Lee Ann Womack At City Winery, Monday, April 20th, 2015 Reviewed

It was all strategic.

Playing a big time media gig at New York City Winery , Monday night, with a bad cold, a hacking cough, a million miles from the high notes, and the media, including Billboard, out in numbers to watch her present her fine 2014 album The Way I’m Livin’, the only way Lee Ann Womack could get through the set without capsizing into fits or losing her voice was through a strategy. Three quarters of the way through the set she sent drummer Dave Dunseath , bassist Sam Grissom, and acoustic guitar and violinist Zach Runquist off stage and with just lead guitarist Ethan Ballinger for company,  “real country” star Lee Ann  performed an exquisite “Fly”, refusing to strain and lose her voice, she quieted everything down and saved herself.

We lost some stuff, no “I’ll Think Of A Reason Later” and a strangely reconfigured setlist which saw Lee Ann turning it upside down, choosing “Buckaroo” after an audience request though you’d think that would be a little on the louder side, putting a couple of quiet songs back to back before heading to the sets climax, she managed the evening carefully and smartly. It was years of experience born to do one thing: provide a fine music experience when one of your greatest strengths is missing, it was like pitching ball without your slider.

Yes a loss, but we gained something anyway. We got a feel for the real Lee Ann: raised in Jacksonville, Texas, a stone’s throw from George Jones home town, where her daddy was a DJ at a local country station, and where she spent her childhood listening to real country, the Dollys and the Tammy’s and the Lynns, and finally following her muse to Nashville, where she cut her career in half, leaving off to have a family and then returning in 2000 one husband down and one on the horizon, to break pop with “I Hope You Dance” . Discussing “Buckaroo” she expressed an ethos so exacting it should be written in a book for all would be popstars to study; explaining how she hooked up with her second husband, former A&R guy for Decca Nashville and country record producer, Frank Liddell (he discovered Miranda Lambert as well) she said “He worked at the record label and kinda develop me as an artist. I didn’t like him when I first met him. I grew up in East Texas listening to real country music and that’s what I wanted to do, then this guy in an office was going to show me how to make a country record and that wasn’t working. Then he found me my first number one hit and I married him and that’s how that goes.”

The set was a lesson in strategy and a lesson in that’s how that goes, opening with her usual one two, self-prophecy “Never Again ,Again” and blues country rocker “All His Saints”, she settled down into a carefully modulated mix of old favorites and new songs, from old time heartbreaker “A Little Past Little Rock” and new time heartbreaker “Chances Are”. Lost life “Twenty Years And Two Husband Later” and classic cover “Wayfaring Stranger” and made it her own cover “Ashes By Now” , all topped off by “the song that got us to the Opry” “I Hope You Dance” and with personal best “Solitary Thinkin’”  somewhere around the midway –which includes one of the great country couplets:

“There’s two things that’ll kill a girl

They’ll strike her down right where she stands

One is his voice and one is the rock glass sitting in my hand”

The set was too short, a scant 75 minutes, but none of it was wasted and here is two more observations:

1 – I had a bad cold the other week and went to see Sufjan Stevens anyway and the Beacon was really quiet and try as I might, I couldn’t stop coughing. Lee Ann didn’t break up once; she was a study in self-control.

2 – Since we were discussing Liddle earlier, I saw Miranda Lambert at MSG last month, and somebody should take her by the hand and sit her in front of Lee Ann. Pacing, yes, but also the personal, the witty, the control of her band (a good country rock crew), just the sense of where things should go and when. I wrote about opening act Amanda Shires misjudged “Bulletproof” yesterday, it was a mistake I can’t imagine Womack making.

Womack’s was a classic country rock performance, which managed to show the seams of her performance and, somehow, you don’t notice it is an evening in progress: like a magician who shows how she does a trick and still leaves you baffled. Lee Ann has an incredible voice “How are we gonna live without her voice after tomorrow?” Amanda asked Jason Isbel during the opening set. “We’ll have to take her home with us”. With a cold, with her range shot to hell, she worked round the limitations and still performed a fine set.

And that’s how that goes

Grade: A