With acoustic guitar in hand and ready to launch in “Lonestar,” Norah Jones had a quick question for the sold out room at Clearwater’s Ruth Eckerd Hall on Tuesday night.
“You guys okay?”
The 37 year old songwriter just finished a six song opening set that pulled from Little Broken Hearts, Not Too Late and her 2016 LP Day Breaks, but the crowd — who respectfully sat so silent that you could hear a seat creak — was a little lucid. The assembled audience, comprised mostly of blue hairs who unchained themselves from Prairie Home Companion replays for a night on the town, eventually started chirping back much to Jones’s delight.
“I haven’t played here in, I think 10 years,” Jones said with a smile on her infinitely charming face. “I forgot y’all are hecklers — well I’m from Texas and proud of it.” (For the record, she played Tampa’s Straz Center in 2010 and Coachman Park in 2003.)
Read: Norah Jones serenades Bay area audiences at the Straz Center in Tampa
The exchange was one of a few brief moments of levity during an 85 minute set of mostly serious piano jazz, blues and pop. And that’s okay, because Jones is a serious talent who cannot be taken lightly. Come Away With Me was released almost exactly 15 years ago, and Jones has spent the last decade and a half letting almost nobody down as she fulfills the promise of an album that earned her eight awards at the 2003 Grammys.
From the first few moments of a pared down version of “Day Breaks” to the last bar of “Don’t Know Why,” Jones God given gift — that incredibly dynamic and wholly unique voice — danced hand in hand with the knack for composition she’s been working on since her childhood summers sweating away in Gainesville, just 150 miles away. “I stayed inside the whole time,” she joked before playing “Little Broken Hearts."
“One summer my uncle finally rented a piano so I could practice,” Jones added.
Someone give that man a hug because, at her best, Jones can weave several layers of feeling into one shred of a singular lyric. Watching her plead “please, please please/forgive me” on “Humble Me” or almost weep “I’ll never stop/loving you,” into the mic while giving new life to “Come Away With Me” is a baffling exercise in emotion.
It seems like Jones could sing the back of a cereal box on tape and make someone sniffle.
And she does it effortlessly, much like how she switched between piano, acoustic, Rhodes and that polished cherry red Strat she used on Puss N Boots’ “Don’t Know What It Means” and “Stuck” from 2009’s The Fall (bonus points for those killer shitkickers, too, Norah).
Listen: Here's a playlist with all the songs Norah Jones played at Ruth Eckerd Hall
At this point, Jones could tour on her hits alone, but Lord knows she likely won’t. Despite a career that boasts six solo LPs and a canon of quality songs, Jones still has so much to say and so much soul left to give (you should have seen the way she slinked around the piano while singing “Tragedy” from Day Breaks). She might deserve a band that pushes her a little harder, but there’s no doubt she’ll keep tinkering and find the right formula for her and whatever sound she’s chasing. Jones’s place in history alongside the great jazz singers will always be there, but for now she is a talent who might be entering her prime. We’re all just lucky enough to be able to see it in person once in a blue moon.
Have a look at the set list below, and listen to a playlist featuring songs Norah Jones played here.
Norah Jones at Ruth Eckerd Hall (Clearwater, Florida — March 7, 2017)
Day Breaks
I’ve Got To See You Again
Out On The Road?
Sinkin’ Soon
Tragedy
It’s Gonna Be
Lonestar
Don’t Know What It Means (Puss N Boots)
Come Away With Me
Stuck
Chasing Pirates
Carry On
And Then There Was You
Little Broken Hearts
Humble Me
Don’t Be Denied
Flipside
Don’t Know Why
This article appears in Mar 9-16, 2017.