POP MUSIC REVIEW : Marriage of Convenience Is Solid Union : Recession Brought Gilmore and Brown Together, but the Honeymoon Is Far From Over

One effect of the recession is that marriages of convenience are being arranged all over the musical landscape. The idea is to find two or more compatible acts, get ‘em hitched and send them on the road on bills offering multiple headliners at an attractive price.

The pairing of Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Marty Brown began as such a union. The two country singers, brought together at the suggestion of their mutual booking agent, had never met before they began rehearsals earlier this month for their current West Coast tour. Each brought a dowry of one guitar sideman to the marriage. They hired on a rhythm section to create a shared band, and set up musical housekeeping.

At the Coach House on Wednesday night, the Texan (Gilmore) and the Kentuckian (Brown) clearly were enjoying their honeymoon.

“The minute we sat down we were blood brothers,” Gilmore, a gently amiable singer whose only token of flash was an embroidered purple shirt, told the audience after dubbing the proceedings “The Jimmie and Marty Party.”

And a party it was--especially at the end, when Gilmore and Brown, after well-received separate sets, got together for a series of duets. Their four-song spree of Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers nuggets was a treat, an instance of musicians dipping into some of their favorite music for the sheer fun of it.

The half-capacity audience whooped and hollered in appreciation. If they could have matched Brown’s impressive yodeling, they probably would have done that too.

While sharing an affinity for delving deep into country’s roots, and a desire to be as authentic-sounding as their influences, Gilmore, 46, and Brown, 26, are very different artists, at very different stages of their career.

At this point, Brown is a promising, eager-to-please rookie, full of spunk and sharp instincts, but not yet arrived at a sound that is distinctively his own. Gilmore, who played first, is an unheralded master, a singer and songwriter of the first magnitude, as fully in possession of his own musical identity as any pop performer you might name.

Brown’s 11-song set relied heavily on those foundations of his style, the Williams sliding moan and the Rodgers yodel. He delivered both with an energetic edge that matched his active but not distracting performing style. He covered most of the emotional touchstones of honky-tonk traditionalism, from the tipsy lamentation of “High and Dry” to “Ole King Kong,” a funny battle-of-the-sexes ditty that Brown said he wrote when he was just 15.

A few of Brown’s songs--the least distinctive ones--fell more in line with the polished currents of contemporary Nashville’s take on traditionalism. “Small Town Love” was an anthem to just that; its sonorous chords overreached for grand effect, and its lyrics veered toward schmaltzy sentiment. “Wildest Dreams,” another reverent ode to love, also toned down Brown’s wilder instincts. Somehow it wasn’t surprising when he said that the tune is his new single.

Gilmore drew a line between his sort of country and “this other thing you hear on the radio.” He suggested that “Western Beat,” a description he said first was applied to him at the Montreaux Jazz Festival (a gig somewhat removed from the regular country circuit), would fit him best.

But Gilmore’s music is really a thing unto itself, due mainly to a voice as idiosyncratic as Bob Dylan’s or Van Morrison’s. Its distinguishing marks are a vibrato flutter a bit like Willie Nelson’s, and a fusion of calmness and commitment that seems to take his songs above the plane of everyday experience.

That’s fitting, because Gilmore has a philosophic, sometimes mystical bent. “Chase the Wind,” with its dark, folkish portents, and “Don’t Be a Stranger to Yourself,” a valediction that had the beauty and sweep of prime Roy Orbison, exemplified his ability to reach for abstract truths in a genre that usually works best when it is most specific.

Reveling in his rich melodies, the backing band shone behind Gilmore. Guitarists Bradley Kopp, who played most of the leads, and Landon Taylor were able to create sighing sound-scapes that evoked vast, empty expanses surrounding a lonely campfire of human warmth kindled by the singer’s voice. But Gilmore and the band were equally at home coming in from the cold and the dark to take boisterous spins around a honky-tonk dance hall.

Most of the set’s 14 songs came from Gilmore’s fine current album, “After Awhile.” Only the dramatic gospel-blues “Midnight Train” suffered by comparison to the recorded version, failing to match the pounding groove and slow, inexorable heaviness Gilmore established in the studio.

Gilmore was a disarming figure. When he and the band got their signals crossed as to song order, it wasn’t a crisis, but an excuse for a running gag. Somehow, everything he played while seemingly struggling to find his compass fit perfectly. In any order, it would have been hard for Gilmore to go wrong, given the strength of his material and the singular quality of a voice so sweet and strange that it grabs without grasping, commands without barking an order.