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Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie make even a rainy night in Raleigh fun
BY LEAH MOORE
lmoore@newsobserver.com
A large crowd braved the rain Saturday night to see Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie, two-fifths of the revered rock band Fleetwood Mac, in a memorable show at Raleigh’s Red Hat Amphitheater.
The concert was a bit delayed due to thunderstorms, but it was worth the wait to see Buckingham’s unique guitar fingerpicking style and hear his harmonies with McVie. The sound was lush and layered, and if you closed your eyes, you were almost at a Fleetwood Mac show.
Buckingham and McVie opened with four songs they played without accompaniment – ”Trouble,” “Never Going Back Again,” “Wish You Were Here” and “Shut Us Down.” These were slow without a backing band.
Buckingham thanked the crowd for coming despite the weather, and then they launched – with the band – into “Sleeping Round the Corner” from their new album, an early highlight of the show.
Other favorites from the night were “You Make Loving Fun”; “Too Far Gone,” which really showed off drummer Jimmy Paxson, who has worked with Stevie Nicks; “I’m So Afraid,” which featured unbelievable guitar playing from Buckingham; and the classic “Go Your Own Way.”
The Fleetwood Mac songs the duo played were greeted with such enthusiasm from the crowd that it might have been a good move to play more of those. But the desire for their new work to stand on its own is certainly understandable, and largely, it did, although they are not the classics.
Buckingham, who did the majority of the talking during the evening, said when he and McVie came back together after her break from Fleetwood Mac, their songwriting chemistry was better than ever before.
“One of the other things that was a surprise and that was just a wonderful occurrence was that she started sending me song ideas, rough song ideas,” Buckingham said. “One thing led to another, and we realized we had an album on our hands. It was something no one saw coming and I guess we sort of sat around wondering what took us so long to figure that one out,” he said.
The Wallflowers, led by frontman Jakob Dylan, Bob Dylan’s son, opened the show.
Lindsey Buckingham, left, and Christine McVie.
Lindsey Buckingham, left, and Christine McVie. John Russo