Nicks lacks spark

Nicks lacks spark
By Bill Thompson
June 26, 2008

Stevie Nicks brought a treasure trove to National City Pavilion Thursday night.

It included a handful of legendary songs (“Rhiannon,” “Dreams,” “Gold Dust Woman” and “Edge of Seventeen”), a dazzling array of shawls, vintage video that chronicled her career since she joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, and photographs that paid homage to her late father, Jess.

She also brought a talented 10-piece band and more than 30 years of experience as a big-time rock star.

What she didn’t bring, however, was a spark; that certain something that sets a concert apart from a rote reading of greatest hits.

The majority of the 3,000-plus fans didn’t seem to mind. They stood and cheered from the first notes of “Stand Back,” yelped when she went into her patented twirling dervish moves (made even ... twirlier ... by silhouette lighting), and waited patiently during extended instrumental breaks while she changed from a black dress to a white one, then a different white one.

Folks love their Stevie, and it’s not surprising. She’s the real deal, a bona-fide Rock and Roll Hall of Fame singer-songwriter who was at the core of one of the most popular bands of all time.

But that’s precisely the reason she should be held to a higher standard. Even though Nicks turned 60 last month (she’s closer to the edge of seventy than seventeen), she’s still in fine voice. But the stage show settled for ritual -- an interminable trip across the front of the stage to shake hands with every member of the front row of the audience while a security guard held her from behind -- instead of a passionate performance of those classic tunes, which had women in the crowd high-fiving each other despite the lackluster delivery.

Nicks has settled for a comfortable niche instead of searching for that inner vixen that helped to fuel the phoenix that was Fleetwood Mac in its heyday. In a way, it’s understandable. She’s worked hard, and if the rumors are close to true, lived hard as well. She deserves to enjoy her success.

But it would be great to see some of the fire in her eyes that you hear in her voice on songs such as “Silver Springs” and “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.”

Ironically, it was during the simplest song of the night that Nicks allowed a peek behind the scripted banter. After dedicating “Landslide” to her father, she sang loud and clear accompanied by longtime compadre Waddy Wachtel on acoustic guitar, as the photos of her life flashed across the background.

Moments like those are what gives one hope that she will dig deeper to uncover her treasures next time around.

“Our lipstick and boots are on!” (Toledo Show Review)

Nicks battles storms during late show at Toledo Zoo
By DAN FIRESTONE
BLADE STAFF WRITER

Stevie Nicks has a powerful song, “Storms,” from the Fleetwood Mac album, “Tusk.”

Perhaps she should have added that to her set Wednesday night while performing at the Toledo Zoo Concert Series.

A rain and lightning storm blew through the area just before the scheduled 7:30 p.m. concert and pushed back the start of the sold-out show until nearly 10.

Nicks will never doubt the faithfulness of her fans in Toledo, who waited the two and half hours in unpleasant weather to see the rock legend at only her second performance here and the first since 1986.

“Our lipstick and boots are on!” that familiar voice said over the loudspeaker near the end of the long delay, explaining she’d be out as soon as she was allowed. “We’re sorry about this damn rain!”

Soaked and more than ready to rock when the legendary singer finally took the stage, the crowd roared with the first beat of “Stand Back,” and stood for the next two hours as she carved through hits from her solo career, some of her finest tunes with Fleetwood Mac, and adding three songs from other artists.

In her traditional black dress draped by a red shawl, she followed with the perfectly fitting, “Outside the Rain,” from her solo debut album “Bella Donna,” then went right into “Dreams,” her No. 1 hit with Fleetwood Mac.

“Thunder only happens when it’s raining,” Nicks sang in the chorus as the crowd loudly joined in while getting drenched and basking in the irony of the lyrics. Nicks and her band were getting rained on to, but they seemed to go with the moment and never missed a beat as she was handed a large umbrella to perform under.

Again and again she thanked the audience for waiting, seeming genuinely appreciative of their patience. By then they didn’t seem to care and as the rain slowed and finally stopped, their energy rose.

For those familiar with seeing Nicks alone or with Fleetwood Mac, it’s on her solo tour she gets to engage the audience more with anecdotes about each song, her career or her life.

“We were all sitting around and someone said, 'If anyone falls in love, I hope it’s one of us,’ and I went home and wrote this song,” she said, then performed “If Anyone Falls,” a hit from her second album, “Wild Heart.”

It was also a refreshing change for those who have seen Nicks multiple times to see her change things up and add cover songs by Dave Matthews (“Crash”) and Bob Seger (“Face the Promise”). The former she said is part of her upcoming PBS special, and after hearing the latter, fans probably wish it was to.

Nicks is backed by an outstanding band, led by guitarist Waddy Wachtel, and backup singers, most whom she said have been with her since beginning her solo venture in 1979.

At age 60, Nicks showed she still has the vocals to rock with the best of them.

Maybe equally amazing is Nicks looks nowhere near her age. If that’s 60, God bless 60 (or at least He did with her.)

She started “Rhiannon,” with a delicate, slow version, just her haunting voice backed by a piano, then launched into a pulsating finish, one of the best songs of the night.

“Sorcerer,” was a song from her last solo album (“Trouble in Shangri-La,” 2001) but she harked back to the time it was actually written.

“It was 1973. Lindsay [Buckingham, her Fleetwood Mac bandmate and former boyfriend] and I were angst-ridden and we were poor. You know, great songs are written when you’re poor.”

“Gold Dust Woman” time-warped the baby-boomer audience right back to the ‘70s, as Nicks still delivers an amazing, stirring rendition of the song from the Mac’s mega-selling “Rumours” album.

“Landslide,” was especially moving, as Nicks dedicated the song, as she always has, to “my dad,” who died three years ago. The giant screen behind her displayed a photo tribute to him, taking the audience on a visual ride of her childhood and the final years with her father. Nicks was nearly drowned out by the audience who sang along to every single word.

After exiting for a moment, Nicks returned with her familiar top hat and ripped into “Edge of Seventeen,” finishing by reaching out to the audience, touching as many hands as she could.

It was still a full house when she came back for an encore, performing Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” and you can probably count on one hand the number of female singers who can do that justice. Nicks, of course, is one of them.

That was it because the long delay and a curfew didn’t allow her to showcase with a second encore, “Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You,” as ballad she has been doing on this tour and dedicating to the U.S. soldiers she’s been supporting with gifts of iPods and visits.

But it had been a long night, and most didn’t even know that, and it had been a long wait for Toledo to have Nicks here again.

Rain or shine the tickets say.

It rained, and Nicks shined.

GIFT OF SCREWS TOUR!

If the title of the tour wasn't coming from his own website, I would not have believed it!.... GIFT OF SCREWS TOUR! How appropriate!!

Lindsey Buckingham's website indicates these are the dates for his Sept/Oct shows:

Sun, Sept 7 - Saratoga, CA - Mountain Winery
Tue, Sept 9 - Seattle, WA - Moore Theatre
Wed, Sept 10 - Portland, OR - Newmark Theatre
Fri, Sept 12 - Lake Tahoe, CA - Harrah's Casino
Sat, Sept 13 - San Francisco - tbd
Sun, Sept 14 - Los Angeles, CA - Royce Hall
Tue, Sept 16 - San Diego, CA - Humphreys
Thu, Sept 18 - Phoenix, AZ - The Orpheum Theatre
Fri, Sept 19 - Anaheim, CA - The Grove of Anaheim
Sat, Sept 20 - Las Vegas, NV - The Joint
Mon, Sept 22 - Salt Lake City, UT - Depot
Wed, Sept 24 - Denver, CO - Opera House
Fri, Sept 26 - Tulsa, OK - Brady Theatre
Sun, Sept 28 - Kansas City, MO - Uptown Theatre
Mon, Sept 29 - St Louis, MO - Pageant
Wed, Oct 1 - Cleveland, OH - House of Blues
Thu, Oct 2 - Chicago, IL - House of Blues
Sat, Oct 4 - Milwaukee, WI - Pabst Theatre
Sun, Oct 5 - Indianapolis, IN - Eygptian Theatre
Wed, Oct 8 - Toronto, ON - Music Hall
Fri, Oct 10 - Reading, PA - Sovereign PAC
Sat, Oct 11 - Atlantic City, NJ - Taj Mahal
Tue, Oct 14 - Northampton, MA - Calvin Theatre
Wed, Oct 15 - Ridgefield, CT - Ridgefield Play House
Fri, Oct 17 - Boston, MA - Berklee Performing Arts
Sat, Oct 18 - Glenside, PA - Keswick Theater
Sun, Oct 19 - New York, NY - Nokia Live

Also, this must be the title of the new cd coming in August otherwise why use the name? Finally after all these years, a cd that was being put together and worked on in the 90's as a solo release which ended up being shelved is finally going to see the light of day...

The track listing will have to be drastically different then the bootleg copies floating around since a couple of the tracks ended up on his last cd Under The Skin and on the last Fleetwood Mac cd Say You Will.

Soundstage.... Season 6 - Stevie Nicks

I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!

After six years of incredible shows, Soundstage is proud to present one of our best line-ups yet with a diverse roster of legendary and chart-topping performers worth staying in for.

Liven up your summer and tune in each week as Grammy nominated Josh Groban kicks of a phenomenal season with performances by Bon Jovi, Kenny Chesney, Matchbox Twenty, REO Speedwagon, and Stevie Nicks!

Check your local PBS station listings for Stevie's airdates beginning in July. SOUNDSTAGE

Stevie Nicks - Boston Review Number 45!

Stevie Nicks
by Brian Callaghan
EDGE Contributor
Wednesday Jun 25, 2008

Before going to the Stevie Nicks concert at the Bank of America Pavilion Sunday night, there was significant worry she might have crossed over into the realm of self-parody. Would it all be a mess of lace shawls, dervish spins, bleating vocals and freaky hippie chick dancing?

While all of those elements featured prominently in Nicks’ show, the star acquitted herself well, putting on an entertaining and musically formidable concert of songs from both her Fleetwood Mac and solo careers.

Nicks is now 60, but looked much younger. With her long straight blonde hair and wrinkle-free skin, you could easily confuse her for Jenna Bush’s 40-year-old older sister. Her voice was strong and as distinctive as ever, and she wisely surrounded herself with an outstanding 7-member band and three talented back-up singers, many of whom have toured with her for years.

The evening kicked off with a good version of Stand Back, with the classic keyboard riffs Prince provided when the song was first recorded. This was followed by Outside the Rain, a well-received Dreams and an impressive version of If Anyone Falls in Love, a 1983 hit this reviewer had long ago forgotten.

Nicks chatted frequently with the audience between songs, providing little bit of info about their inspiration. Sorcerer, from 1973, was described as being written at a time when she was living with Lindsay Buckingham, waitressing to make ends meet and barely scraping by.

Landslide was dedicated to her father, Jess Nicks, who passed away a few years ago, and was accompanied by a slide show chronicling the life of the singer and her family.

Rhiannon and Gold Dust Woman, the two other Fleetwood Mac songs she performed, showcased her trademark sheeplike warble but her voice was powerful and clear throughout the hour and 50 minute, 14-song performance.

The Mac songs were all wisely performed in extended versions, with playful instrumental preludes that built some excitement before the actual song was revealed.

Edge of Seventeen, with its chorus of "Just like a one-winged dove," was the only other major solo hit she performed. Other well-known songs were missing in action, including Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around, Leather and Lace, The Insider and Sara.

Taking their place were unexpected covers of Dave Matthews’ Crash Into Me, Bob Seger’s new Face the Promise, and even a terrific version of Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll, during which the vibrato in Nicks’ voice all but disappeared.

Guitarist and musical director Waddy Wachtel led the proceedings, which included a few too many musical solos in the second half of the show. One wished for a few less indulgent solos and one or two more hits.

By surrounding herself with a great band, Nicks proved it’s possible for an artist with a 35-year career to still keep things fresh and exciting, which the near sell-out crowd embraced enthusiastically.

Opening was singer Mandy Moore, who was pleasant and friendly. Knowing most in the audience would be unfamiliar with her music (and having disavowed herself of her first few albums), Moore wisely included Cat Stevens’ Moon Shadow" and Joni Mitchell’s "Help Me I Think I’m Falling" in her set list, providing the audience with a couple popular anchors to latch on to.

Sunday, June 22
Bank of America Pavilion, Boston

Rhiannon rings like a bell thru the night.....

All your life you've never seen a woman - taken by the wind.

Swirling, twirling Nicks captivates

Stevie Nicks delivered a two-hour show filled with her past hits.

By Jonathan Perry
Boston Globe Correspondent / June 24, 2008

As if anyone needed a reminder of the influence Stevie Nicks has had on pop music, "Bootlylicious," the Destiny's Child hit built on a sample of Nicks's "Edge of Seventeen," was piped over the house public address system before we got the real thing Sunday night.

The appetite-whetting tease was one not-so subtle reminder - opener Mandy Moore being the other - of the vast difference between a pop star and a genuine artist. As one of rock's most successful songwriters and original voices, both with and without Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks is both.

When the first signature twirl of her gold-flecked shawl came, mere moments into a percolating and percussive "Stand Back," Nicks's fanatically devoted audience roared its approval. It was an auspicious start to a two-hour, career-surveying set at the Bank of America Pavilion that was crammed with many highs and few lows: beloved evergreen hits, power-ballad misses, and poignant moments.

Impeccably supported by a seven-piece band led, as always, by longtime musical director and guitarist Waddy Wachtel, as well as a trio of backup singers, Nicks took a twirl and a tour through a catalog more than three decades deep, and nearly as wide. Considerably less wide, however, was the 60-year-old Nicks's vocal range.

While her voice, clear and strong in the sound mix, was as inimitable and often as affecting as ever, it stayed, for the most part, within a narrow melodic framework. There were fewer highs hit on a still-graceful but somewhat flat "Dreams," for instance, the song's gilded edges blunted and gauzy embroidery all but cleared away. And why perform a flaccid cover of the Dave Matthews Band's turgid "Crash Into Me" when we didn't get "Gypsy" or "Sara", or any number of other Nicks classics?

As if to make up for this brief (but unfortunately not brief enough) lapse in judgment, Nicks and Co. offered a dramatically stirring "Rhiannon," then hit soon after with the baleful, brewing storm of "Gold Dust Woman." A pulse-quickening version of "Edge of Seventeen" was an epic curio, stretching into a well-meaning but distracting meet-and-greet receiving line with the adoring faithful.

If an encore cover of Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" was the night's throwaway thrill, then "Landside," a tender meditation on the passage of time, was its most elegiac moment. Nicks dedicated the song to her late father, and gave it a gorgeously glistening reading as family photos of dad and daughter gently bled into one another on the stage screen.

Onetime pop goody-two-shoes and perpetual smiler Mandy Moore opened with a cloying 45-minute set of karaoke-bar cover songs meant to demonstrate how, at age 22, she's all grown up and has discovered Cat Stevens and Joni Mitchell. With a voice and personality as bland as generic toothpaste, the fact that Moore's been handed an enormous public platform to say absolutely nothing original felt like an insult to the artists she so earnestly covered.

Lindsey Buckingham in Reading PA - October 10th

Another date has appeared on ticketmaster adding a third date to Lindsey's tour itinerary...

From what I've heard, he's going to be touring for approximately 5-6 weeks this fall... If you can see him, grab a ticket! Seriously, you won't be disappointed - he puts on a really great show.

READING, PA
FRIDAY OCTOBER 10, 2008
SOVEREIGN PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

BRE PRESENTS
AN EVENING WITH LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM

Stevie Nicks keeps on rockin' (Boston Review)

By Jay N. Miller
For The Patriot Ledger
Posted Jun 23, 2008 @ 01:16 PM

QUINCY — Stevie Nicks’ star quality continues to shine unabated, even if some of the vocal subtleties have changed.

Nicks, who turned 60 a month ago, and her 10-piece backing band delighted a near sellout crowd of about 4,600 Sunday at Bank of America Pavilion with a two-hour show that touched on all phases of her career, and added a couple of surprises.

With a band led by longtime leader Waddy Wachtel on guitar (who also served as Warren Zevon’s bandleader), and including such rock stalwarts as Scott Plunkett on piano, Ricky Peterson on organ, Lenny Castro on percussion, and Carlos Rios on second guitar, Nicks boasts one of the best groups anywhere. The arrangements stuck close to the hit versions of her songs, but extended many into gloriously pulsating workouts that had the throng singing and sweating along.

One minor detail was that Nicks’ voice seemed to be harder than usual, without the velvety quality that marks some of her biggest hits. This could just be from the strain of the current tour, and it didn’t detract from the material as much as just give it a new twist. It wasn’t so much Nicks’ emotional vulnerability that the vocals conveyed, as perhaps in the original renditions, but a kind of world-weary resilience born of a lifetime of experience.

“Stand Back” was the rumbling opener, with Nicks appearing in a red shawl flecked with gold, over a black pant suit. Frankly it took most of this hard-rocking song to get the sound balanced, as the drums were burying everything else early on. By the throbbing rocker “Outside the Rain,” Wachtel’s slide guitar and the rest of the superb band were coming through loud and clear. Nicks played with the lines in “Dreams,” dragging the tempo a bit as the crowd sang the chorus to that Fleetwood Mac mega-hit gleefully.

“If Anyone Falls” from 1983 was an apt example of the different vocal sound, as that tune’s delicate trilling lines of enchantment became more stark, open imperatives. Nicks explained she had done a live show for PBS, which will be released this summer, and wanted to cover a favorite songsmith. Her take on Dave Matthews’ “Crash Into Me” was done with just two acoustic guitars and her backup vocalists, for an effect that was both more reflective and more sensual.

Plunkett’s lovely piano interlude introduced “Rhiannon,” as just a piano/vocal duet, that soon took off into a pounding rock charge that electrified the arena.

Nicks reminisced about her days waitressing and songwriting at night, in introducing ‘73’s “Sorceror,” and backup singer Sharon Celani provided the second half of what was a dual vocal on the ballad. Bob Seger’s “Face the Promise,” a tune about life on the road Nicks claimed she hadn’t sung for 25 years, was probably the night’s hardest rocker, with a fiery Wachtel solo.

Since her father’s 2005 death, Nicks has been doing “Landslide” as an acoustic tribute to him, with photos from their life together. Sunday’s was done with just Wachtel’s finger-picking accompaniment, and turned into a communal hymn with the crowd singing along quietly.

“In the Still of the Night” and “Edge of 17” were the pulse-pounding rockers that finished the regular set. Nicks returned for a blistering run through Led Zeppelin’s “Rock ’n’ Roll,” wearing her Mad Hatter’s chapeau.

Finally Nicks ended with a softly moving “Has Anyone Ever Written About You?” as pictures of soldiers flashed on the screens. Nicks has been working with the USO since 2004, and has sponsored an effort to provide iPods full of music to returning, and especially wounded, service personnel.