Tuesday, December 21, 1999
Richey's solos save jinxed WNKU benefit
BY LARRY NAGER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
“This is like an anything-can-happen day,” Kim Richey said Sunday at Northern Kentucky University's Greaves Hall.
Among those things: the cancellation of scheduled headliner Martin Sexton. He called in sick that morning, and Ms. Richey was promoted from opening act. The concert, a WNKU benefit, was jinxed by scheduling conflicts, a wrong date on the tickets (as well as a misspelled “Kim Richie”) and production glitches.
The Kettering native made the best of it, in a casual evening of intimately confessional songs and self-deprecating stage chat.
Ms. Richey is the latest emotionally honest, rock-tinged songwriter out of Nashville's commercial country scene. The list includes k.d. lang, Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lucinda Williams and Rosanne Cash.
Like them, Ms. Richey has failed to thrive in the land of Garth and Shania, but like her literate cohorts, she has nurtured a small, devoted following. The 300 in attendance knew her material as well as she did, even helping out when she forgot lyrics. It was that kind of night.
Instead of the delicately filigreed picking of local opening act Wild Carrot, Ms. Richey backed herself with rudimentary strums. Playing songs from her three albums, her simple approach kept intact the killer hooks that helped her get a major label deal.
She joked about that and about sneaking “up-tempo, negative material” onto records instead of the happy stuff Nashville demands.
And while such songs as “Those Words We Said” and “Every River” cried out for a band, her warm, ringing voice and solid rhythm guitar created a unique performance.
She also sang Joni Mitchell's seasonal “River.” Her voice lit up the theater in an incandescent falsetto, bringing a warmer than usual feeling to that song of yuletide alienation.
She saved the best for last, encoring her 80-minute set with an unrecorded song, an aching portrait of regret. She summoned tiny details of love — the rhythm of breath, the taste of skin — finishing with “I wish I'd thought to tell you that. I wish those words would bring you back ... I'm sorry.”
That sort of raw heartbreak doesn't make it in these “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” times. And that's exactly why Nashville is ending the century at an artistic low point.
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