O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Tritt or Treat? Some of Both

Depending on which portion of Travis Tritt’s performance one was watching Monday, it could safely be said that the singer is: A) one of the most promising young performers in country today; or B) just another bar band singer, indistinguishable from thousands of other entertainers duking it out in the nation’s lounges. Having seen both parts, one can only shrug and say time will tell.

His late show Monday at the Crazy Horse Steak House was a marked improvement over his appearance at Anaheim’s Bandstand only five months ago. There, his repeated heavy-handed statements about what a really real country guy he is seemed to outweigh any evidence to that effect in his music.

Perhaps Tritt is more comfortable in the spotlight now, or perhaps he was aided by the intimate character of the Crazy Horse, but Monday his voice took a batch of workmanlike songs and invested them with genuine depth and feeling.

Garbed in fringed, studded black buckskins, the bearded singer didn’t waste any time getting down to business, bravely using up the hits most artists save for their set closers. “Country Club,” the title track from his near-platinum debut album of last year, could easily come off as a mere novelty song, playing the standard notion of a country club off against one that includes pickup trucks and honky-tonks. But Tritt’s vocal had just the right degree of playful attitude--not to mention chorus-line leg kicks--to razz the snooty, stiff anti-country attitudes held by some.

Similarly, “I’m Gonna Be Somebody” is a not necessarily exceptional song of the Sammy Davis Jr. “I’m gonna make it someday” variety. Though Tritt didn’t write the song, it so clearly applies to his own exceptional success that his face nearly glowed as he poured his powerful voice--sort of a grainy cross between T. Graham Brown’s and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan’s--into the lyric.

As much as he and his hot six-piece band play up their Southern boogie side, Tritt’s greatest gift seems to lie with country ballads. The finest songs in his set were the country-soul ballad “Help Me Hold On” and a soaringly romantic rendition of his “Drift Off to Dream” (both of which he had a hand in writing). He sang, “We can dance to the radio right until dawn, And drift off to dream in my arms,” and that idealized vision of life with the woman he hasn’t met yet drew aaahhs from his largely female audience.

He has a clearly different vision of the women he has met. Twice divorced, he announced he won’t venture to the altar a third time.

“Instead of getting married again,” he told the audience, “every five years I’m going to find a woman I can’t stand and buy her a house.”

That said, he launched into the first of two new songs in the set, an effective mixture of humor and bitterness titled “Here’s a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares).”

The other new song, “The Whiskey Ain’t Working,” follows the first album’s “If I Were a Drinker” in pioneering the abstentious barroom ballad. While still giving a nod to country’s longtime love of the bottle, “Whiskey” places that love in the past tense, owning up that failed love plus liquor just equals more failed love.

The songs were encouraging signs of artistic growth and of a more personal voice in his writing. However, those glimpses were all Tritt offered from his new album (titled “It’s All About to Change” and due next month).

Instead--and here’s where it gets squirrelly--more than half of his 75-minute show was devoted to playing rote versions of KLSX-grade rock oldies. And with one exception, there was no vision or personal touch to any of it. “La Grange” sounded like nothing more than your average bar band doing ZZ Top, while on “Hotel California” Tritt copied Don Henley’s vocal all the way through. And is there anyone left in even the most remote climes who hasn’t heard Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way” a few dozen times too many?

The exception among the covers was Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page.” There may be no corner of rock or country songcraft more pompous, self-serving and downright loathsome than the “me and my guitar in the motel room” expositions of a musician’s life on the road. At the same time, though, we expect artists to sing about the life they know, and some of them don’t know much but buses, stages and motel rooms (Tritt quipped that he’s having his new house decorated like a Holiday Inn room so he’ll feel at home).

For this show at least, Tritt managed to make Seger’s lyric ache with the rigors of the road, with his gritty, impassioned voice answering back to all the brain-fogging late nights, the endless drives and blinding, distancing stage lights.