POP MUSIC REVIEW : Leo Kottke: Strummin’ His Stuff : His Timeless Style Blends Engaging Tales, Expressive Instrumental Work at the Coach House

Leo Kottke is probably one of the small minority of Americans who could function reasonably well if suddenly transported back in time 100 years.

Before wireless, folks sat around on their porches, fanning themselves and telling stories. At night, they’d gather in the parlor, listening to somebody play a musical instrument.

At the Coach House on Wednesday, Kottke displayed prodigious gifts for gabbing and playing.

His expressive and unerringly accurate instrumental work probably would have made him as much a hero on the 19th-Century hearth and parlor circuit as he has been for the past 20 years among contemporary acoustic-guitar buffs. And his knack for spinning engaging verbiage about not much at all would have stood him in good stead on any old-time front porch--unlike most of us who have grown up cocooned by audio and dazed by video. A constant electronic purr has got our culture’s tongue, but in Kottke, a youthful-looking 45, the yarn-weaving spirit of a Mark Twain still flickers.

Kottke passed the time with funny chat that didn’t really lead anywhere, and so much the better for that. There was a long story about a staring match he had with a carnivorous Amazonian fish while sitting beneath an aquarium at a Thai restaurant. There was the tale of a guitarist who could play just about any jazz piece there was, until he took up the oud. After that, Kottke said, all he would play was “goatherd kind of stuff. He’d become a Turk.” And there was the one about Kottke’s bass-playing pal who got called to sit in with Thelonious Monk--only to be hung out to dry when Monk had him solo endlessly during the first number.

In between all that, Kottke did some eloquent storytelling with his guitar and shaped a 95-minute show that established a dialogue between somber moods and lighter hues.

He opened by bumbling about on stage looking for a missing capo, a calculated routine, most likely, but an effectively disarming device nonetheless. Giving up on the capo, Kottke played a series of brisk, optimistic pieces, including a gruffly tuneful vocal number that celebrated sweet dalliances followed by preachers and wedding bells.

“It’s so good-natured, which means there’s something tragically wrong about this tune,” Kottke noted by way of introducing the wedding-bells piece. “It’s not the way things work, but it’s irresistible.”

A couple of songs later, without opening his mouth, Kottke was communicating how things more commonly work in love and life. He did it in an instrumental piece that began with a lovely, idyllic reverie. But Kottke had a more complex emotional statement in mind. Darker, minor key passages began to encroach. Then, sweet reverie would return, only to be interrupted once more by those cloudy, unsettled bits.

Listening to this wordless plot unfold, it was impossible not to be caught up by the tale. What would happen next, and how would it end? Was this a commentary on how a relationship ebbs and flows after the sweet dalliances and wedding bells? Kottke proved too much the realist to choose a bright and upbeat conclusion.

The juxtaposition continued throughout his show. On the lighter side were a joking song about a guy hunting for “hippie chicks” in Santa Cruz, and Kottke’s gem of wryly expressed disillusionment, “Everybody Lies.” But there were also new Kottke songs about the self-disgust he felt after attaining early success (“I was 29, and it absolutely stank . . . “) and a grim depiction of refugees stranded in a sizzling desert.

Each of these emotional lows was followed by an instrumental piece signaling uplift and recovery, culminating in a set-closing run through some of Kottke’s rousing old slide-guitar standards played on 12-string guitar.

In what he said was an experiment, Kottke, who usually plays solo, brought on a bassist to lend unobtrusive accompaniment to several songs. The second instrument proved vital only for “Jesus Maria,” a show-closing ballad by Carla Bley in which the bowed bass formed a broad backdrop for Kottke’s spare, lyrical guitar lines. Otherwise, Kottke needed no embellishment. His self-contained act contains a great deal.

Opener Tom Kell is part of 1990s Nashville’s attempt to revive the soft-rock, singer-songwriter sound of 1970s Los Angeles. Kell, whose debut album is due out next week, lives in Long Beach but records for the country branch of Warner Bros. Records. His voice, plaintive and reedy, but with a touch of a lived-in burr, qualifies him as a capable revivalist of the old heart-on-sleeve Eagles/Jackson Browne style.

In his low-keyed way, Kell showed a nice touch with a humorous anecdote to balance his music’s mainly lamenting tone. A taut, rock-oriented song, “How Does the Reckless Heart Survive?” revealed a bit of Roger McGuinn and Tom Petty in Kell’s mix, too.

Kell, who played solo, was convincing on songs that sounded as if they were grounded in personal experience. He was less sure when reaching beyond himself. “One Sad Night in Kerrville,” a ballad about a disastrous marriage between a rich Texan and a social climber, didn’t draw its characters vividly enough to make the tale hit home.