POP MUSIC REVIEW : An Ever-Restless Ronstadt Grows

Linda Ronstadt’s first pop-rock tour in almost a decade reminds us of how excellent a singer she is . . . and how restless an artist.

First, it’s misleading to say that it was the “old” Ronstadt at the Santa Barbara County Bowl on Saturday night, the first of 10 Southern California stops on her new “Cry Like a Rainstorm” tour. (She performed Sunday night with the Neville Brothers at San Diego State University’s Open Air Theatre.)

She did sing nearly a dozen of her old hits--from the energetic “It’s So Easy” and “Tumbling Dice” to the delicate and dreamy “Blue Bayou” and “Ooh Baby Baby.”

And she acted pretty much the same as before--which means Ronstadt still doesn’t quite know what to do between songs.

Wearing a denim jacket over a black sweater vest along with black stretch pants, she mostly just stood around waiting for the seven band members to start the next number, smiling sweetly and rarely speaking to the audience.

And the old songs, while enjoyable on a nostalgic level, mainly served to demonstrate how Ronstadt has improved as a singer.

She had already established herself as the premier female voice in mainstream pop-rock when she decided at the start of the ‘80s to look for new challenges.

When that search led to such musically distant territory as Gilbert & Sullivan, Mexican folk music and pre-rock pop standards, there was fear among some longtime fans that Ronstadt’s rock instincts might suffer.

But the discipline of working in those styles has heightened Ronstadt’s ability to sing pop-rock--as revealed Saturday in the added authority and control in her handling of the early hits.

And she took advantage of that growth by opening the show with a knockout punch of eight of the early favorites in a row. It was such a dramatic beginning that even a 13-minute rain delay after the first number failed to lessen the impact.

While she finished the concert with another group of oldies, the artistic heart of the show rested in the eight songs in between the opening and closing flurries: five Jimmy Webb compositions and three duets with Aaron Neville.

Ronstadt, 44, may be ready to concentrate on pop-rock again, but she is going to do it in ways that have new meaning for her. There are songs on “Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind,” her lastest album, that recall the tone of her pop-rock successes from the ‘70s.

Yet Ronstadt--backed on the tour by such allies as guitarist Andrew Gold, drummer Russ Kunkel and singer Rosemary Butler--left little doubt that it was the Webb ballads and the Neville duets from the album that interested her most.

Ronstadt’s faith in Webb is justified, but the danger with some of his songs is that their sweeping romanticism invites instrumental over-embellishment. That’s a problem on the “Rainstorm” album and still a lesser one live, where the intimacy of Ronstadt’s vocals is sometimes sabotaged by some unnecessary keyboard touches.

She has another standout partner in Neville, whose high, heavenly, vibrato-style voice makes him one of the most distinctive and appealing stylists in pop. Their version of the tender “Don’t Know Much,” a recent hit single for them, was so striking Saturday that it was hard for them to hold the audience’s attention on two good but less dramatic numbers that followed.

Even with the minor hitches in the Webb and Neville sets, however, Ronstadt approached them with such commitment and purpose that she seemed a bit distant from the older pop-rock hits when she returned to them to close the set.

Just as David Bowie’s “Sound + Vision” tour demonstrated, there is a time when artists no longer relate to songs that once worked for them. That’s why it’s hard to imagine Ronstadt’s building future tours around the old hits. She’ll always be able to reach back for some meaningful songs to help the audience revive some memories.

But the lesson of this return to pop-rock is that Ronstadt is still an artist in search of herself, which is one of the best things you can say about a quality singer who has been turning out hits now for more than 22 years.

A bonus of the tour--which, following a scheduled stop Sunday at the Open Air Theatre in San Diego, moves Oct. 9 to the Universal Amphitheatre for seven shows and then to the Pacific Amphitheatre on Oct. 20--is the Neville Brothers band.

The long-admired group’s 45-minute set spotlighted Aaron’s vocals, the group’s eclectic mix of jazz, reggae and New Orleans R&B; strains and new songs that often express humanitarian ideals. The music was well-received, but the impact might be heightened even further by giving more time for Aaron to reach for the R&B; intimacy of songs like “Tell It Like It Is,” his ‘60s hit that was featured Saturday, or “Bird on a Wire,” which was not.