Stevie Nicks’ sold-out show in NLR a party

Songstress took audience on journey through the past

For two hours Wednesday night, Stevie Nicks took her Simmons Bank Arena audience on a journey through the past with stories and songs from her five-decade career. It was part spoken memoir, part rock concert, but most of all it was, in her words, a party.

“Let’s get this Little Rock party started,” the 75-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer told the 14,000 concertgoers who sold out the North Little Rock arena.

Dressed all in black, with a long, flowing skirt, accented with capes that she changed throughout the show, she brought her signature witchy vibe to the stage.

Backed by a six-member band led by her longtime lead guitarist, Waddy Watchel, she floated across the stage, twirling theatrically, singing a multitude of hits from her days with Fleetwood Mac and, subsequently, as a solo artist.

A sharing of energy in the crowd, which she called “awesome,” clearly fueled her performance while she, in turn, inspired the enthusiastic concertgoers, a diverse group ranging from teens to 70s-plus.

She opened with “Outside the Rain,” from her 1981 debut solo album “Bella Donna,” followed by “Dreams,” a No. 1 hit for Fleetwood Mac from the acclaimed 1977 “Rumours” album. She followed that with “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” a song written by Tom Petty, who sang on what became a hit single from the “Bella Donna” album. And she performed “Fall from Grace” from 2001’s “Trouble in Shangri-La,” followed by “For What It’s Worth,” written by Stephen Stills in 1966 for his band Buffalo Springfield.

In the night’s longest song introduction, she shared how she and her former partner and bandmate Lindsey Buckingham lived as paupers in the early 1970s while trying to establish their musical careers. After she became famous with Fleetwood Mac in 1975, her life became more of whirlwind, leading her to write about her previously more-simple life in “Gypsy,” a hit from Fleetwood Mac’s 1982 album “Mirage.”

The show continued with performances of “Wild Heart” and “Bella Donna” before she and the band rocked it out with “Stand Back” from the 1983 album “The Wild Heart.” She dedicated “Soldier’s Angel,” which she wrote after visiting wounded servicemen at military hospitals in the Washington, D.C., area, to the people of Ukraine, saying that if she was a man and wasn’t 75 years old, she would be there helping in their war against Russia.

A true highlight was Nicks’ performance of “Gold Dust Woman” from “Rumours.” Draped in a gold sequined cape, she twirled around the stage, her voice echoing powerfully through the arena, backed by the perfect harmonies of two back-up singers. She finished her main set with “Leather and Lace,” a duet she performed with Don Henley on “Bella Donna,” and “The Edge of Seventeen.”

For the encore, Nicks and the band returned with a tribute cover of “Free Falling,” written by Petty, who died in 2017; one of her first hits with Fleetwood Mac, 1975’s “Rhiannon”; and the ballad “Landslide,” also from her first Fleetwood Mac album. A video of images of Nicks with her late best friend and Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Christine McVie (who died in 2022), played while Nicks sang the haunting song of lost youth to the accompaniment of Watchel’s acoustic guitar.

She closed out the show with another story, about the intense grief she felt following McVie’s death. “My mother always said, ‘Anytime you are hurt, Stevie, you run to the stage,’” she said, adding that she was grateful to her audiences for helping “fix me” by coming to her shows. “I love you so much for that and appreciate it, every single night,” she said.

For those in attendance Wednesday night, there was no doubt the feeling was mutual.