POP MUSIC REVIEW : Strait Plays It Straight at Amphitheatre

George Strait let his surname be his guide as he opened the outdoor concert season Friday night at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre.

This was indeed the straight stuff: 100 minutes, 31 songs, zero affectation. Strait came on in his white cowboy hat and the kind of brown leather jacket that real folks wear, as opposed to the leather worn by pop stars trying to put on attitude. His eight-piece Ace in the Hole band, meanwhile, looked no different from your average group of rooters at a Friday night high school football game. Strait didn’t do much more than lean into the microphone, tap a foot and sway a little, looking handsome and singing a bunch of songs.

That, as it turned out, was more than enough.

The risk in such a low-key approach to performance is that a concert will amount to little more than an in-the-flesh record-spinning session. But Strait, whose polite stage manner brought Gary Cooper to mind, and his band managed to convey a pleasure in playing that filled the evening with personality. They let liveliness spring from the songs themselves, and given the strength and variety of the set list, there was a lot of vibrancy to draw upon.

The show ranged from Strait’s own tradition-honoring western swing and honky tonk numbers (supplemented by lots of well-chosen nuggets from such precursors as Bob Wills, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash) to some crowd-pleasing middle-of-the-roadish balladry that avoided smarminess.

Strait’s singing was smooth, never forced, taking the curves and hills of a song like a well-tuned Cadillac. His humorous approach to melancholy--a capacity to laugh in the face of troubles, perhaps Strait’s strongest suit--came across in such songs as “Am I Blue” and “All My Ex’s Live In Texas.” At other times, Strait seemed to show genuine hurt, without overemoting.

The one time he did display some vocal fireworks--throwing a big husk into his voice at the end of a brawny “Milk Cow Blues,” the effect on the audience wasn’t too far from what the Beatles used to elicit by shaking their heads and harmonizing an “oooh.”

Highway 101, a promising new country band with rock ‘n’ roll leanings, has a singer, Paulette Carlson, who is capable of searing souls. But it didn’t happen Friday night, when a bottom-heavy sound mix made it hard for her voice to break free. The booming low end did help power a couple of good Steve Earle rockers, “Hillbilly Highway” and “Someday.” The 45-minute set was amiable and well-played, but it ended on a sour note when the band squandered its best song by reaching for the sort of contrivance that Strait scrupulously avoided.

The song, “Whiskey, if You Were a Woman,” captures the strength, fury and ultimate helplessness of an alcoholic’s wife. For who knows what reason, Highway 101 decided to play the Pee-wee’s Playhouse version, urging the crowd to yell the magic word, “whiskey,” whenever it came up. It’s a poor trade-off when a band opts to massage an audience with gimmicks when it has a chance to stir it with a moving song.