Bonnie Raitt Returns

THE LEGENDARY ARTIST PERFORMS AT TANGLEWOOD 

By Anastasia Stanmeyer

By Ken Friedman

There is nobody quite like Bonnie Raitt. The songs that she has performed have touched the lives of so many people—tracks like "Something to Talk About," “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” “Angel from Montgomery,” “Made Up Mind,” “Nick of Time," “Just Like That,” and many more. She has been described as a voice of an angel and plays the blues like nobody’s business. The singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose unique style blends blues with R&B, rock, and pop has earned her 13 Grammys®, but despite the high honors, Raitt is incredibly humble and gracious. In 2023, she walked on stage in disbelief at the Grammy Awards ceremony to receive Best American Roots Song, then Best Americana Performance, and Song of the Year for "Just Like That.” “I don’t write a lot of songs, but I’m so proud that you appreciate this one,” she said. Last December, Raitt was honored at Kennedy Center for 50 years of musical excellence, with Brandi Carlile, Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris, Dave Matthews, Keb’ Mo’, Susan Tedeschi, James Taylor, and Jackson Browne performing songs that she is known for. (See page 36 for a talk with James Taylor.) When we recently spoke, she was in the middle of what she loves most—a string of live performances. She will be making her way back to the Berkshires on Sunday, August 31, to play at Tanglewood. 

Anastasia: Bonnie, I was doing a bit of research about your time in the Berkshires. You started playing at Tanglewood in ’76, and the last time you were here was a few years ago, in 2022. You also played at the Music Inn earlier than that.

Bonnie: Many, many years ago, the Music Inn was our main gig in Western Massachusetts.

Anastasia: I see that the first time you played was back in 1973 with John Prine. Then in ’74 with Mose Allison and with Steve Goodman back in ’75, John Lee Hooker in ’77, and solo in ’78. What a history in the Berkshires! What do you think about when you think about this region?

Bonnie: The fans have always been so incredibly enthusiastic for the kind of music I do and the other artists who were in the Music Inn shows. A high point of our summer touring was to come and play in the Berkshires.

Anastasia: Looking at your setlists from back in ’76 at Tanglewood, the songs included “Women Be Wise,” “You've Been in Love Too Long,” “Love Me Like a Man,” “Give It Up or Let Me Go,” “I'm Blowin’ Away,” and “Runaway.” Do you still perform those songs?

Bonnie: Oh, yeah. We do a smattering of songs always from the big albums, Nick of Time and Luck of the Draw, and with 21 albums to draw from, I don't want to forget the fact that those fans came to see me in the early ’70s. I always go back and rotate some of songs that are special to them and to me, like “Love Me Like a Man,”or “Women Be Wise.” “Angel from Montgomery” is one I've played every gig since I met John Prine in ’71, so I would never leave that out. But there are way too many albums of songs that people always wished we played, and we just can't get around to all them. We play about 17 songs when we have a strong co-bill, like we're doing with Jimmie Vaughan this time at Tanglewood. He’ll come out and do a couple at the end of our show, which I'm really excited about.

Anastasia: Are you a completely different person now than you were 50 years ago?

Bonnie: I like to look at chapters of my life as everything was part and parcel of how I ended up here at 75. I wouldn't change any of it. So, the core of who I am, in terms of social activism and the music I love, has really stayed the same. And I like to think I'm a wiser and more mature and certainly living a healthier lifestyle than I did in my 20s.

Anastasia: What would you tell your younger self?

Bonnie Raitt at Tanglewood, 1991. By WALTER SCOTT

Bonnie: Some of the lessons you just have to live, whether they're romantic relationships that you look back and go, “Oh, man, I didn't see that coming.” All the relationships I've been in have been wonderful for that time period. And you just outgrow each other, or you move from the East Coast to the West Coast, and you have to break up, like people do when they go away to college. I really wouldn't change too much, including having as much fun as I could after the shows, and traveling with a big band of musicians, and the whole lure of—I don't want to say drugs, sex, and rock and roll—but partying after the show was really fun, just like it is for people who finish the workday and come home at 7 o'clock at night and have dinner with their family and then relax. For us, relaxing is 11 o'clock at night. In my mid-30s, there were lifestyle changes that I needed to make. The things that you got away with or had fun doing in your 20s just don't sit with you as well in your 30s. So, I wouldn't have changed anything sooner as my younger self, but I was glad that I got sober when I was 37. Whatever excuse I had of trying to be a blues mama and keep up that late-night lifestyle and smoke and drink and all that, that sort of went out the window. I was really grateful that I was one of the ones who made it through without killing myself or anybody else.

Anastasia: What can we expect when you return to Tanglewood on August 31 with Jimmie Vaughan & The Tilt-A-Whirl Band?

Bonnie: Jimmie and I have known each other and played together when he was in The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and I was friends with his brother, Stevie Ray. We all were part of the Austin blues scene when I'd come through town, and we did a lot of touring together in the ’70s especially. So it'll be a great reunion. The last time I played at Tanglewood was literally the biggest audience I'd played to in many, many years. It was almost 17,000 people. My recollection not only was it a great show for the audience and us, but it was freezing. It was 55 degrees. So, I’m hoping it’ll be warmer. It'll be a great celebration. What you can expect is me going back to some deep cuts from albums that not everybody has. I'm at the point where I’m pretty good at picking songs that work live and jettisoning the ones that don't feel right for this era. We'll play the ones they expect.

Anastasia: Do you ever get tired of performing “I Can't Make You Love Me,” or any of those other popular hits?

Bonnie: I don’t. It's different every night. I grew up with my dad, John Raitt, basically rotating summer stock, every summer. He played in the show Carousel, where he was the original leading man, and Oklahoma!, and also he was the originator of Sid Sorokin in Pajama Game. He later went on to do Music Man and On a Clear Day and Shenandoah and Zorba and a lot of different other shows, but he made every night opening night. And I mean that sincerely. I watched him imbue those songs and the production as if he'd never played them before. Every night now, I get really deep inside, especially the ballads, because if I ever start phoning it in, I'll hang up my spurs. Every night is a different opening night. Some of those people are seeing me for the first time, and some of them have seen you many times, and you want to show that you still have the emotional connection with them for those songs that mean as much to me as they do to them.

Raitt at Americana Honors & Awards in 2016. By ERIKA GOLDRING

Anastasia: What was it like growing up in a household of music?

Bonnie: I grew up in a combination of Westchester, New York, where my dad was on Broadway and in Pajama Game, and then when he was in the movie with Doris Day, we moved back out to California in ’57, and I stayed there from seven until 15 years old. It was fun being in LA because there was a lot of other kids at my school who were the children of people in show business. My folks were Quakers … and not flashy. They were deep. They were politically involved with the ban the bomb movement and the civil rights movement and then save the redwoods, and taught us a real ethic of fairness and social justice early on. My mom was my dad’s music director and pianist, and he would rehearse for his concerts and for his shows downstairs. It was just fantastic. I knew all the words to the shows. It was a thrill being part of that behind-the-scenes Broadway road life. He took the shows out to the people, and that's what I'm doing. I couldn't care less if I had a hit record, and he couldn't care less if he had a hit Broadway show. He just wanted to take the music out to people.

Anastasia: You must have been exposed to a lot of music storytelling when you grew up.

Bonnie: Yes, those Rodgers and Hammerstein story songs that are in Carousel and Oklahoma!, in particular. Hearing the stories about what it was like to go through the Depression and go through the Second World War, and then the early days on Broadway for my folks who were raised in a religious background, to suddenly be part of this Broadway scene. They were riding across the country on trains, and there were swear words in Oklahoma!, and all that. It was pretty fun to hear their eye-opening stories about hanging out with Ella Fitzgerald and Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra, and to hear the stories about the early days of the peace movement. Those social activism stories were just as interesting to me as the show business ones. My greatest education came from hanging out with the blues artists I opened for when I left college. I ended up striking it lucky and was offered a record deal on my own terms when I was 21 years old. To travel with Muddy Waters and Sippie Wallace and Mississippi Fred McDowell and "Big Boy" Arthur Crudup, and to hear the stories about what it was like with racism and growing up on plantations, or, in Sippie’s case, the vaudeville circuit and the classic blues circuit. That was an invaluable background, just like listening to my folks talk about the early days of their careers. It was fantastic.

Anastasia: What is it about the blues that moves you so much?

Bonnie: It’s the music for me. When I was eight or nine years old, I really could tell the difference between Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. Little Richard was killing me and The Isley Brothers. The Beatles and The Stones fell in love with American R&B and covered a lot of those songs and turned America onto our own blues tradition. I would have never heard about Slim Harpo and Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters if it wasn't for both the folk music revival of those blues artists at Newport and the recordings of them, and also the British invasion. They turned us on to tons of R&B records that we didn't get to hear on our pop charts. So, it was kind of a cross-pollination. I fell in love with it and couldn't get it out of my system.

Anastasia: There’s no way a person can describe you in one genre of music. I recently talked with Sonny Rollins, and he quoted Duke Ellington as saying, “There's only two kinds of music, good or bad.” Do you agree?

Bonnie: I love that quote. I wasn't expecting a career in music. I was just a fan. Aretha Frankin and Ray Charles and Tony Bennett and my dad, they were singing all kinds of different songs from different writers, and it was Dylan and then later James Taylor and Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell who broke into the singer-songwriter realm, where people actually performed mostly their own songs. That was something that I admired so much. But I found for myself that the tradition I come out of is mixing it up. What's a great song? It’s so subjective. What's the right song for me to do? It could be “Dimming of the Day” by Richard Thompson or “Angel from Montgomery” from John Prine, right next to some great Big Mama Thornton cover or some R&B covers that I've done, or rock and roll songs. It's the mixture of songs that I really love. That's what keeps me interested.

Anastasia: I was watching a clip of you when you were in your 20s, and I thought how incredibly poised you were, and how totally comfortable in your skin you were.

Bonnie: Oh, thank you! I had the blessing of having been raised in show business and watching people not have control over where they worked or what they got paid, or the quality of the things that they signed up for when they just needed a job. I always said, if I was going to do this for a living, I would not have anybody tell me what to record or with whom, or how often, or what to wear, or “We want you to have a commercial hit or we’re not backing you.” I just would have stopped and gone back to being a college student and an activist. I was pretty savvy. In my personal life, I was a lot more vulnerable and not as confident as I was when I stepped into the professional part of me. Which always cracks me up, because I think of the Wizard of Oz, when he goes, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” I’m just a regular person with vulnerabilities and foibles and mistakes and addictions and all that, but when I step into the professional realm or as an activist, I think I can hold on to the power line a lot more easily.

Anastasia: What do you do to protect yourself as far as your voice and your physical and mental well-being?

Bonnie: What an incredible gift the internet is to be able to turn younger people onto the roots of the blues. Maybe they find some local metal band that they like, and then they read in an article or on their website that they loved Led Zeppelin. Then you look at who Led Zeppelin loved. Within a half hour, you can go back and discover everybody's albums. That’s an incredible gift. So, aside from that gift, the internet, email, and texting have saved my voice, because I used to spend a lot of time phoning friends or making arrangements for a guest list or after-show get-togethers the next day or a day off. I don't use my voice as much. That's one way I take care of my voice. The other way is I warm up for a half hour. And I didn't used to do that. I used to just sing an easy song first in the set. I've been sober 38 years. I eat organic, and I try to get outside and get some fresh air and get my heart rate up. I do a pretty serious yoga and weight practice three or four times a week. That all helps me to be more limber and flexible and strong at 75 than had I been on the path I was on in my 20s and 30s.

Anastasia: I'm fortunate to talk with you, as well as with Joan Baez, Rosanne Cash, and Ani DiFranco recently. There’s something about these feminist icons, like you, who are committed not only to their music, but to social activism. Joan told me that there's no separating the two.

Bonnie: I agree, and she was one of my main inspirations. Pete Seeger and Joan, and groups like The Weavers and Woody Guthrie, practiced the whole tradition of using your voice to raise attention and sometimes funds. We all know that some grassroots group trying to stop a toxic incinerator near a Black community in the middle of Ohio isn't going to get any press attention. But some artist comes in and speaks at the rally or sings at the rally, then the news stations cover it. The town criers that artists have been for years, we're just reflecting the conscience of the culture. I think it's important to be responsible and informed if you're going to speak out. I also don't preach from the stage. When people are there to see my concerts, I don't subject them to my political views. I might make a barbed comment here or there, if I can't help it. We always have grassroots groups tabling, local groups that are working on issues that we think are important, primarily food insecurity, safe and clean energy, and all of that. I don't proselytize, but certainly I like to speak out and raise my voice and use the funds from the tour to contribute to groups that don't have access to corporate money like the big guys do.

Anastasia: Where are you the happiest, on stage or recording?

Bonnie: Definitely on stage. It's a total transformative exaltation. There’s nothing like what happens between the audience and us on stage. It's why you put up with the other 22 hours. We don't have a real heavy schedule. We work five months out of the year, four days a week. It's really a wonderful thing to be on the road. I make records so I have new songs to play, not the other way around.

Anastasia: When did you pick up the guitar?

Bonnie: I went to summer camp while my dad was doing summer stock. He primarily toured in the summertime, eight shows a week, and switched over to theater in the round. There were a lot of tents. Broadway stars would take their shows all around the country. And so my brothers and I went to a Quaker camp up in the Adirondacks, which was run by dear friends of my folks. And there was all kinds of international counselors and kids from all kinds of backgrounds from the East Coast and around the world. Folk music was taking off in the late ’50s at colleges. The folk music revival that started with the Newport festivals caught fire. My counselors were all singing folk music around the campfire, songs by Joan Baez and Odetta and Pete Seeger. And I learned how to play the guitar. I tried it out, and I asked my folks if I could get one for Christmas. When I was just a month shy of nine years old, at Christmastime, I got my first guitar. I played folk music like my counselors did. I asked for a Joan Baez record, and then I played Odetta records. Then I played Bob Dylan songs. I heard country blues on the Newport ’63 album. That’s the first time I heard slide guitar in a blues context. My grandfather played Hawaiian lap steel guitar when he played hymns sometimes, and that was really fun to hear. Once I found out that you could just move this bar back and forth, you could easily play all kinds of songs without learning the chords. That ease has never stopped being fun for me. So, about 15 or 16, I started playing slide guitar.

Anastasia: I was just listening again to your latest album, Just Like That, and I’ve read the story about how the title song came about. Do people reach out to you about the songs that you have sung?

Bonnie: Yeah, especially after “Just Like That” won the Song of the Year, which was a huge surprise to everyone on Earth, including me. Within a few days, at the website for the lyric video for “Just Like That,” there were 4,500 messages from nurses and doctors, people who wanted to donate their beloved’s organs, but the bureaucracy stopped them from being able to get to the person that needed them. I found out how disorganized and backed up the bureaucracy was, and that only something like 3 or 8 percent of the organs actually find people that desperately need them, and that those people lose their lives because of it. I've gotten letters from people who got to hear the heart of their beloved’s in someone else's chest, the way that I was inspired to write the song. Their children are living because of the donation and the kindness of another family that donated the organs. That song has gotten more response than I ever would have expected. I was doubly overwhelmed, just in tears for days, reading the beautiful letters. People can still go on that site and read them. Within a few months, President Biden announced that they were going to overhaul the organ donation system and make it easier. Who knows whether Jill Biden giving me that award that night at the Grammys®, maybe she went back and was able to focus with her husband on that issue. The ripple effect of that song has been incredibly beautiful for me, and something that I never would have expected.

Anastasia: My sister was a transplant patient, and we learned that one of the donors was an 18-year-old young man who died in a motorcycle accident. Your song reminded me of the life that was passed on from one person to another.

Bonnie: I’ve gotten so many letters, and I keep them all. I also get a lot of letters about “Nick of Time” when that song came out. There’s a lot of people who say that they played it in the delivery room when they didn't think they'd ever get pregnant. They wanted to honor that song and what it meant to them. That made me really happy.

Anastasia: How do you pick the songs that you sing from other artists? 

Bonnie: I do a lot of research and a lot of listening. When I did an INXS cover of “Need You Tonight,” I knew I was going to cut that. It was just a question of which album. I knew that I wanted to sing “Dimming of the Day,” but I wanted to wait about two or three decades between my version and Linda Thompson, who did such an exquisite version. I wanted to let hers live on its own. After a while, I went, “You know what? Life is short. I got to be able to sing this every night.” I always pay tribute to Richard Thompson when I sing it. So, a lot of it is just the fun part of listening to oldies stations or going through my old record collections and digging deep under cuts of artists I already love, and I may find some jewel that I didn't know about, and then I cover that. But, usually, it starts with just me being a fan. 

Bonnie Raitt with special guest Jimmie Vaughan & The Tilt-A-Whirl Band will perform at Tanglewood on Sunday, August 31, at 7 p.m. bso.org/tanglewood