Bruce Springsteen dug deep into his catalog for his St. Paul concert last month, but he failed to include anything from his grim solo album "Nebraska."
Aoife O'Donovan did her best Friday to make up for the slight.
The veteran singer-songwriter, a regular during the final years of "A Prairie Home Companion," tackled that entire 1982 classic in sequential order, adding color to black-and-white tales of despair.
As she explained to the sold-out crowd at St. Paul's Turf Club, she originally covered the album 12 years ago during a residency at an intimate New York bar. She resurrected the concept during the pandemic and subsequently put out an album, followed by this limited tour.
O'Donovan's long relationship with the songs paid off. She found the playful, flirty side of "Atlantic City," making smart use of her ringing voice. On "Open All Night," she applied the same kind of bounce Mary Chapin Carpenter brought to "Down at the Twist and Shout."
But the highlight of the evening was her rendition of "Highway Patrolman," which she introduced as one of her favorites. She narrated in a whispering tone, like she could barely face the fate of the song's doomed characters, blood brothers on different sides of the law. But fans were listening so reverently, they didn't miss a word.
O'Donovan performed solo except for the album closer, "Reason to Believe," and an encore featuring her own songs. Her backing musicians for those numbers were members of the Westerlies, a brass quartet that also served as the opening band.
The group's avant-garde style seemed a bit out of place at a folk-pop show — they got heckled earlier in the week during a Wisconsin show — but they quickly won over O'Donovan/Springsteen fans with an instrumental cover of John Prine's "Way Back When" that could have been lifted from the soundtrack for a loved one's funeral.
