The Bay Area was never big enough to contain Ledisi’s voluminous talent, but the R&B star credits her formative years here with providing everything she needed to take on the world. Returning to town on Wednesday for a gig at the Warfield celebrating the release of her luscious new album The Truth (Verve), she’s a bona fide soul queen who hasn’t forgotten where she came from.
“I’m so grateful for the Bay Area,” Ledisi said during a recent phone conversation from the tour bus with her band heading to a gig in Arizona. “I got some great training there being a performer. If I could please those audiences in theater, churchy, jazz and R&B settings, if I could please all those listeners, I was ready after that. I had my training. The Bay Area kicked my butt.”
A supremely versatile singer, Ledisi draws from a vast swath of African-American music, infusing soul melisma into standards while using smooth R&B grooves as a springboard for improvisational flights. Like her previous release, the Grammy-nominated Pieces of Me, The Truth only reveals one small facet of what Ledisi can do. But in concert she lets loose, scatting Charlie Parker’s blues “Now’s the Time” with the harmonic sophistication of a bebop saxophonist, or delivering Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child” with scorching intensity.
Just as important as her stylistic range and huge, multi-octave voice is Ledisi’s mercurial stage presence, honed during an 11-year run in the North Beach cabaret institution Beach Blanket Babylon. Playful and goofy one moment, she can switch on a soul diva persona if a song requires. Ultimately, she seeks to turn audiences into confidantes as she provides romantic advice, affirmations and cautionary tales, all set to the most seductive beats.
She took her affirmations from the stage to the printed page with her 2012 book Better Than Alright: Finding Peace, Love & Power. The project was part of a collaboration with Essence, a natural fit as the magazine produces the huge annual Essence Music Festival in New Orleans (she’s one of the vocalists featured on three different Essence cover photos this month, along with Erykah Badu and Solange).