Put Bettye LaVette on stage most anywhere and being blown away is a guarantee.
And when it happens in her home state, the genre-hopping singer — still a powerhouse at 76 — takes it to another level.
The Muskegon-born LaVette’s return to The Ark in Ann Arbor on Sunday night, Feb. 20, was filled with special occasion moments. Her daughter and grandchildren were in the house, for starters. Her band members, led by guitarist and musical director Brett Lucas, were all from the Detroit area. And though she performed at Detroit’s Sound Board in September, LaVette told the Ark crowd that Sunday’s show was a return to the last place she headlined before the pandemic shutdown in March of 2020. “Trust me on this,” she told the Ark crowd, “we are SO happy to see you. From the Rolling Stones to little ol’ me, we are.”
So LaVette, who played a four-night stand at the prestigious Blue Note in New York earlier this month, had every reason to make this show special — or, at least, even more special than what she usually does. She certainly achieved that over the course of an hour and 45 minutes, applying tackling a robust 15-song set that touched on various points of her 60-year career, from her 1965 single “Let Me Down Easy” to selections from last year’s “Blackbirds,” an album paying tribute to female singers who preceded an influenced her.
Whether it was a gut-bucket spiritual interpretation of Lucinda Williams’ “Joy” or the emotion-filled hush of John Prine’s “Souvenirs,” LaVette was in strong, fluid voice throughout the show, a performance enhanced by the in-your-face intimacy of The Ark, which put everybody there within sight lines of her tonsils. There were some concessions to age — LaVette joked about needing to wear glasses on stage and about a stool that “I like just as much as I do my husband — but LaVette’s slender figure, sealed into leather pants, looked more 17 than mid-70s, and her ability to dance on stiletto heels made many of those years melt away.
She announced the show as “more of a class on R&B than anything else,” but LaVette’s set pushed even broader than that as she introduced many of the songs with reminiscences and reflections. She opened with Bob Dylan’s “Things Have Changed,” and other highlights included Della Reese’s aching “Blues For the Weepers” and Dinah Washington’s “Drinking Again,” which LaVette finished with a long whistling section. She and Lucas engaged in a bit of give-and-take schtick during Don Henley’s “You Don’t Know Me At All,” and before another Dylan song, “Ain’t Talkin’,” LaVette spoke about needing a lyric sheet by her side and readers on her nose because “I’m in the middle of CRS — Can’t Remember S***.”
And before “Let Me Down Easy” she exulted in the song’s new hit status, as a primary sample in electronic duo Odesza’s new hit “The Last Goodbye.”
LaVette kept the “class” going with her own “A Woman Like Me” and renditions of Fiona Apple’s “Sleep To Dream” and the Beatles’ “Blackbird” before rollicking to a close with Big Maybelle’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.”
New Jersey may be her residence these days, but on Sunday LaVette showed that Michigan still has a home spot in her heart — and in her soul music.
