LeAnn Rimes
Once you've heard
LeAnn Rimes sing her cover versions of legendary hits by
Merle
Haggard,
George Jones and
Waylon Jennings,
you may find a whole new way to love those songs. Her acoustic tour kicked off here in Chicago on Saturday night (Sept. 18)
in an intimate theater packed with about 1,000 fans. She spent about half of her 90-minute set doing songs off her upcoming
album,
Lady and Gentlemen, with a simple three-man band behind her. In addition to playing Haggard's "I Can't Be Myself,"
Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and Jennings' "Good Hearted Woman," she opened the show with
Kris
Kristofferson's "Help Me Make it Through the Night" and
John Anderson's
"Swingin'"
(one that Rimes said she learned to love when her parents played it during her worst colic days as a baby). Rimes called the
new album "a covers record with a little twist, because it's all songs by men with my female perspective on them" -- not to
mention her powerful pipes and her charming presence. She also did a handful of her own big hits and new tunes from an album
she is currently producing. The standout from that part of the set was a song that she initially forgot early on in the night.
"That's the first time since I was 11 that that has ever happened to me," she said. "That's freakin' hysterical." But when
she tried it again toward the end of the show, she remembered all the words. And with lyrics about "Oh my God, what have I
done? I broke the sweetest heart of the only man that's ever loved me, I don't know what I've become," I doubt anyone in the
crowd will ever forget that song either.
