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]

Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham on cover of UnCut

OUT NOW IN THE UK:

Buckingham McVie are on the cover of Uncut, and inside in an exclusive interview, Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie reveal all about their new album as a duo, and how it fits into the storied past, present and future of Fleetwood Mac. “It’s that umbilical cord that can’t be broken,” says Christine. “It just pulls you back.”

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.