POP REVIEW : Quality Material Helps Flawed Singing Wear Well

The moral of the story in Saturday night’s tripleheader at Bogart’s was that while excellent songwriting may not disguise other problems during a performance, it certainly makes them matter a heck of a lot less.

Dave Alvin, Rosie Flores and Chris Gaffney turned up sharing a common geography (Southern California), a common record label (HighTone), a keen sense of musical roots and a mutual respect for each other’s work.

If the night had its imperfections, a lack of quality material certainly wasn’t one of them. The three sets spanned three hours and 15 minutes, and not a lame song was heard.

Headliner Alvin is no golden-throat, unless maybe his vocal cords have been stained that hue from too much nicotine. If Michael Bolton sounded as rough and patchy as Alvin, he would probably have made a nice career for himself as a short-order cook. But however ungainly his vocal means, the ex-Blaster writes meaty, personality-filled roles for himself. He was able to inhabit them with great confidence that drew listeners to the conviction of the performance, as opposed to its technical shortcomings.

Flores is a fine singer, but a sore throat had her straining at Bogart’s. Still, the quality of what she sang carried her along to a solid, enjoyable set.

Opener Gaffney and his band don’t have the concert-stage flair of such touring veterans as Alvin and Flores, possibly because they’ve spent most of their musical lives playing gin mills instead of concertizing. But while some people today think that music without a visual flourish is as dull as, say, a clean, fair and honest fight in a presidential election, those willing to concentrate on the substance of the thing won’t complain. Gaffney and his Cold Hard Facts band didn’t give a beholder much to stare at, but they rewarded the attentive ear.

Gaffney’s 55-minute set offered lots of variety. There were sprightly Tex-Mex strains featuring the Costa Mesa-based bandleader’s accordion, straight country and honky-tonk music done with both wry humor and deep lamentation, a touch of Western swing, and several Chuck Berry-fueled rockers, with the set-closing “Fight (Tonight’s the Night”) revving particularly hard. Everything was as eminently hummable as it comes across on Gaffney’s two fine albums, “Chris Gaffney & the Cold Hard Facts” and “Mi Vida Loca.”

The band’s flexibility was such that Gaffney, after switching back and forth between rhythm guitar and accordion, could take a third option: sit down at Wyman Reese’s keyboard and let Reese try playing guitar. Reese didn’t just try, he rendered expert solos on covers of the jumping “Caledonia” and a notably warm, mellow “Love in Vain” (you won’t catch too many bands that are nominally country playing Louis Jordan and Robert Johnson covers).

Lead guitarist Danny Ott was the band’s MVP, with his deft touch and his knack for saying a great deal in a little space, and sticking to the point set by the song’s mood and content. Ott also provided a smooth harmony cushion for Gaffney’s sturdy, grainy-toned voice.

With two albums’ worth of songs of gem quality and a band that can play them impeccably, Gaffney has one more task ahead of him: finding a way to visually hint at all the rich life coursing through those songs. To have written a song as zesty and funny as “Psychotic Girlfriend” ought to be enough; still, giving it, and others, a laconic, straight-faced performance, as Gaffney and band did, is somehow selling it short.

Even as she fought huskiness, Flores was able to show unusual dimension as a singer in her 50-minute set. On R&B-tinged; songs like the playful opener, “That’s Me,” she had some of the sass of a Bonnie Raitt. Yet, in the same song, there was a plaintive, almost girlish undercurrent--the sort of thing you would expect from a wistful Nanci Griffith.

Flores drew mainly from her strong “After the Farm” album but also played solo-acoustic in introducing a promising new song about a woman who has hardened herself to chase away lovers--until she finds one who has the persistence and strength of affection to wear her defenses down.

By the end of her set, having incorporated folk, honky-tonk, R&B; and country-rock elements, Flores was blazing away like a garage-rocker, trading tough-sounding solos on the last two songs with her excellent lead guitarist, Duane Jarvis. Even on those assertive songs, “Price You Pay” and “Dream Dream Blue,” Flores mixed pleas with demands, achieving that dual quality that makes her interesting.

James Intveld, who has written songs on Flores’ two albums, turned up midway through her set, allowing her to rest her voice while he took over her band to play two songs of his own. The former Garden Grove resident has done rockabilly and Springsteenian rock in the past but seemed to be on a promising track with two wry, cranking Stones-go-country numbers.

Alvin played his 90-minute set with a band put together specially for the show--with Jarvis and X’s drummer, D.J. Bonebrake, joining Don Falzone and Rick Solem, the bassist and keyboards player who backed Alvin on his excellent 1991 album, “Blue Blvd.”

While Alvin opened with solo readings of two sad, reflective songs, “Dry River” and “Every Night About This Time,” he quickly established an easy flow of quips and banter with the audience that would last through the show. It proved to be a brawny, rambunctious, crowd-pleasing set once the band turned up--first for a raunchy Chicago blues instrumental, then a rich selection of some of Alvin’s best material, including many a highlight from the Blasters catalogue, plus “Fourth of July,” the brilliant anthem he wrote for X before launching his solo career.

With Jarvis shaking remarkably fat, grimy tones from his Telecaster, and Alvin answering with lean, steely, but no less emphatic solos, it was a heavenly 90 minutes for lovers of ‘50s based rock ‘n’ roll guitar with roots in Berry, blues and rockabilly. Bands that rollick so freely sometimes forget about substance, but Alvin did a convincing job of stepping into roles or playing the narrator.

Alvin made his encores collaborative, summoning a game but vocally flagging Flores to sing the Elvis Presley song “Too Much” and inviting Gaffney, a sometime songwriting and playing partner of Alvin’s, to sing and add accordion to tunes by the Blasters and Webb Pierce. Alvin is scheduled to play at Rhythm Cafe in Santa Ana on Dec. 10. Meanwhile, it’s possible the bill that played at Bogart’s will team up for a tour next year.