Beth Hart 2022 – Thankful Tour
March 5, 2022
Foxwoods Great Cedar Showroom
Beth Hart a well known performer in the blues community gave a fantastic, soulful and saucy performance at the Foxwoods Grand Cedar Showroom on March 5 to a receptive audience glad to be back in a theater to hear the much-missed singer. Picking up her schedule again in the New England area where Covid had canceled so many concerts last year both Beth and the audience were ready for a great night of good music.
This is Hart’s Thankful Tour and also a showcase of her new album “A Tribute to Led Zeppelin.” Beth opened the show with “Dancing Days” and “When the Levy Breaks” off her new album and tributes to Led Zeppelin. These two numbers started the night with a promise of an energetic performance.
Hart introduced her band consisting of Jon Nichols on guitar, Tom Lilly on bass and Bill Ransom on drums. All of them great musicians on their own but the combination delivered a dynamic blend of talent for the night.
During the performance Hart starts off at the mic either standing or comfortably sitting on the edge of the stage, or on a stool. She’s comfortable in whatever position she feels like taking at the moment. At times her strutting and expressions resemble Mick Jagger and his ability to amble the stage, dancing and crooning with a frenetic energy that just draws you in. Then in the blink of an eye she can switch to a song that brings up a painful or poetic memory in her life and you can feel the emotion projected in her music.
Beth has a gift of conveying emotions so well she brings you into her mind and gives you a sense of how she felt dealing with whatever pain, joy, gratitude or anger she experienced in the moments that were the inspiration for each of the songs. She prefaces some songs with the background of her life and what happened to make the song so meaningful for her. It’s genuine feelings of heartbreak, sometimes joy, but either way she paints a picture of it all through her music so very well. I looked around and saw some around me tear up during a couple of numbers, perhaps she drew out some emotion they felt in their life the songs pulled out. But that’s the blues and she does it so well.
After a few songs with the band Beth went to the piano and gave beautiful versions of “I Need A Hero” and “Leave The Light On” and “Woman Down.”
The last four songs after the band rejoins her are at the front of the stage with Beth comfortably seated surrounded by her bandmates in close folk style staging. They start with “Sugar Shack” a catchy fast paced toe tapper. Beth is such an expert at taking the audience from heartfelt numbers in crooning blues to road trippin’, knee slapping songs she plays the audience’s emotions as much as she does the guitar and piano.
Then she starts “The Boogieman” a song never released on an album but haunting in a tale of the forgotten, shamed and discarded of society and the lifelong toll it takes to the point some snap. We all have boogiemen she reveals the shape some take in our fears.
Hart included the song “Isolation.” An eerie song of being in a psych ward under in isolation and the whispers going through someone’s mind during that time. She has only performed this a few times on tour.
For her encore she sang “Thankful.” The audience gave Hart and the band a standing ovation. It made many reflect on Covid and conflicts we are going through as a nation and the world as a whole. The fact that we have come through the worse we hope and after losing so many and so much we can still laugh, sing and cheer all together in a theater once again is reaffirming that no matter how hard the struggle we didn’t lose faith just as Beth Hart has done through her life and career.
This was a fantastic show and I recommend that if you get the chance to see Beth Hart live go for it. Now more than ever a live show is a salve for the mind and soul and there is no better to see than her for an evening of great music.
Review by Donna Erichsen
Photos by George Bekris
Setlist:
Dancing Days
When the Levee Breaks
If I Tell You I Love You
Your Heart Is as Black as Night
Tell Her You Belong to Me
Bottle of Jesus
Chocolate Jesus
I’ll Take Care of You
War in My Mind
Rub Me for Luck
Mama This One’s for You
I Need a Hero
Leave the Light On
Woman Down
Sugar Shack
Fat Man
Isolation
The Boogieman
I’d Rather Go Blind
Encore:
Thankful