Witchy vibes, musical magic: Stevie Nicks flexed rock god power at Austin's Moody Center

On Tuesday, Stevie Nicks conjured music and magic at the Moody Center. In a set that clocked in at nearly two hours, she led a packed house of elated fans on a musical odyssey through her storied career, playing songs that have been the fabric of American pop culture for generations with power, beauty and grace.

Perhaps you have questions about the show. We have answers.

Stevie Nicks is getting older. How’s her voice?

Her voice is a national treasure and thank god she has protected it. (You might recall that she canceled a string of dates including an Austin City Music Limits headline set during the COVID surge in 2021. She was worried that if she caught the virus and had to be intubated it would destroy her voice.)

Nicks' voice has always been vehicle for profound emotion. At 75, she carries the dust of decades of life and love, ecstasy and agony, in that distinctive rasp. Backed by an eight-piece band, she commanded the stage on set opener “Outside the Rain.” As she lamented “what you had and what you lost” on the Fleetwood Mac classic “Dreams,” her voice echoed the ache in our own hearts. “If Anyone Falls” was a sheer triumph, her voice rising, a siren through the storm, to lead us through cascading swells of sound.

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Did she wear flowy shawls and make witchy hand moves?

Here’s the amazing thing about Stevie Nicks: She is a legitimate rock god who resides in the same pantheon as Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix and Prince. The setlist for this show was a cavalcade of classics from the ‘70s, ‘80s and beyond performed with soul-shattering prowess.

She is also a charming and down-to-earth human being who tells rambling, occasionally illuminating stories with the verve of your kooky aunt. Clad in all black with a skirt adorned with layers of torn taffeta that resembled the tufted crest of an ominous bird, she entered the stage to a riotous cheer and immediately greeted the crowd with a goofy curtsy.

She spun around the stage with her shawl (one of many during the night) during a stirring mid-set version of “Bella Donna.” After facing her backup singers to close the song with gorgeous a capella chords, she said it was the “original cape” from the video.

A song and a shawl change later, her voice rose over pummeling drums and muscular guitars on the forceful “Stand Back.” She crouched down, coaxing the band to build and covering herself in a gold-threaded shawl, then stood tall, wavy blonde hair flowing as once again she spun with the shawl, which she described as the original “Stand Back” cape. “It’s been mended many, many, many times, but it still works,” she said.

Her most dramatic shawl-eography was during “Gold Dust Woman.” As the requiem for a past life spent courting darkness built to an explosive cacophony of pounding drums and wailing guitars, she banged her head around then grabbed her hair with both hands. She waved her hands wildly like a mad conductor. As the melee died down, she caught the shawl in her outspread arms. With her back to the audience, she looked like a rock ‘n’ roll butterfly emerging transformed to face a new day.

Did her fans also wear said shawls and gesture witchily?

Stereotype much? Look, let’s say less than 30%, but more than 15% of an audience that skewed female, white and closer to AARP than college-aged draped their shoulders with some sort of a black lace or crochet shrug. There were indeed witchy fingers winding in the air during some songs, but more wild cheering than anything else.

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Let's hear more about the rambling stories.

She intro’d “Gypsy” with a story about how rapidly the life she shared with her then-beau and longtime collaborator Lindsey Buckingham changed when the pair joined Fleetwood Mac. She had been working as a cleaning lady and a waitress, forcing herself to not look at the fancy stores she passed on the way to the laundromat. Almost overnight, the duo was making $200, then $400, then $800 a week. Before Fleetwood Mac, they “never made enough to pay taxes,” she said. By the end of their first summer with the band, they had amassed $500,000. “We were half a millionaire,” she said.

To center herself, she would put a mattress in the middle of the floor (the way they lived during the lean era), scatter it with paper flowers and remind herself “I am still Stevie.”

The gorgeous rendition of the song that followed — “the only reason some of you came to this show,” she quipped — inspired some of the biggest cheers of the night.

So, about Lyndsey Buckingham … did she allude to their bad blood?

Maybe? She called her 2001 track “Fall From Grace,” the “closest thing to an argument song” that she has. For years she didn’t play the song because it is so “violent and mean,” she said. She described it as a story that you write in your journal, then immediately draw a line through but choose not to erase.

“Be that what it may,” she decided to start playing it on this tour in part because she “gets her steps in” during the performance, she said with a wry smile.

Did she talk about current events?

She confessed to never voting until she turned 70. She made excuses. She was busy. She didn’t want to be called for jury duty. “Don’t be like me,” she said as an intro to a cover of “For What It’s Worth” by Stephen Stills.

She also dedicated “Soldier’s Angel” to the people of Ukraine. The song was released in 2011 and written after visiting with soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Those conversations dramatically affected her world view, she said. “If (Putin) takes over that country, he's right up against Europe, he's not going to stop,” she said.

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How epic was 'Edge of Seventeen'?

It opened with an extended guitar solo dancing around the familiar melodies and built into a breathless thing of wonder. Nicks became the heroine left standing at the end of a devastating quest, wiser from loves lost, steel-willed because every time she was beat down she came back stronger. She performed with such ferocity we could feel the mythical wind whipping through our own hair as our souls took flight.

Did 'Landslide' make you cry?

Oh Stevie, how you handled our fragile hearts. Nicks capped off an encore that included a heartfelt cover of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" and a galloping rendition of "Rhiannon" with a gorgeous tribute to Christine McVie. A misty-eyed audience sang along as images of Stevie and Christine together through their Fleetwood Mac years played on the screen. She was transcendent as she unwound one of the most beautiful songs of loss ever written.

“Love never dies and if anything is making me better it's you,” she said to her late friend, who died in November, at the end of the song.

Stevie Nicks is very open about her decision to forgo marriage and children for a life in rock ‘n’ roll. The song, and the concert itself — loaded with poetry, passion and power chords — was a testament to a life well lived.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Review: Stevie Nicks brings musical magic to Moody Center in Austin