Minnie Driver
Blender Bar @ the Ritz, Saturday, March 20 On any given night in Austin, you can go see Tia Carrera, only it’s not really Tia Carrere, the actress. Yet on a SXSW Saturday in Austin, you could go see Minnie Driver, and damn if it wasn’t Minnie Driver. And think about it: Julie Delpy, Don Johnson, Bruce Willis. These are thespians that have stepped out from behind the camera and in front of the microphone only to embarrass themselves. Not Minnie Driver, who can actually sing; there’s a bit of Maria McKee inside her. Driver’s breathier, but still very capable, warm even. Musically, she wasn’t too far off the kind of guitar-driven Americana that Lone Justice used to traffic in. These weren’t songs to change your life or anything, but stylistically, Driver fit well on a bill with Minibar and Pete Yorn. Put it this way: She did a chanteuse take on Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart,” dedicating it to her “favorite people” (singers who champion underdogs? people from Jersey?). She might want to stop holding those 30-pound weights by her side, however, because, while as an actress she’s lovely to look at, as a performer, she’s not particularly. Comfort in the former milieu doesn’t translate into comfort in the latter. Still, on the whole it could have been much worse, and given what actors before her have done, it probably couldn’t have been much better.This article appears in March 26 • 2004.