Search - Bonnie Raitt :: Same Old Love

Before Bonnie Raitt walked out of the 1991 Grammy Awards with an armful of trophies, she was a singer, performer, and occasional songwriter, trying to keep her music alive with a yearly ritual of a new tour and a new album. Despite in 1979 her big commercial breakthrough still being more than a decade away, Raitt was well on her way to blending raw blues, R&B and rock into a decidedly more adult contemporary style. Typically for the time, when this show was broadcast in 1979, Raitt was on the road promoting her then new Warner Brothers album, The Glow. Since her first Warners LP, Give It Up in 1972, Raitt had expanded her live line-up from an acoustic duo consisting of herself and bassist Freebo, to a full-fledged electric band playing a much more hybrid style of blues, rock, R&B and folk, than she had in her early years. This show marked the end of nine weeks on the road, and the band is as tight as any Bonnie has ever worked with. She opens with Baby I Love You and moves straight into Sam & Dave's classic I Thank You. The gig moves from one highlight to the next. Raitt's take on Mable John's You're Good Thing Is About to End is a particular standout, as is Angel from Montgomery. The show also features a one-two punch of Runaway (Raitt had achieved a hit in 1977 with a rocked-up version of the 1961 Del Shannon number) and raucous replay of Robert Palmer's You're Gonna Get What's Coming. The show closes with a powerhouse version of Under the Falling Sky featuring Pat Hayes' smoking harmonica work. When Raitt performed this show at the Orpheum in Minneapolis, she and her band were only a few months away from the historic No Nukes rally held in the fall of 1979 in Battery Park, New York City. That event, organized by Bonnie, would forever place her on the top-table of activist artists, and she has consistently supported multiple causes to this day.