Pop Weekend : Waylon: Warm, Candid

Half-an-hour before the first show of his three-night solo run at the Westwood Playhouse, country singer Waylon Jennings ambled through the lobby and chatted amiably with the stunned concert-goers. This casually warm gesture set the tone for the evening.

The 50-year-old Jennings is known as a straight-shooting country rebel. So the idea of his using pre-taped tracks to back the watered-down autobiographical songs from his current “A Man Called Hoss” album (“Too many people would get killed or divorced if I told the truth,” Jennings explained Friday) just didn’t seem right.

But the day was saved by the candidness and spontaneous down-home humor of the linking tales (with all the drugs the reformed Jennings says he’s done, it’s amazing he remembers all that stuff), by the good-natured exchanges with the audience (which included actor James Garner and country musician Roger Miller) and, especially, a set of three songs and some repartee with his wife, singer Jessi Colter. The show moves to the Crazy Horse in Santa Ana tonight and Tuesday.