Pop Music : Living-Room Gig From Yoakam : Country singer’s off-center licks and guitarist Pete Anderson’s stinging riffs steal the spotlight.

It was good news, at least for local yokels, that Dwight Yoakam is not on tour right now, and that his show on Friday at the Universal Amphitheatre was his only scheduled concert of the year. That meant that his lead guitarist would almost certainly be stalwart Pete Anderson, who is too busy as a producer and session guitarist to tour with Yoakam anymore, but does show up at isolated gigs. Sure enough, Anderson--like Yoakam a veteran of the L.A. country scene--was on hand, and true to form he nearly stole the show.

Over four albums, Yoakam has established himself as one of contemporary country’s most gifted songwriters, with a plaintive voice to match. But he’s a laconic enough stage presence that he needs a strong foil in concert, and Anderson’s stinging riffs and slightly off-center licks provided just that, a constant delight of rockabilly-inflected invention.

This indeed offered some of the fun of a “living room gig,” as Yoakam promised, in noting that the lack of a tour made it seem that his band had virtually stepped onto the stage from their bedrooms. Which is not to suggest it was anything but tight.

The show featured energized, well-thought-out rearrangements of selections from Yoakam’s early LPs--sometimes turning standard country fare more rock-ish (the opening “Ring of Fire”), or sometimes just the opposite, giving his more rock-flavored numbers a bluegrass lilt.

His fine new effort, “If There Was a Way,” was also well-represented. This included a bit of monkey business at the end when Yoakam encored with “Wooly Bully”--in tribute to the opening act, Tex-Mex all-stars the Texas Tornados--then launched into the new LP’s “Since I Started Drinking Again,” only to stop mid-chorus and start up “Wooly” again. This process was repeated twice, to general crowd delight. He might not want to take that irreverent routine on the road next year, but it played just great in the hometown.