On June 23, 2008 at Chicago's legendary roots club The Hideout, Staples played with a stripped down, raw, and swampy three-piece band and just a handful of backup singers, providing a rare opportunity for fans to get close to a figure who has led a five-decade long musical charge towards equality. This release comes off her critically lauded "We'll Never Turn Back", and is a potent mix of her classic civil rights freedom songs alongside some fiery new compositions co-written with producer Ry Cooder. Staples is a Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductee, and has appeared with the likes of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Bill Cosby, Presidents Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton, Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd, Santana, Bonnie Raitt, and Tom Petty. She's recorded with Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Marty Stuart, Los Lobos, and many more.

1. For What It's Worth
2. Eyes On The Prize
3. Down In Mississippi
4. Wade In The Water
5. Waiting For My Child
6. This Little Light
7. Why Am I Treated So Bad
8. Freedom Highway
9. We Shall Not Be Moved
10. Circle Intro (encore)
11. Will The Circle Be Unbroken (encore)
12. On My Way (encore)
13. I'll Take You There (encore)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001GJ2ZI4/?tag=imwan-20

From the ANTI website...

There are few living musicians who can lay claim to being America's conscience, even fewer who continue to make vital music. On Monday night at The Hideout, Mavis Staples proved she’s still capable of both. But far more than merely being capable, the 69-year-old Staples showed she can light a fire, agitate for change and re-energize the American songbook.

Though she never referenced it directly, it was impossible - even in an anachronistic setting like The Hideout - to experience Staples's performance outside of the context of an election season in a country at war. Opening with "For What It’s Worth," a song whose power - at least in Buffalo Springfield’s all-too-familiar version - has long since ebbed thanks to its ubiquity, Staples tapped into the song’s theme of absolute corrupted power, giving new resonance to lines like "Paranoia strikes deep…it starts when you’re always afraid." Later in the night, she would sing of waiting for a letter from a long-away son or daughter ("Waiting For My Child") or of letting her light shine in the streets or on the battlefield ("This Little Light of Mine").

Staples commanded the stage with a dual mission: To record a live album (the bulk of her performance that night pulled from last year’s We’ll Never Turn Back, a collection of songs from the black civil rights movement) and, in her words, "to bring joy, happiness, inspiration and positive vibrations…to last for at least the next six months." Just enough to get us to Election Day.

Befitting the intimate space, Staples performed with only a three-piece band, and a trio of backup singers. The warm acoustics of the Hideout were the perfect setting for their Southern-fried soul and Staples’s voice moved with ease from the high notes of church-choir praise to a throaty growl of defiance. The deep, swampy bottom of the rhythm section perfectly complimented guitarist Rick Holmstrom’s no-wasted-notes style.

Though Staples has performed some of these songs countless times over 40-plus years - she introduced "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" as the first song her father "Pops" taught her to sing - she injected her set with a stunning immediacy, as these are both traditional songs, and stories of her life. Whether it’s the autobiographical lyrical touches she adds to J.B. Lenoir’s "Down In Mississippi" or the lunch counter standoff of "We Shall Not Be Moved," the politics of Mavis Staples are very personal indeed.

As for the happiness and inspiration she promised at the outset, Staples and her band delivered. A Monday night crowd of once-in-a-while concertgoers is a rough audience, and most of the assembled kept a hushed reverence as she sang, limiting their joyful noises to moments between songs. But by the end - with warm encouragement from her backup singers - she helped them find their voice in call-and-response and revival rhythms, bringing the night to a close with the hopeful promises of "On My Way" and "I’ll Take You There."

Anger burns hot. So much so that if not properly directed, it burns up quickly, preventing movement, resulting in sadness or frustrated impotence. Hope, on the other hand, promises joy on the other side of the river, just over the mountain, a few more miles away. It is this country’s primary renewable resource and, as such, Staples’s show demonstrated why it is the only way to conquer fear and inspire change.

Scott Smith, Time Out Chicago

This looks great!