“It’s gonna crack,” warned a slightly under the weather Lee Ann Womack. “And I’m gonna miss notes.” But Womack has been around long enough to know that everybody has a different idea of perfect. In fact, her voice sounded great at City Winery Wednesday night, and if any notes fell imperceptibly shy of the mark, the effect only served to underscore her knack for adjusting on the fly, whether tweaking the setlist or in a greater sense, tweaking her entire career.
There was never any question Womack could sell out the appropriately intimate venue. She’s already played the pop game, selling millions and playing to thousands, but her most recent album, the excellent “The Way I’m Livin’,” consciously downsizes country from its overinflated current trends. Nonetheless, Womack remains a star, and nursing a nascent cold or no, she carried herself like someone keen enough to know how to make the best out of a bad situation, whether calling the right songs over the course of her hour long set or (behind the scenes) dealing with an industry that recognises her greatness but doesn’t quite know what to do with it.
Fortunately Womack’s instincts remained rock solid Wednesday as she picked and chose from her catalog not just the songs best for her throat, but also songs that worked together, thematically. In the hellraising “The Way I’m Livin,'” the subject, already on the way down the wrong path, hits up the Devil himself for a bottle of booze, but Womack followed it with the heartbreaking “Send It On Down,” a desperate prayer for divine intervention from a hard-drinking small town woman looking for a way out. Later Womack found an equally smart pairing in “Last Call,” sung from the reluctant recipient of a late night ring, and the George Jones classic “You’re Still On My Mind,” which might as well have been from the perspective of the guy making the phone call.
Womack’s ear for great songs remains as strong as her ability to inhabit them but even so, Buddy and Julie Miller’s “Does My Ring Burn Your Finger” and the latter’s “Don’t Listen to the Wind” suited her remarkably well. Womack’s take on Rodney Crowell’s “Ashes by Now” gave the song an extra kick, just as an understated rendition of her crossover hit “I Hope You Dance” teemed with tempered optimism of the bittersweet kind equally suited to graduations, weddings and funerals. That song was a huge hit back in 2000, but if nothing else Womack has sung has reached those platinum commercial heights, she showed again and again that she still carries the spark and soul that can spin anything into gold.
Klein is a freelance critic.
Twitter @chitribent