Concert Review: Jackson Browne shines in solo show

Jackson Browne

One of the most successful and artistically accomplished of the rich crop of '70s singer-songwriters, Jackson Browne has a legacy as a tunesmith that has been obscured in recent years by his personal travails and his political activism, including a tussle last year with John McCain over the presidential candidate's attempt to co-opt Browne's 1977 hit "Running On Empty."

Jackson Browne

But Friday night, Browne made a compelling case for his artistic worth with a powerful, sold-out solo acoustic show at the Orpheum theater. The 2 1/2 -hour concert was an electrifying survey of Browne's entire career, with popular hits, cult favorites and the artist's personal favorites thrown into the mix.

But the constants among the two dozen selections Browne performed reflected his strength as a songwriter and the timelessness of the tuneful but angst-filled vision.

As the format might suggest, Friday's concert was a stark affair. Simple, static lights illuminated a black stage, adorned only with a keyboard, a simple wooden chair and a bank of guitars from which Brown pulled liberally throughout the night, matching each song to just the right instrument.

Brown himself was similarly unadorned, dressed in black and shorn of the salt-and-pepper beard he sported of late. At 61, he still looks, from a distance, like the long-trussed California golden boy who started in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and wrote songs for The Byrds and Joan Baez before going solo in 1971.

His voice is likewise in excellent shape. Brown had no trouble scaling the heights of songs like "Running On Empty." The only place his age did show was in the wizened and weary lines of a "These Days" or "The Pretender," Browne's epic of ennui and dissatisfaction.

Free from the constraints of a band, Browne adopted a freewheeling tack for this show, "a set without a set list."

Browne seemed content to feel his own way from song to song. With little regard for theatrical convenience, he would abruptly switch instruments based on which way his mood pointed him, jumping, in one frenetic stretch, from acoustic guitar on "Barricades of Heaven" to the keyboard on "Late For the Sky" and back to the guitar on "Giving That Heaven Away" before wrapping up the show's first half on the keyboard.

"Barricades" was remarkable for also being one of only a handful of numbers to feature guests. For that song, as well as a rendition of "Time the Conqueror," Browne brought out Knoxville music teacher Will Carter to accompany him on guitar.

© 2009 Go Memphis. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.