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.

Stevie Nicks and Soundstage

WOW! This is starting to get exciting.... Check out the new pics from Stevie's upcoming Soundstage on PBS!

Stevie-Nicks.info posted these along with a link to the Iowa PBS station previewing the pics....

Very nice!

Starting around the middle of July, this 2 part Soundstage performance should start airing all over PBS networks in the US. In September, it's scheduled to be released as a DVD/CD package.

Stevie Still Enchanting (Boston Review)

Rock goddess Stevie still as enchanting as ever at 60
By Lauren Carter
Monday, June 23, 2008

Rock’s resident goddess doesn’t appear ready to give up her title anytime soon.

Fleetwood Mac member and solo star Stevie Nicks rocked the Bank of America Pavilion last night with a verve that belied her 60 years: A roar of “Let’s go” before the ethereal “Outside the Rain” set the tone for the night, and a variety of fist pumps, wails, coos and a flick of the microphone any moody hard rocker would be proud of made it clear that Nicks’ signature intensity is still going strong.

After 25 years onstage touring solo, certain elements of Nicks’ show remain comfortably predictable: the hard-rocking opener, “Stand Back,” the ruffled black dresses and multiple shawls, the microphone draped in jewels and scarves, the flowing blond hair, and the enchanting twirls that crowds go wild for.

But amidst the signature atmosphere and a lineup of classic solo and Mac hits, there were a couple of new additions during Nicks’ 90-minutes-plus onstage, including the pleasant surprise of Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash.”

Vocally, Nicks warmed up throughout the night, her voice a soothing medium on “Dreams” and a sandpaper flame on “Rhiannon,” “Gold Dust Woman” and the bluesy “How Still My Love.”

With help from a tight band anchored by guitarist and longtime musical director Waddy Wachtel, she took on the multiple personalities her songs demand, from the poignant “Landslide” to the hard-driving “Edge of Seventeen.”

How similar Nicks really is to the otherwordly enchantress she plays onstage, we may never know. But a show is still a chance to step inside her temporary world - a world of white-winged doves, billowing clouds, snow dreams and mysterious painted women, a world of intense love and loss, where shawls are used to create metaphors and unicorns frolic in an onscreen enchanted forest.

Even as the years pass, the trip remains worth it.

Nicks is known for bringing along young female singer-songwriters as opening acts, and this time around, Mandy Moore got the call. The once-teen-pop starlet showed off a decidedly folkier side last night with a stripped-down set that put her voice front and center.

Looking eerily like a young Nicks, Moore was especially powerful on the wistful “Wild Hope,” but hasn’t completely closed the door on her past - she ended with a rootsy rendition of her breakout hit “Candy,” albeit with a few self-deprecating chuckles along the way.

Stevie Nicks Never Seems To Change

Stevie Nicks: The rock goddess appears in the Toledo Zoo Concert Series Wednesday
By DAN FIRESTONE
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Article published Sunday, June 22, 2008

Stevie Nicks never seems to change.

Legends don’t have to.

The rock and roll gypsy has twirled her way through a career of dreams, mesmerizing her faithful fans for more than 30 years now.

With flowing chiffon and lace and a leathery voice, Nicks has pretty much kept her style throughout her time with supergroup Fleetwood Mac and a successful solo career that is being highlighted on her current tour.

Nicks spins her way here for an appearance at the Toledo Zoo Concert Series at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, in a show that will focus on solo material, with a few of her Mac classics tossed in. At 60, she seems to always be on tour — alone, with Fleetwood Mac, or even, as she did a few years back, with Eagles member Don Henley.

She rose to fame in the 1970s when she and then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham, whom she met in high school in California, joined the British-based band Fleetwood Mac.

Mick Fleetwood, the band’s drummer and leader, heard the two on a demo tape, and without even an audition asked them to join himself, bassist John McVie and singer-keyboardist Christine McVie.

The band made history with the 1977 release of “Rumours,” which stayed at No. 1 on Billboard’s charts for 31 weeks. It became the biggest selling album in history at that time, with sales of 19 million in the United States and 30 million worldwide. It won a Grammy for album of the year and included “Dreams,” a Nicks classic which also hit No. 1.

“Rumours” was a follow-up to Fleetwood Mac’s 1975 self-titled album that also topped the charts, thanks largely in part to Nicks’ hit single “Rhiannon,” and her unforgettable “Landslide.”

In the process, she created mysterious rock goddess persona on stage in the pre-MTV days. She was aloof and sexy and rarely gave interviews.

She was dubbed “Queen of Rock” by Rolling Stone magazine, causing friction among Mac’s members that resulted in brilliant songwriting but the end of relationships.

“Lindsey and I both loved each other, not just because we loved Lindsey and Stevie, but because we loved what Lindsey and Stevie did,” Nicks recently told the British magazine Telegraph. “And that is definitely what kept Lindsey and me together for as long as we did stay together. It’s not that he’s not a great love — he is a great love.
And I write songs about him to this day. I don’t know why. But whenever we’re together we fight — to this day.”

Nicks and Buckingham had actually achieved some mild success as a duo before joining Fleetwood Mac. The sounds that drove the early success of the group can be heard on the cult classic 1973 “Buckingham Nicks” album.

“I think, in Lindsey’s heart, he thinks if we hadn’t joined Fleetwood Mac, we would still have become famous, and we probably would have gotten married and probably would have had kids and probably would have lived in San Francisco, his hometown, and our lives would have been very different and we probably would have never done drugs. It’s possible,” she told Q Magazine in Great Britain.

Through all the fighting and broken relationships – Nicks and Buckingham split, the McVies divorced – the band continued on with tremendous success. But in 1981, Nicks launched her solo career, which was immediately successful.

“Bella Donna,” her debut album, sold 5 million copies, hitting No. 1 and spawning the hits “Edge of Seventeen,” “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” (with Tom Petty), and “Leather and Lace,” (with Henley) — all still staples on classic rock radio.

It didn’t spell the end to Fleetwood Mac, however, as Nicks has weaved her creativeness between both ventures while becoming one of the biggest influences on a generation of female rockers, actually writing more hits as a solo act than she did for the band.

Including greatest hits packages, she’s released nine solo albums and had major hits in the ’80s like “Stand Back,” while still cranking out timeless songs for FM like “Sara” and “Gypsy.”

Her songs stand the test of time, a clash of mystical poetry with a raw rock sound that appeals to both her male and female fans.

“I was only doing my solo career to have another vehicle for my songs,” Nicks told Q. “When you’re in a band with three writers [including Buckingham and Christine McVie] and you do a record every two or three years and there’s 12 songs on an album, that’s not much for somebody that writes as much as me. I adored being in Fleetwood Mac.”

She was back touring with Mac most recently in 2003 when the band (without Christine McVie) launched “Say You Will,” its first studio album in 13 years. Still oil and water off stage, Nicks and Buckingham remain magical together on stage.

Her personal history has been told over and over — battles with drugs, a soap-opera love life that included Buckingham, Fleetwood, and her record-producer Jimmy Iovine, as well as Henley and fellow Eagle Joe Walsh.

Except for a very brief marriage to the widower of her best friend from childhood, Nicks has remained single and never had children.

When VH1 made its century-ending list of greatest women of rock in 1999, Nicks was on it at No. 14. Of course, viewers had another opinion, ranking her No. 1.

In recent days, Nicks has devoted herself to causes such as support for wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, aiming to use music in the rehabilitation of soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. She gives hundreds of iPods away on her frequent visits.

Last year she released another greatest hits package, but hasn’t done a studio album since “Trouble in Shangri-La” in 2001.

Perhaps life on the road led to the recent selling of her mansion near Phoenix in a “downsizing” effort, Nicks said. She spends more time away, even now, than she does at home.

She’s still Stevie, still a rock-and-roll gypsy.

Stevie Nicks performs at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Toledo Zoo Amphitheater. Tickets are $99.50, $75, and $49.50, and are available from Ticketmaster outlets or by calling 419-474-1333, or at www.livenation.com. Tickets at some prices are available at the zoo box office.