need a band."

As bands do go, Nicks has always managed to surround herself with some amazing musicians, whether on stage or in the studio, a fact that was never more evident than it was Saturday night -- both in terms of live performance and with her revelations into each song's background. This has been true since she broke into music as a duo with partner/guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, continued on with that pair's tenure in Fleetwood Mac, and been a constant throughout her solo career as well. Some of her best stories revolved impromptu recording sessions with Tom Petty's Heartbreakers and Prince, among others.

Both Prince and Tom Petty had notable influences in Saturday's set. Nicks told of how she wrote one of her biggest hits, "Stand Back," on her lone wedding day, literally working through her honeymoon night on it, after hearing Prince's "Little Red Corvette" on the radio for the first time. Recognizing Prince's influence on the song, she later rang him up from Sunset Sound studios in Los Angeles to seek his permission to finish the track. He happened to be in town and showed up at the studio 15 minutes later, as Nicks said, "Dressed to the 9's in purple," to hear what they'd recorded.

"If you hate this, it's over, we will throw it in the trash right now,' " Nicks said she told Prince. "(But) he loved it. I said, 'Would you like to play on it?' And he said yes."

In true rock star fashion, Prince had brought a guitar with him in his car. He added some guitar and keyboards to the final track.

"He, like, finished in an hour," Nicks said. "(He said), 'I love it. Be seeing you.'

"Now when I sing it, he's right here," Nicks said, motioning just to her side on stage.

Nicks' collaboration with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers is more obvious, since the band literally helped catapult her solo career with the duet "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" in 1981. Short of T.P. and the Heartbreakers personally showing up, it's hard to imagine a more spirited version of the tune being performed live than this tour's rendition. As she has been doing all tour, Chrissie Hynde, frontwoman of opening act The Pretenders, walked into the "Stop Draggin' " party like she was walking onto a yacht, strolling confidently out to thunderous applause during the first verse. There was so much genuine interaction between Nicks and Hynde, as well as guitarist Waddy Wachtel, that it was blatantly obvious how much fun everyone was having.

In the grand tradition of concert "walk-ons" -- where artists from other bands on the bill make a guest appearance in another's set -- the best ones tiptoe the tightrope between rehearsal and spontaneity. In this, "Stop Draggin' " was a huge early-set success. Although planned, it seemed to catch most of the crowd by surprise. Additionally, whether true or not, it appeared as if Nicks and Hynde almost decided on the fly who would take some of the lead vocal lines.

Nicks alluded to that after the song, saying that with so many singers -- five in this song, counting Wachtel and full-time backup singers Sharon Celani and Marilyn Martin -- it is hard to keep track of who, exactly, is supposed to sing what.

"You tried your hardest just to smooth it over," Nicks laughingly said to Wachtel after the song, "but you just couldn't do it."

Wachtel, who in addition to lead guitar duties is also the band's musical director, has been with Nicks from the start. He literally performed as a session musician on the "Buckingham Nicks" album in 1973 that led to duo's destined decision to join Fleetwood Mac the following year. Wachtel has played on every one of Nicks' solo albums and tours, and his performance -- not to mention his wild frizzy hair -- also figures prominently in the band's live show.

Nicks' latest album, "24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault," provided the perfect template for her strong storytime approach. The album features a collection of songs that Nicks wrote and recorded over the years that for some reason never quite fit musically or timing wise into any of her other projects. Over time she metaphorically placed them in her "gothic trunk of lost songs."

She played three songs from that album -- "Belle Fleur," "If You Were My Love" and "Starshine." The latter song, which Nicks co-wrote and recorded with Petty and the Heartbreakers (she thinks around 1979), certainly sounded like it could have been a vintage single for either of them, and helped drive home the sometimes fickle nature of the music industry.

"I wasn't doing a record (at the time) and he wasn't doing a record," Nicks said. "If either of us had been doing a record, it would have been on it. So it went into the gothic trunk of lost songs."

Nicks' set was extremely well paced in terms of song selection and running order. She could have filled the entire show with hit singles -- but to her credit, she didn't. She only played four Fleetwood Mac songs, and branched out into much of her lesser-known solo material as well. In less-capable hands this might have been a bit of a gamble, but it was no threat to a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer of Nicks' stature.

To be sure, Nicks did scatter hits occasionally throughout the show, before backloading it with four songs guaranteed to garner a great reaction. An especially intense 10-minute version of "Gold Dust Woman" set the beginning of the end in motion. That was followed by the main set-closing "Edge of Seventeen." The encore featured "Rhiannon" and "Landslide," two songs from her Fleetwood Mac debut. Nicks noted that she has sang both those songs every single performance since they were written.

"I wrote this song in Aspen," she said of "Landslide." "I wish I'd written it here."

Nicks owned the crowd from the moment she walked on stage in her trademark platform heel boots, flowing black dress, black fingerless gloves and an ever-changing array of scarves, shawls, jackets and capes.

One such cape, by the way, was the silk chiffon one she wore on the "Bella Donna" album cover. The cape, she said, cost her $2,000 in 1981 and remains in perfect condition today. She laughed considering what her mother would have said at paying that initial exorbitant price tag.

"(But) $2,000 over 35 years is a very good price," Nicks noted.

That's very likely the sentiment anyone in attendance Saturday night will have years from now when they look at the price on their ticket stub. Seeing someone of Nicks' legend, caliber and overall talent, still performing at a very high level, is not an opportunity to be missed. You simply can't put a cost on gathering memories like that -- or missing out on them.

Adding to the value of the night's entertainment, The Pretenders, also a R&R Hall of Fame act, performed a tight 15-song, one-hour set. The band showcased both new and old material along with well-known hits "Back on the Chain Gang," "My City Was Gone," "Middle of the Road" and "Brass in Pocket."

Pretenders frontwoman Hynde runs the show, naturally, along with the animated efforts of lead guitarist James Walbourne, original drummer Martin Chambers, and the more laid-back efforts of bassist Nick Wilkinson and keyboardist Ricky Peterson. Peterson deserves special notice for pulling double duty, as he also is a member of Nicks' touring band.

In one sense, Nicks and Hynde are polar opposites. Hynde, rocking her signature fringe mop hairdo, hit the stage in skinny jeans, a T-shirt and a short-waisted pink tuxedo jacket, which she removed six songs in. But in another sense, Nicks and Hynde are kindred spirits who can rock with the best of them. As unlikely as it sounds, there are fewer sights more pure rock and roll than seeing the statuesque Hynde, bent at a three-quarters side angle, jamming on a harmonica with her Fender Telecaster slung behind her back during the end of "Middle of the Road." Perhaps you had to be there.

On any other night, The Pretenders would have been the talk of the town. In this tour, however, Nicks gets the final word.

Concert review: Stevie Nicks’ “gothic trunk of lost songs” filled with magic moments

By Eric Walden, 

The Salt Lake Tribune

"She was magical. Make sure you put that in your write-up," my wife insisted upon leaving Saturday's Stevie Nicks concert at Vivint SmartHome Arena in Salt Lake City.

She had a point. How else to explain an artist I had no particular affinity for prior to entering the building delivering two and a quarter hours of the best concert-going experience of my adulthood?

Magic seems as good an explanation as any.

OK, so you could argue that many of the live performances — bolstered by two guitarists, a bassist, drummer, Hammond organist, grand pianist, two female backing vocalists, and the occasional Nicks-shaken tambourine — were infused with a depth and energy that isn't always apparent (to me, anyway) on her recordings.

Still …

That hardly tells the whole story, though Nicks proved quite adept at just that, often preceding or following the tunes that comprised the night's setlist — many pulled from her "gothic trunk of lost songs" — with meandering, colorful and humorous tales.

Among her topics of conversation:

• Her two-plus years growing up in Utah: "My parents threatened to send me to that Catholic [high] school downtown if I didn't get a B-plus average [at Wasatch Junior High]. … That place turned out to be a lot fun! It was coed! I didn't brag about it 'cause I knew they'd whip me out of that school and put me in a convent."

• Her humble pre-Fleetwood Mac career: "I was still a waitress and a cleaning lady, and I had a Toyota Corolla with no reverse. And all of a sudden I'm flying first class and riding in a limousine — something I never thought I'd do unless I was the one driving it."

• Her expensive-yet-theoretically-practical fashion proclivities: "This is the original 'Bella Donna' cape. My mother, if she were standing here, would fall over if she knew how much it cost. It was $2,000! It's made of silk chiffon! … But look at it — not even a loose thread anywhere. So, you take $2,000 and spread it over 30-something years … now, all of a sudden, if my mother was standing here today, she would say, 'That was a very good choice of fabric!' "

Nicks also spun yarns of having to promise not to break up Fleetwood Mac in order to make her first solo record (but giving her label a panic attack by quasi-joking that what she really wanted to do was join Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), having nothing to do one night in Brisbane, Australia, and winding up "thoroughly and completely in love with the love story of Bella and Edward" after getting sucked into the first two "Twilight" films, and meeting a young Prince sometime between 1975-77 "when hardly anyone knew who he was" and remarking to him, "You don't say much do you? You need to talk a little more."

Of course, Nicks also has a way with words in her songs, and she proved equally enchanting there over the course of her 18-tune setlist, which included four selections apiece from Fleetwood, 1981's "Bella Donna" and 1983's "The Wild Heart," three from the 2014 rarities collection "24 Karat Gold," two from 2011's "In Your Dreams," and even one from her original "Buckingham Nicks" album from 1973.

She got the crowd rolling early by having The Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde trade lines with her on her Petty duet "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" (with guitarist Waddy Wachtel taking on Petty's parts). Other highlights included the ethereal, "Twilight"-inspired "Moonlight (A Vampire's Dream)," the unexpected electro rave-up "Stand Back" (an offshoot of Prince's "Little Red Corvette"), and the main-set closer "Edge of Seventeen," which had the audience dancing and singing along on all those "Whooooo! Whooooo! Whooooo!"s.

Really, though, just about everyone's favorite moments came in her Fleetwood performances. "Gypsy" got the crowd swaying, and the encore included "Rhiannon" and a sparse acoustic guitar and piano arrangement of "Landslide," but perhaps the singular moment of the entire evening was the hypnotic-and-transfixing-yet-swaggering run through "Gold Dust Woman."

Hynde and The Pretenders opened the night with a no-frills hour of straight-ahead rock, starting off a bit flat before settling in and catching a groove around their fourth song in. Her mid-set trifecta of "Back on the Chain Gang," "I'll Stand By You" and "Don't Get Me Wrong" would've been her inarguable highlight if not for her rousing, set-closing edition of "Brass in Pocket."

When The Pretenders wrapped up, Hynde told those assembled, "Stevie will be on in about 20 minutes. Don't go anywhere!"

Great advice — unless, of course, you'd simply already had too many magical moments in your life.