Stagecoach 2017: 'I'm not shying away from anything,' Rhiannon Giddens says of her music - Los Angeles Times
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Stagecoach 2017: ‘I’m not shying away from anything,’ Rhiannon Giddens says of her music

Rhiannon Giddens performs on the Mustang Stage on the first day of the Stagecoach country music festival in Indio.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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In what was one of the most moving performances at the 2017 Stagecoach country music festival, singer-songwriter Rhiannon Giddens employed a carrot and just a little bit of the stick when explaining her music.

“We’re all beautiful people,” she said with a broad smile, introducing folk singer Richard Farina’s riveting ballad “Birmingham Sunday,” about a 1963 bombing of a Baptist church in Alabama that left four girls dead and injured 22 others.

“But sometimes we do things that aren’t beautiful, and it’s important to remember events like this so we can work together toward the things we all believe in,” Giddens, 40, said from the Mustang Stage on Friday during the first of the three-day festival in Indio.

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Backed by a muscular five-piece band that included Louisiana musician Dirk Powell, with whom she produced and wrote many of the songs on her new “Freedom Highway” album, Giddens also included the title track from that collection, a vintage civil rights-era song originally recorded by the Staple Singers.

Stagecoach most often is about good times and celebration, but Giddens, who came to prominence with her folk-rooted band the Carolina Chocolate Drops, which played Stagecoach in 2008, had more on her mind as she prepared to take the stage on Friday.

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“I’m not shying away from anything,” the North Carolina bred-singer and multi-instrumentalist said backstage a few minutes before her performance. “We’re doing what we always do.”

Her Stagecoach set was the launch point for a new U.S. solo tour over the next several months, one that concludes with an Oct. 25 stop at Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A.

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A few minutes earlier, Giddens had been backstage, bounding in place to the potent Americana rock of Son Volt and was sporting a colorfully incongruous outfit that combined an elegant maroon-and-black corset over a layered black skirt on top of pink running shoes, which she would ditch before taking the Mustang Stage barefoot.

Her music is founded in blues, gospel and folk sounds with little that could be called traditional country. Her Stagecoach performance included one fleet and fiery fiddle duet with multi-instrumentalist Powell, which harkened back to the African American string band music that has long been the Chocolate Drops’ specialty.

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But she noted that “I have a little stronger connection to the country music world now,” referring both to her recent duet with Eric Church on his hit single “Kill A Word” and her recurring role on the “Nashville” TV series, revived recently by the Country Music Television cable channel after ending its five-season network TV run on ABC last year.

“I get recognized now and then,” she said with a demure smile.

As for the powerful social and political statements in some of the songs from her two solo albums — “Tomorrow Is My Turn” in 2015 and “Freedom Highway” — Giddens said she wasn’t about to soften her approach for a country music crowd that’s often engaged in literal flag-waving and has in years past erupted in spontaneous chants of “USA! USA!” when the mood struck.

“I’m not here to apologize for anything we do,” she said. “We pretty much let the songs speak for themselves.”

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