POP MUSIC REVIEW : Belly Up Full of Fire With Leon Russell

Several hundred fans marveled as 51-year-old Leon Russell blew a hole in the roof with a slam-bam, 90-minute concert Monday night at the Belly Up Tavern. They have Bruce Hornsby to thank. Last year, Hornsby took a career detour to prod his idol into recording his first studio album in eight years, and the resulting collaboration, “Anything Can Happen,” is the ostensible reason for Russell’s current tour.

Judging by the album, one had an inkling that this show would be good. Sure, the Hornsby-inspired production sealed the tunes in the colored foil of high-tech instrumentation, which, on principle, would seem at odds with Russell’s Tulsa, Okla.-bred funk. But, happily, the process instead seems to have fanned Russell’s creative spark.

“Anything Can Happen” has a kind of nerve , an in-your-face vitality, that one hasn’t heard on a Russell album since his heyday in the early ‘70s. Monday night’s show, in which Russell was backed by an energetic, nine-piece band o’ young’uns that included two percussionists and three (count ‘em) keyboardists, took the new record’s verve and gave it a liquid-oxygen liftoff.

Russell, who’s scheduled to undergo hip replacement surgery at the tour’s conclusion, limped onstage to a band-performed, film-score-like overture that included snippets of his familiar hits. Russell’s appearance provided further evidence that some of his personal pages have been rewritten. And it wasn’t his trademark mane and beard, which have turned a Rip Van Winkle-ish white, or the omnipresent cowboy hat and impenetrable sunglasses.

In recent years, Russell has performed in an all-black outfit that, when combined with his mute stare and lack of audience interaction, gave him an aloof, almost malevolent presence. On Monday night, he wore a floral-print Hawaiian shirt and gray slacks. As it happened, that would be a visual clue of the program to come.

Seated at a keyboard setup that included a computer monitor, Russell took the crowd on the musical equivalent of a ride on Space Mountain. With barely a breath between tunes, Russell and band played a stomping version of “Kansas City Woman;” gave an earthy, gospel-ish push to his languid 1976 hit, “Back to the Island;” laid some N’Awlins-style funk on Willie Dixon’s blues “Big Boss Man,” and stretched the prancing rhythm of the 1972 hit “Tight Rope” into a tight strut.

Russell drove the band like a trail boss, at times pounding out his signature gospel-stride-funk piano figures with such force that the computer monitor seemed in danger of tumbling from its perch. The crowd responded in kind, first cheering and then dancing to such Russell faves as “Dixie Lullabye,” “Prince of Peace,” “Delta Lady” and “Stranger in a Strange Land”--each sung in Russell’s inimitable nasal growl with the fervor of a man trying to earn a reprieve from the governor.

Russell’s new stage demeanor included many “thank-yous” between songs and a genuine emotional sincerity that infused such ballads as 1975’s “Lady Blue” and its newest spiritual companion, “Angel Ways.” He took his hands off the keys to sing the new album’s other ballad, “Faces of the Children,” and appeared to be caught up in the lyric’s vow of everlasting love.

A sequence of songs from “Anything Can Happen” demonstrated that Russell’s current live show is more than a rehashing of studio takes. “No Man’s Land” rocked with a vengeance; a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business,” which, on the record, is sung-spoken to a quirky rhythm track, in concert was texturally punched-up and sung with conviction, and the Middle-Eastern-sounding “Black Halos,” whose recorded version stressed exotic modes rather than compelling rhythms, was turned into a Bo-Diddley-in-Morocco romp.

Russell’s solo encore, a rendition of the 1970 ballad “A Song for You” that he reinvigorated with lavish pianistics, was interrupted several times by applause. When the band returned to jam with him on “Kansas City,” Russell turned the energy up another notch and left it there, presumably to whet his fans’ appetite for his inevitable return.