O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Raitt in the Role of Her Life

Finally, Bonnie Raitt has the script she wants to play--and this blues-singing daughter of a well-known stage actor played it to the hilt Monday night at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

Raitt’s new script is triumphant: cast off as a commercial has-been, a hard-working, resilient singer surges back by scoring a hit with an album that underlines, rather than compromises, her substantial talent. Playing for a rapturous audience in one of the small clubs where she kept the faith with solid shows during lean years, Raitt basked in her success.

“Man, it feels like prom night,” she said after waves of applause greeted the title song from her comeback album, “Nick of Time.” But this evening in a steamy club played more like an episode of “This Is Your Life,” with Raitt as her own emcee.

Raitt, 39, paused often during the nearly two-hour set to look back over the past and savor the present from a promontory that wasn’t easily reached. Addressing the packed house as if this familiar setting were full of old friends joining her for a cozy celebration, Raitt made several oblique references to the fact that lately she has been appearing on far bigger stages (such as the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, where she and her band play Friday night).

She also alluded in passing to “women . . . picking up the electric guitar”--leaving unstated, but not unacknowledged, that her own free-wailing blues guitar style has long served as a role model. Not one to suffer scorn without fury, Raitt let a couple of barbs fly at her old record label, Warner Bros., which had dropped her in 1983, only to re-sign and then drop her again. Most of all, Raitt relished such moments as the introduction to “Three Time Loser,” where she was able to speak with the swagger of a winner: “I’m not taking (any guff) from anybody,” she vowed. “It’s great to be able to stand up here and say it.”

Yes, Raitt was full of herself, but that’s appropriate. Fullness has been her style--both in the brimming sass of her guise as a blues woman who loves to revel in raunchiness and in the fullness of emotion that Raitt can bring to bear on songs that call for gentle warmth or quiet expressions of pain. On this night, especially in those more circumspect moments, she was full to overflowing.

Raitt’s freewheeling side came out best in playfully jumping versions of “Woman Be Wise” and “Give It Up,” a couple of old favorites that she and her sharp five-man band did up in old-time New Orleans style, complete with two tootling horns. John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love” came across tough and funny, with Raitt’s green bottleneck shredding fine licks from her guitar.

After starting the show with amiable rockers that didn’t quite catch fire, Raitt turned to a series of quieter songs from “Nick of Time” that brought the set into focus. She rendered the deep hurt of rejection on “Too Soon to Tell,” tempering the aching husk in her voice with firm passages that conveyed a determination to get through hard times. Then, on “Cry on My Shoulder,” Raitt extended a hand of comfort with intimate, grainy-voiced singing that balanced a polished pop song arrangement.

Raitt struck a moving grace note by pausing near the end of her celebratory set to dedicate a lovely elegy, “River of Tears,” to the memory of musicians Lowell George, Paul Butterfield, Jesse Ed Davis and Carl Radle, “the ones I had to say goodby to.” Raitt’s singing and playing carried the lament as far as she could take it. Then, in a gesture that was as eloquent as the music, she stopped playing, cradled the guitar against her body, and embraced herself against the sadness of loss.

Before closing with one last rocker, Raitt sang yet another telling quiet song, John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery.” The song is about a woman so isolated and bereft of any real prospects for warmth that she considers giving up on life. But something in Raitt’s rendition--a spark of determination, or perhaps even anger-- suggested reserves of toughness that would enable her to get by.

One of these days, Richard Thompson, who opened with a 55-minute solo set, also will get a gold record and a triumphant evening to go with it. When that day comes, Thompson will probably show off the same coolly sardonic humor he did at the Coach House, along with the same incomparable guitar style. Thompson starts with the deft, fluid attack and rhythmic drive that most guitarists hold as their ultimate goal--then proceeds to insert the distinctive bends, groans, shivers and chromatic strokes that make his playing truly special. On this night, aging British rockers mounting big bonanza comebacks were among the prime targets for Thompson’s between-songs wit. As if to blunt those jabs a bit, he ended with a hard-charging version of the Who’s “Substitute.” But for this ‘60s British veteran, who started with the folk-rock band, Fairport Convention, the current decade has been a productive time of creative adventures as a singer, songwriter and guitarist, not a time for nostalgia trips.