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Piano and song work well for Krall; story-telling not so much

Energetic set bogged down at times by spoken word.

Two things were obvious from Diana Krall’s set Tuesday night at Kingsbury Hall: she’s an excellent musician but only a fair storyteller. Also, she really loves booze.

Krall’s set was part of a tour in support of her 2012 album "Glad Rag Doll," which is the award-winning jazz pianist’s 12th studio album.

The show began just before 8:30 p.m. with three silhouetted figures on a stage reminiscent of a Georges Mèliés film set: oversized moon, metal stars and a glowing piano.

And Steve Buscemi. Yes, he of "Boardwalk Empire" fame. Buscemi is a pleasure to watch nearly all of the time, though it was kind of an odd pairing that walked a precarious line between humor and sincerity. Was it a joke? Was it serious? It was hard to tell with Buscemi hamming it up in a video behind what seemed like a very earnest Krall and co.

Which isn’t to take away from the music, which was beyond reproach. Krall — whose breathy voice and playful piano toyed with the 1920s-themed material from "Glad Rag Doll" — was backed by a five-man band. Highlights included a surprisingly gritty cover of Tom Waits’ "Temptation" and "Let it Rain," which Krall described as the "Bridge Over Troubled Water" of its day.

As the show progressed, Krall drew laughs from the audience with anecdotes from her life. She described raising two sons and wanting to fill a bathtub with booze. Having a good drink was a recurring theme throughout the show. She described the gramophone player on the stage, revealing that it was actually her father’s. And she described growing up near her grandparents, her grandma making sandwiches and her grandfather "making books" in the back of the restaurant.

They were interesting, charming stories that painted Krall’s life as an adventurous, perpetually buzzed folk tale. But they also slowed the show down significantly, especially during the middle of the set. Long stories increasingly included long pauses and at one point she seemed almost bored as she invited shouted song requests before launching into "A Case of You" — a delightful song that was probably not well-served by the low-key chaos that preceded it.

It’s also unfortunately worth noting that when Krall switched from her grand piano to the glowing upright the sound suffered from what seemed like audio clipping or distortion. That’s not Krall’s fault of course, but really, someone should have fixed it.

Still, when Krall was playing the show was a pleasure. In addition to the Buscemi video, most songs were accompanied by vintage film clips that complemented well the silent-era-themed sets and pre-war songs. The emotion also varied considerably, jauntily rising on "Just You Just Me," for example, before tumbling back down again on the 1933 song "Boulevard of Broken Dreams."

The audience, apparently, loved it. Krall finished her set with "I’m a Little Mixed Up" but the audience compelled her back behind the piano with a standing ovation. She complied, playing an encore that included Bob Dylan’s "Wallflower" and The Band’s "Ophelia." Krall pounded them out powerfully and with pleasure, showing off exactly what she does best.

Slideshow: http://www.sltrib.com/csp/cms/sites/slt ... id=5551586

"the sound suffered from what seemed like audio clipping or distortion. That’s not Krall’s fault of course, but really, someone should have fixed it."

This happened very briefly in L.A., too. Clipping and speaker crackling. I forget which song it was.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/8655 ... tml?pg=all

Two-time Grammy winner Diana Krall croons at Kingsbury Hall

Two-time Grammy winner Diana Krall exudes the kind of coolness that makes costume changes look like a fuss. Had that not been the case, she might have donned everything from a rockabilly swing dress to cabaret attire during her Tuesday night performance at Kingsbury Hall.

Seated alternately at a grand piano or an antique standup (with a few tinny keys for good measure), the smoky-voiced jazz pianist and contralto toured her latest album, "Glad Rag Doll," performing a mishmash of mostly ’20s and ’30s relics that included ragtime, jazz, blues, swing, rockabilly and even folk-rock.

Krall treated the lineup with devil-may-care flair. She made it clear this was not a serious departure — it’s really more of a dalliance, like an oil painter who plays at watercolor to scratch an itch.

“These songs are kind of a product of my childhood,” Krall explained while mindlessly caressing the piano keys before the audience. Pointing to her family’s gramophone set up on the corner of the stage, she said, “I’d riffle through my dad’s stack of 78s and just listen for hours.”

In interviews preceding the tour, Krall described tossing around the idea for a throwback jazz album with her husband’s producer T Bone Burnett (her husband is Elvis Costello). After spending a weekend with her dad poring over his old records, she sent Burnett a fat list of possibilities.

The process seems to have brought on a bout of nostalgia for the 48-year-old British Columbia native — not just over scattered records around the gramophone, but the music shared by her family. Between numbers she took jaunts down memory lane with the audience in tow, occasionally checking herself during stories about Christmas Eve at her “Nana’s” or making sandwiches for her hungry coal mining family:

“You don’t want to hear this stuff, do you?” she asked, already knowing the answer. Whatever the relaxed and playful Krall mused over, she had the audience eating out of her hand. Treating the audience like old friends at a dinner party, she collected spirited approval no matter which genre she tapped into, no matter how melancholy the song.

Her set journeyed into the land of Bing Crosby, Annette Hanshaw, Fats Waller and Gene Austin. She threw in a few modern nods like Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Tom Waits and rounded it out with what she called “American songbook” hits (a more familiar avenue for Krall) like those of Nat King Cole and Irving Berlin.

The stage had a vaudeville feel, with heavy red curtains, twinkling lights and a dimly bulbed crescent moon. A movie screen behind the musicians served as an ever-changing backdrop of vintage movie reels, old family photos, ancient cartoons and plenty of tragic-looking Ziegfeld girls. It's from these women that Krall drew inspiration for the album title "Glad Rag Doll," a 1928 movie theme song for a film of the same title.

“You’re just a pretty toy they like to play with. You’re not the kind they choose to grow old and gray with,” Krall crooned as 1920s era women in flouncy attire danced across the screen.

Krall was accompanied by bassist Dennis Crouch, Patrick Warren on keyboards, Karriem Riggins on drums, fiddle player Stuart Duncan (who doubled on guitar and ukulele) and Aram Bajakian on electric guitar.