POP MUSIC REVIEW : Charlie Daniels Delivers the Tried and True

Saturday, the Universal Amphitheatre hosted a bill of Dwight Yoakam, Buck Owens and K.D. Lang--all cocky country music outsiders who have been accepted only grudgingly by the Nashville establishment. Sunday, the Greek Theatre presented Charlie Daniels, Gary Morris and the McCarters--all bearing the Nashville Seal of Approval, all playing music so safe it should come with a tamperproof seal.

Headliner Daniels mixed up good old Southern boogie-rock and good old country fiddle-and-banjo tunes. His rabble-rousing songs about workin’ men seemed uniformly designed to make his listeners feel better about their existences.

Daniels was quick to thank his Lord and Savior for the gift of having been born in the U.S.A., though his Christian charity apparently does not extend to the Russians (who can “go to hell”), nor to the women he leaves behind nor the husbands of the women he leaves them for in his not infrequent cheatin’ songs.

If you programmed a computer to come up with a polar opposite to Daniels, it would likely spit out Gary Morris. As fit as Daniels is flabby and as suave as Daniels is down-home, Morris sang little that an objective jury would ever rule to be “country music.” As “easy listening,” though, it was, well, easy enough to listen to.

Morris excelled when ditching his band and singing excerpts from “La Boheme” and “Les Miserables” (both of which he has performed on Broadway) with acoustic guitar. But when wrenching out emotion and facial tics while fronting a faceless country/pop group, the clean-shaven but still long-haired and mighty-voiced Morris resembled nothing so much as a soft-rock Meat Loaf.

Emerging most enjoyably out of Sunday’s choices were the McCarters, a sweet trio of sisters in their early 20s hailing from (you got it) Tennessee. Though their debut LP is a bit sleepily ballad-heavy, the big-haired gals’ sentimentality is more winning on stage, and the way they guilelessly wrapped up their set with a quick-stepping line dance left a lovely last impression.