Gritty from a Safe Distance
At a Lucinda Williams show, we confronted the reality of aging — hers and ours.
I saw on my phone that Lucinda Williams was coming to town, and believing that most other people also liked Lucinda Williams, I thought there would be a great rush to get tickets. I stabbed at my phone a few times and soon was the owner of some choice seats for her appearance in downtown Portland.
Going to a concert of folk/rock/country music, or whatever it is that Lucinda Williams writes and sings, is out of the ordinary for my wife and me. I have no musical talent and little musical taste, only a few haphazard song lists on Spotify that I play in the kitchen when I am cooking or cleaning. During the Christmas season, we go to one obligatory performance of holiday music, but that’s about it for our concertgoing. We watch Jeopardy every night after the news. When the questions have to do with popular music, I know none of the answers.
Lucinda Williams was playing at the Roseland Theater. Portland’s city center has several nice entertainment venues. The Roseland is not one of them. The Roseland is to entertainment what dive bars are to drinking establishments.
I was dismayed that Lucinda hadn’t been booked at a more upscale venue, but in a way, the Roseland fit the sad, gritty music that she writes. The main floor of the Roseland only has standing room, an experience far too extreme for old suburbanites like us, who like to experience our gritty from a safe distance. We bought good, expensive seats in the balcony.
On the night of the concert, I didn’t really want to go. It is something that happens to me every time I schedule an outing these days. I schedule it in a fit of enthusiasm for getting out of the house and into the stream of life, and then when the day arrives, I regret I did. I go anyway because I spent the money on it and, when it is all over, I am happy that I went. I repeat this pattern every time, but actually going happens less and less as I age.
We live in the suburbs. When going downtown at night, we take Uber. No driving at night through the rain and the wet nighttime glare for us. Our young, competent Uber driver dropped us off at the Roseland at 7:30 P.M., plenty early enough to get to our seats and people watch until the eight o’clock start time.
At the entrance to the Roseland Theater, we are funnelled through a metal detector by young people in bright yellow t-shirts emblazoned with the words “Event Staff.” They look like people who aspire to be roadies. One of these folks sees my wife’s cane and approaches us to ask if we need to use the elevator to the second floor, where the music happens. We say yes and are told to wait in line, where we get to watch an argument between two large women and the aforementioned event staff about whether they can bring in water bottles they allege contain “medical grade water.”
Before we learn whether medical-grade water will be allowed in, we are led away to a frightenedly rickety freight elevator. We make a mental note that at the end of the concert, we will risk our lives on the stairs rather than once again in that elevator.
Our seats are in the front row of the balcony, where we have an excellent view of the standing room only audience below. I was not surprised that our row was filled with gray hairs, or in my case, no hair. People my age don’t want to stand and have the money to buy a place to sit. I was, however, surprised to see how many gray heads there were down there, elders braver than me, for sure.
There were young people in the crowd below. Or should I say middle-aged people, who I consider young. But Lucinda herself is old. Not as old as Mick Jagger, but still old.
Then Lucinda Williams came on stage. I knew she was about my age and had suffered a stroke in 2020, but seeing her for the first time in person was a shock. A stagehand assisted her to the microphone, where she gripped the mike stand with both hands, using it for support, and kept both hands firmly there for the first three songs. The years and medical problems, had been harder on her than ours have been on us. The voice, however, was still there.
Whenever I go to see touring musicians in small local venues, I feel sorry for them. They swoop into town with a rental truck full of equipment, set up, perform, tear down, and head for the next town, sleeping in hotels and eating delivery or in nearby restaurants. Even when they put on a great show, they always look tired, like they really just want to go home. I want that for them.
I told this to a musician friend of mine. He couldn’t understand. My ideas about a good life were not his at all. Life on the road playing music was the only life he ever wanted.
I wanted Lucinda Williams to be at home on a porch, knitting, sipping tea, and stroking her cat. Not humping from one shithole venue like the Roseland to the next. It was no life for an old lady still coming back from a stroke or the sad, past-middle-aged California musicians who backed her up. I imagined them having families who missed them and who wanted them home. Where they should be.
The old audience in the standing room only portion of the venue swayed and waved and clapped with as much energy as they could muster, but never reached the frenetic level that a bunch of 20-year-olds would have maintained. Half-way through the performance, one of my people, an old man who had misjudged his vitality, collapsed and had to be whisked away by the yellow-shirted event staff.
Towards the end, Lucinda released her grip on the microphone stand to sway and dance slowly for the appreciative crowd, a flicker of old fire, but my sense of her fragility was set and would not be dislodged. It was too little, too late.
On the Uber ride home, my wife and I shared our impressions. Lucinda had played all of my favorites except one, so I felt sated. My wife, who’d had her doubts about the entire enterprise, had been energized by seeing live music again. Going out caused us to stay up later than usual, but we were in bed before midnight.
I hope Lucinda Williams was too.
Sign up here to receive our free weekly newsletter featuring the best of Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age.
