POP MUSIC REVIEW : Burning Tree Catches Fire in Late Set

To live up to its name, Burning Tree has to go out on a limb.

By the end of its 50-minute set Friday night as the first headliner in the new rock format at Crawford’s, the impressive local power trio was stepping outside the relative safety zone of its album arrangements and branching into more risky territory. When that happened, a set that had simmered with moderate heat crackled into bright flame.

The show was a homecoming performance for Burning Tree, which recently toured as opening act for the Black Crowes, another rookie band that is part of a welcome back-to-bluesy-basics, anti-metal current that gained steam on the hard-rock scene in 1990.

The Crowes, whose album has gone platinum, have a rambunctious stage presence and a quickly accessible sound swiped wholesale from the Rolling Stones. Burning Tree, whose debut album for Epic failed to make the charts, is the more interesting and versatile band. It has a greater range of musical colors and styles drawn from Jimi Hendrix, Cream and Stevie Ray Vaughan, with the Stones as a secondary influence. And members Marc Ford, Mark Dutton and Doni Gray, who share the songwriting and take turns singing lead vocals, generate a brooding intensity that wears better than the more gregarious, showy approach of their pals in the Black Crowes.

Egalitarianism is at play in Burning Tree: Each of the three members sang solid, if not brilliant, lead parts and effective harmonies, and each occupied a respectable amount of space and upheld a significant role in the trio’s instrumental format. But in rock music, the guitar rules--and that’s especially true when the player happens to have Ford’s extraordinary attributes.

Ford’s meaty, streamlined sound hurtles out of his amplifier and commands attention like a burst of bright light. At the same time, he has the taste, dexterity and discipline to play within the framework of a song, rather than trying to dominate it. Ford is as active and alert while playing rhythm patterns as he is when it’s time to solo.

Like an Olympic gymnast handling all the compulsory figures, Ford moved confidently through a guitar-hero’s lexicon: blurting out a wah-wah pedal solo or some noisy whammy bar groans, playing clean, staccato fills, graceful sustained cries, or pumping out the catchy, fast-coursing chord pattern of “Mistreated Lover.”

Actually, the early going of Burning Tree’s concert had something of the feel of a gymnast’s compulsory routine as it stuck with song arrangements from its album. It wasn’t dull going, since the material holds up well and the band’s tour-honed playing was sharp. But the only real surprise in the set’s first half was Ford’s uncharacteristic slip-up on a high-note solo guitar passage during the fine ballad, “Crush.”

Playing an abbreviated set because it had also scheduled a show later the same night in Hollywood, Burning Tree waited until its last two songs to exercise some more adventurous options. The concluding numbers, “Burning Tree” and “Turtle,” stretched out in unpredictable directions as the band reached peak form. Ford was at his best, changing dynamics, adding inventive punctuations as he created an intense, forward-moving funnel of sound that seemed to spring from the controlled chaos of Gray’s drumming, which circled and swarmed around the beat. It may be asking too much of a band to detour onto the unpaved path with each song, but Burning Tree did it so well that it ought to go on those excursions as often as possible.

After Burning Tree’s brawny power-rock, Children’s Day provided a smooth, pleasant nightcap with a 45-minute, mood-weaving set of wistful, melodic songs. The band has evolved quite a bit since it put out a 1986 EP that went for a dark-and-stormy sound like the Cure’s. About a year ago, leader Russell Scott handed over the vocals to Kirsten Konte, whose sweet, clear voice, colored by a hint of a dusky grain, makes her the band’s focus. Konte, who is Marc Ford’s fiancee, proved an extremely attractive and polished front woman, calling to mind a less-frosty version of ‘Til Tuesday’s Aimee Mann.

Scott complemented Konte’s singing with pretty, rippling, Johnny Marr-style guitar figures; drummer Patrick Young, while lending good rhythmic motion to the mostly mid-tempo set, overplayed his hand. This is first and foremost a singer’s band, requiring a subtle, supportive instrumental weave instead of competition from too-loud snare and cymbals.

Most of the original songs relied on abstract images rather than forging a story line; both lyrically and sonically, it would help if Children’s Day occasionally came up with something more concrete and substantial for the sake of contrast. The band’s seamless array of gently rolling, melancholy ballads and restrained rock tunes was sometimes enchanting, but ultimately one-dimensional.

For Crawford’s, at 11529 Carson St., the show launched a new booking agreement with independent rock promoters Ed Christensen and Jay Sheridan. The club’s clean, cozy-but-not-cramped, circle-shaped concert room should be a comfortable spot for local rockers to build a following. Because the stage is so low--about a foot high--listeners have to crowd near it if they want to get a full glimpse of the band. That means a lot of standing for patrons who want to see as well as hear. At the same time, close contact with fans could help prod bands to more heated, interactive performances.

Toward the rear of the concert room, several concrete support beams serve either as leaning posts or as sight-line impediments. A spacious back room with pool tables is in earshot, but out of sight, of the bandstand. The club’s nicest amenity is its large, outdoor brick patio, overhung by palm trees, that offers respite from smoke and blare.

Crawford’s low stage and ceiling make it far from an ideal concert setting, but it shapes up as a good place for hardier music fans to see a band up close.