Lucinda Williams rides poetic 'Highway 20' to the Dakota

Lucinda Williams hits the stage nervous. Always.

It's apparent in her body language, her fidgetiness, her reliance on lyric sheets in a giant spiral notebook.

Even if the queen of heartache and melancholy throws in a rocker early on — as she did Tuesday night at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis with her second tune "Can't Let Go" — she doesn't warm up easily.

But once the Grammy-winning avatar of Americana music lets the poetry take over, she relaxes and her performance transforms into an artfulness not rivaled by any current female singer-songwriter.

The key line Tuesday came in "Can't Close the Door on Love," a number from her brand-new album, "The Ghosts of Highway 20." A discussion of the frustrations and complications of love, the lyrics talk about how he's a piece of work. "You're always right some of the time," Williams sang with her smoky, slurring Louisiana drawl. And the sell-out crowd chuckled. Still, she held out hope for the relationship.

Happiness doesn't surface often in Williams' work. To be sure, the roadhouse rocker "Honey Bee" was a pure love song, and "Blessed" celebrated what's right in the world, such as a teacher without a degree or a prisoner who knows how to be free.

But mostly her words addressed the world gone awry, whether it was "West Memphis," about three boys wrongly accused of a crime, "Drunken Angel," about a bluesman who drank himself to death, or the scorching "Joy," part of the encore, which she said was written about unrequited love but has now turned into a protest song.

Williams, 63, whom Time magazine once called America's greatest songwriter, grew up on Flannery O'Connor's short stories and Bob Dylan's songs, and the influence of her father, a published poet and professor of English. It's no wonder that she has turned out as meticulously poetic as Leonard Cohen, with the casual rock 'n' roll cool of Keith Richards. No words are wasted in her carefully crafted songs filled with vivid images and palpable emotion.

Many of Williams' selections reflected on her life, especially the material from her new album. When she talked about the tunes, it enhanced their resonance — and made her more relaxed. The song "Ghosts of Highway 20," she said, was about the two-lane highway that ran through her childhood as her family moved around. Performed solo on acoustic guitar, it was deeply emotional, easily one of her more impassioned vocal performances of the night.

The new songs also addressed death, the singer-songwriter explained, because both of her parents have passed on, as have some of her friends. "Dust" was adapted from a poem by her father, Miller Williams, using the repetition of phrases to make her voice more penetrating. "Doors of Heaven" was about as gospel as Williams gets, with Stuart Mathis' sacred, swampy guitar perfectly framing the tune.

His masterfully versatile guitar work was essential throughout the 125-minute performance. He got all psychedelically Beatles-esque on "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," bent bluesy on "West Memphis" and atmospherically Daniel Lanois-like on "Dust." On "Are You Down," Mathis started with a haunting purr and ended with a soaring rave-up.

By the end of the night (her first of four at the Dakota), Williams also asserted her bona fides as a singer in a knockout encore of J.J. Cale's sweetly Southern "Magnolia," Sam Cooke's strikingly soulful "A Change Is Gonna Come" and her own rip-roaring "Joy," which showed that the nervous poet can rock with abandon.

Williams' backup trio, Buick 6, opened the evening with 40 minutes of often intriguing instrumental music.

Despite its artistic triumph, Tuesday's concert was far from a model of efficiency. Advertised as a 7 p.m. show, Williams didn't take the stage until almost 9 — after a 40-minute intermission. Let's hope things run more smoothly for Williams' other three performances at the Dakota.

Jon Bream • 612-673-1719

@jonbream