Bonnie Raitt performed together with her band and her support Mavis Staples at ICC Darling Harbour on 7th April 2023

Review by Katie McMurray

“I’m here to bring you joy. I want you to feel happier than when y’all came in here.”

Our evening begins with Mavis Staples promising to take us higher and higher. The show starts with Maples playfully percussing her wobbling cheeks. Then she struts over to wing man and lead guitarist, Rick Holmstrom, to joyfully whack him on the shoulder. Over and over, in time to the music. She becomes opalescent in her flowing butterfly blue costume under pink lights. Illuminated as a stained-glass window, Staples is our preacher tonight.

The ICC Darling Harbour theatre produces sparkling sound and Staples compliments the quality of the auditorium. Let’s mention her age because we need to know Mavis Staples is 83. She is the last touring member of The Staples Family Singers. She was raised to sing gospel and is preaching all the while on stage. The gentle, fun communion of her two backing singers (hooray for more older women on stage), bandleader and ripping guitarist Rick Holmstrom, drummer Stephen Hodges and bassist Jeff Turms; supports the loving emanation who is Mavis Staples. Staples’ addresses racism, hope and sticking together in her lyrics and on-stage preaching. All-the-more meaningful; this woman has lived nearly a century, this turbulent American century.

The most touching moment of the set was a sweet song penned by her father Pop Staples, Friendship. We could all relate, “We got friendship, don’t you know? The kind that lasts a lifetime.” Most surprising was her rendition of Talking Head’s Slippery People. She warned us afterwards “Watch out for the slippery people”.

In 2019 she released We Get By, produced by and featuring Ben Harper. On the album we experience Staples troubled, feeling alone and heartbroken,

“In a world so lost, so dark, so afraid, it cuts you to the bone…Now all that we are is the living ghost of our youth.”

The political song Change made President Barack Obama’s 2019 favourites list. While warning of division and darkness, Mavis Staples thankfully guides us towards light and love. Who else can take the audience on a transcendental journey with the song lyrics, “Sha- na boom boom…”?

Mavis Staples set included I’ll Take You There, Friendship, Anytime, Come Go with Me, I’m Just Another Soldier, Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha-na Boom Boom). Tonight, Staples sang for peace and racial acceptance, urging we help each other. While her beautiful baritone deepened and clarified through the night, Staples praised her Lord with joy and music. As promised, she made us happier than when we arrived.

Arriving on stage with her guitar slung, Bonnie Raitt announced she’d left one boot in Melbourne, so she was wearing the boots of someone named Noodles, from backstage. “They’re a little higher than I’m used to.” Raitt’s dry humour continued, “I like it when the band don’t know what they’re playing next. I feel powerful. Like Trump.”

Raitt wears her own power lightly. We’re experiencing one of the world’s greatest guitarists and slide guitarists, also named one of world’s greatest singers – and an acclaimed songwriter. An unlikely acolyte – a teenage female; red-haired and fair-skinned – Raitt sat at the feet of the world’s greatest surviving blues musicians. Meeting Son House changed her life. Mississippi Fred McDowell, Junior Wells and Sippie Wallace appeared in her early music career and she recorded with Earl Palmer. She acknowledges Ry Cooder and Lowell George for the influence on her slide. In charmed restraint, her guitar playing never leaves the song. It might wail towards infinity, yet every note is strung to Raitt’s heart, and her sexy humour. Let’s mention her age too, 73!

Her songs range from the life affirming story of Just like That to the cheeky Something to Talk About. On that topic, Raitt says, “It’s been a while”, then brightens, saying she hopes to run into Jackson Browne (a friend, collaborator and touring partner) at Blues Fest in Byron Bay. Her voice is an equal star in this brilliant show. Sometimes crushed velvet on silk, others its silk on crushed velvet. Raitt’s warm timbre shares the love, suffering and humility of folk, country and the blues. She is both a descendent and creator of the styles, insisting on staying inspired. After fifty years she is still taking music forward and we join her on this night’s ride.

Her song choices include a cover of INXS’s Need You Tonight, which she recorded for her 2016 Dig in Deep album. Raitt brings her sensuality too, “There’s something about you boy, that makes me sweat.” Raitt ‘don’t wanna hurt nobody’ either but gives us a flaming slide lead for Talking Heads’ Burning Down the House: “I’m an ordinary girl, and I’m burning down the house”. We can’t catch a Talking Heads show, but tonight we experience the mighty Staples and Raitt covering their songs.

Fun and friendly on stage, Bonnie Raitt name-checks Sam Neill: “Hope you like this one baby.” And Jimmy Barnes: “A cooking show huh?!”. She tributes her friend Renee Geyer, “A difficult woman, in the most perfect way.” She is also an activist; fundraising performances are an important part of her life work. She co-founded the Rhythm and Blues Foundation to address the inequity of royalty income paid to R&B and Motown artists.

Opening with the words “I am an old woman…” Angel from Montgomery is a prayer for a life worth living. It was written and recorded by the immensely talented and supremely beloved John Prine, who sadly passed away due to COVID. Raitt introduces the song with tenderness and performs its frailty, tapping on our hearts.

Raitt has been nominated for thirty Grammy Awards and recently won her thirteenth, the Song of the Year for Just Like That. It’s a ballad, inspired in style by her recently late, great friend John Prine. She’d caught the news story of a transplant recipient visiting the mother of the man whose heart he received. He asked would she like to put her head on her son’s beating heart. Our own hearts stop as she tells the story, keeping it humble – with no mention of the recent Grammy.

Raitt is supported by Ricky Fataar on drums; James Hutchinson, her bass player of forty years; new band members – guitarist Duke Levine and Glenn Patscha on keyboards. There is deep humanity and musical brilliance as these two older women speak and sing to us. Between them they write and perform from a combined 156 years of life. When they sparkle, we go high places. When they mourn, our tears spring. The pandemic took away the Blues Festival and now it’s returned. Sydney audiences received plenty enough shows to oil our neglected grooves. We needed you tonight, Bonnie and Mavis.

-Eastside Radio Reviewer Katie McMurray