All feels right as Lucinda Williams kicks off ‘World’s Gone Wrong’ run at the Dakota

The love affair between Lucinda Williams and the Dakota in Minneapolis is alive and well, despite all the other trouble going around. Or maybe because of it.

The Details

Last seen in town at the mega-sized Mystic Lake Amphitheater opening for Bob Dylan in July, the poetic country-rock hero offered quite the contrast in venues by returning to the small and low-lit jazz club Friday night. And she’s returning there four more times.

Friday’s set was the first of Williams’s five shows at the Dakota over the next week. She’s been regularly playing multiple-night runs there since 2016.

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Lucinda Williams took the stage at the Dakota on Friday wearing a T-shirt from Bob Dylan, with whom she toured this past summer.

Aaron Lavinsky/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Chalk it up to her husband/manager Tom Overby being a native Twin Citian, or to her longstanding ties to Minneapolis that include recording her 2001 “Essence” here, or to her early-career/late-1980s gigs at First Avenue, where she and Overby had their wedding in 2009. Williams clearly likes playing the Dakota.

On Friday, it was abundantly clear why. The Dakota’s warm-cozy-blanket vibe seemed especially comforting this time. Coming just four years after Williams, 73, returned to the road following a debilitating stroke — she hasn’t been able to play guitar on stage since then — the 105-minute set was more relaxed and slow-stewing than her rockier opening gig with Dylan.

The Louisiana-reared singer’s drawling voice sounded as soulful and thick as ever as she and her four-man band kicked off with a series of older fan-favorites. After the opener “I Just Want to See You So Bad,” they rolled through “Crescent City,” “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” and her piercingly poignant tribute to late songwriter Blaze Foley, “Drunken Angel.”

Where many of the songs were uniquely Southern in their imagery and themes, the newer songs Williams played deeper into the set took on a broader American hue — and a political tone, too.

Starting with the anthemic title track of her 2026 album, “World’s Gone Wrong,” Williams turned the intimate, slow-burning show into a bigger, more fiery protest concert.