Staples’s rich, full voice is still limber enough to engage her band members in scat sessions or to punctuate songs with theatrical grunts, groans, and giggles. Guitarist Rick Holmstrom, drummer Stephen Hodges, and bassist Jeff Turmes ably moved from gut-busting gospel blowouts to steely ballads. Staples’s older sister Yvonne joined Vicki Randle and Donny Gerrard in the vocal section.
The troupe opened the concert with everyone’s voice joining in an a cappella devotional “I Am His, He Is Mine.’’
Staples’s brand of gospel has a spectral beauty that can nab the staunchest of nonbelievers. The heaving blues of “Creep Along Moses’’ and sassy soul of “I Belong to the Band-Hallelujah’’ were as musically bountiful as they were spiritually loaded.
Staples was comfortable outside of the church canon. Her earthy arrangement of “The Weight’’ passed out verses to different band members before Staples herself crafted a frenzied finale to The Band classic. She transformed Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth’’ into a sassy soul number without losing any of its cautionary dread.
As hopeful as Staples is, she is not naive, as “Freedom Highway’’ linked injustices originally voiced during the civil rights marches of the 1960s to social inequities that exist today.
But Staples never raised a worry without also offering some comfort for it. The tug of war between trouble and solace was most pronounced during the locomotive surge of “We’re Gonna Make It.’’ The Staple Singers hit “I’ll Take You There’’ served as a balm to close the show.
The Parkington Sisters from Wellfleet opened with a swirl of fiddle, piano, guitar, and percussion that bridged folk roots and contemporary edge. The sisters swung from the regal original “Ours by the Day’’ to the lurching Radiohead cover “There There.’’
