Marcia Ball

Fri., June 3

With the Robert Cray Band; Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Pl. (betw. 15th & 16th Sts.), 212-777-6800; 8, $32.50.

True, she may be sharing the bill with a more famous act (the Robert Cray Band), but make no mistake ? Marcia Ball is more than capable of taking a stage on her own. The Louisiana-born artist is an astounding triple threat: an incisive writer who plays the meanest barrelhouse piano this side of Professor Longhair, then completes the package with a voice brewed in swamp water, sweet and potent. Onstage she's one of the rare performers who seem to be having as much fun as we are.

"I like to leave people with a smile at the end of a set," Ball says, her words a southern drawl trickling through the phone line, "but, I also know that if you really want 'em to remember you, you'll bring a little tear to their eye."

Ball's new live CD, Down the Road (Alligator), does just that, hurtling the listener from jubilant second-line rhythms to soulful ballads (a magnificent take on Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927") without losing its thread or sense of purpose. It's a hell of a party record, one that asserts Ball's toughness in a field-blues-that remains dominated by men.

"I've often said that I haven't had any struggles, necessarily, because I'm a woman, but I will tell you something I'm noticing lately. You'll see a whole festival that might have 12 or 15 acts on it, and in some cases there's one woman, or none. It's starting to get on my nerves."

Outspoken and politically committed (on her website she's repeatedly criticized the Bush administration and its actions in Iraq), Ball has always stood apart from the pack. She's also one of the few modern blues instrumentalists to choose piano over guitar, challenging the image-so beloved by male blues fans-of the noisy, Hendrix-style soloist.

"It used to be that the piano was the leader of the band, all the way through the Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard era. But when they electrified the guitar and [guitar players] could drown out everything else on stage, then they took ascendancy. I'm doing my part to crank that piano back up."