Parton pure, simple, perfect

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This article was published 12/09/2016 (3635 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It had been been eight years since music icon Dolly Parton last graced Winnipeg with her rhinestone-emblazoned presence. Monday night at the MTS Centre, it seemed she was almost as excited to be back as Winnipeg was to have her.

“Helloooooo Manitoba!” she roared in the way only Dolly Parton can, strutting on stage in a multicoloured, sparkly dress (a dress of many colours, one could say) paired with big heels and equally big hair. A few robust thank yous and some high-pitched giggles and the arena was officially enamoured.

The Pure and Simple tour, in support of Parton’s album of the same name, stripped things back to basics. Parton was joined on stage by just three musicians; plain panels of white cloth, occasionally dotted with lights, flowed down around her, which, other than a few small sets used to represent snippets of her youth spent in Tennessee, were the only design elements on stage.

But pure-and-simple Dolly is the best Dolly, as the format allowed for a rare feeling of intimacy not present in other large tours.

She told stories — about her family, about her husband, about the sniffles she got from the air conditioning on the tour bus — and she told jokes — about sex, about her fashion sense and her larger than life personality.

She made a performance to 8,500 fans in an arena seem more like a one-on-one conversation in her home.

As charming as her Southern stories were, it was the music that truly had jaws dropping. At 70 years old, and with more than five decades as a performer to her name, Parton’s voice has not aged.

As she launched into one of her first big singles, Jolene, the escalation of the chorus was stunning in its perfection; her control, full-bodied power and delicate manipulation throughout her deceptively detailed songs time and time again were truly astounding.

Though fans were most invested in her older material, her new songs, including the title track Pure and Simple and, later, Outside Your Door (among others), held their own — sounding like vintage Parton and fitting seamlessly into her set.

Parton is most recognizable as a singer, but she is also a talented multi-instrumentalist, cracking out a bedazzled collection of instruments, including a guitar (acoustic and electric), dulcimer, autoharp, recorder, harmonica, piano, saxophone (on which she blew everyone away with an mind-boggling rendition of Yakety Sax), as well as a fiddle she played while she had her banjo hanging around her neck.

During the first half of her set, Parton threw in a lovely medley of classic country hits — surrounded by her three-piece band (now in acoustic mode with a standup base, tambourine and guitar), she worked her way through sections of American Pie, If I Had a Hammer, Blowin’ in the Wind, Dust in the Wind, and a particularly captivating version of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

After a 20-minute intermission, Parton was back (this time in a pristine white, but still sparkly, outfit), and wasted no time as she charged through Baby I’m Burning before the house lights had even come up, and rounded the song out by integrating a piece of Alicia Keys’ smash single Girl on Fire.

Near the end of the night, Parton worked her way through tear-jerker and “sad-ass song,” Little Sparrow, her stellar performance bringing the raucous crowd to complete silence.

She promised the party would start after that song, and she delivered — the final tunes of the night included staples Islands in the Stream and 9 to 5. The more-than-two-hour performance ended with an encore that consisted of her most famous song, I Will Always Love You.

Parton would be impressive at any age, but at 70, there is something extra inspiring about the amount of energy she expends on stage.

Each story was told with as much enthusiasm as if she were telling it for the first time instead of the thousandth, every power note at the top of her register blasted through the arena with ease and every laugh and joke and off-the-cuff riff felt unquestionably genuine.

It takes a lot of effort to be that good, even if it doesn’t seem like it.

Many of Parton’s stories carried with them a moral — and more than once that moral was: be true to who you are, you’re all you’ve got.

It’s a lesson Parton lives as hard as she preaches, and her authenticity pours out of her in a way impossible to ignore or be skeptical of.

There is no way for Parton to be better than what and who she is; she is perfect, pure and simple.

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel