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SXSW review: Bonnie Bramlett
“Push the Aretha button!”
Thus spoke Bonnie Bramlett to her soundman before her Wednesday night set at Pangaea. But truth be told, there was little need to juice the voice that once beguiled Eric Clapton and Leon Russell and helped bridge the gap between Etta James and (to cite but one example) Susan Tedeschi.
There might have been too much echo added to Bramlett’s voice in the sound system, but her warmth and immediacy transcended any technical shortcomings. She’s old school, referring to Marlboros and such as “cig-a-rates,” effusively praising her bandmates and the songwriters whose material she samples and the audience she seemed determined to entrance.
Along with mixing up her set between driving, Muscle Shoals-flavored rockers and ballads, Bramlett also found time to dip into the songbooks of Stephen Stills (“Love the One You’re With”), Delbert McClinton (“Sure Got A Way With My Heart”) and her brother Randall Bramlett, who also accompanied her on keyboards.
There were some flat spots—a deliberately paced rendition of Robert Johnson’s “Come On In My Kitchen” that illuminated nothing new in the material, and a heavy-handed topical song called “Some of My Best Friends”—but Bramlett changed mood and tempo as though she were channel surfing. And, no, that’s not a criticism.
A certain piquant pleasure was to be had in watching Pangaea’s regulars, in a roped-off VIP section, sipping premium-priced champagne as Bramlett employed some soulful Dixie body English to wring the last bit of juice out of a lyric.
It’s the sort of ironic tableau that seldom works in a song, so she just took a running start and used that still-formidable voice to punch a hole in another new tune entitled, appropriately, “Shake Something Loose.”
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