Diana Krall getting back to basics?

Caught the show this week at the Moody Theater in Austin. Not my favorite venue, sort of soulless vibe with high pitched banks of seats, but at least you can see the stage from most parts and the sound is better than other venues about town. Krall played with a four piece: drums, bass, guitar and violin, giving the band lots of time to play, and play they could. Anthony Wilson on guitar was excellent and overall, the set seemed to hang a lot on her older releases with the instrumentalists given space to shine. As such, for jazz fans like myself, this was a set I enjoyed though I gather some of the crowd wanted to hear more of her newer stuff and less of the band. I would have enjoyed an Elvis song myself but I figured my shouts for 'Shipbuilding' would not have been appreciated.

The set was a little short of 90 mins with encores, and in parts I felt DK was a little disconnected, seemingly a bit distracted and somewhat tired looking. No real complaints there, the road is a tough life and I like my performers to be human, in all the ways that entails,  but I've read comments from others who caught her recently and this seems to be a common refrain. Regardless, the woman can play when she cuts loose,  and from my vantage point I enjoyed both her piano work and her vocals which are as velvety in real life as on record.

If there's anything to be learned about the industry from the demographics of this audience, I'd say her audience is distinctly middle-aged, white and not too keen on improvisation. This puts her in a position of trying to steer the course between musical exploration and just delivering the hits, but then she won't be the first musician to face this, and she can at least be assured of people willingly paying nearly $100 at least to see her. Not such a tough life I suppose, but I'd love to see her just forget the constraints and play more jazz...she has the chops.