O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Ex-Eagle Has a Safe Flight : Glenn Frey reveled in history rather than the here-and-now at a Coach House concert that pleased enthusiastic fans but left them unsure about his future in rock.

Twenty years after his old band took flight, at least one prominent ex-Eagle seems to be wondering whether it’s time to retreat to a well-feathered nest.

At the Coach House Wednesday night, Glenn Frey introduced “Strange Weather” as “the title song from my fourth and last solo album.” Then he demurred: “I’ll make one more, because if I don’t care, it’ll be a hit” (unlike “Strange Weather,” a 1992 release which has failed to chart). Finally, he added, “This marks my last year in rock ‘n’ roll.”

When cries of “no, no” rose from the audience, Frey--who remains just a few scissors-snips shy of having Ollie North’s haircut--advised his fans not to worry, but to “live it up.”

If his wings have been clipped by his dwindling fortunes in the pop marketplace, he at least had sufficient good spirits Wednesday to follow his own advice. Apart from those brief, waffling remarks about his future, the 44-year-old singer was an affably humorous if low-key host during a proficient show that neither soared nor plummeted, but managed to be lively enough.

If two hours of note-perfect renditions of Eagles oldies and Frey’s own hits is your idea of a good time (which seemed to be the case with the enthusiastic crowd), the set made sense. Frey and his sharp, 11-man band also included five from “Strange Weather,” an album that, while suffering from his characteristic slickness, is attuned to more than the good times and romance of his past efforts. The songs were well received.

But Frey wasn’t one to burrow deep into a mood, or to go to the extremes of emotion that make for memorable rock ‘n’ roll. “I’ve Got Mine,” the best song on “Strange Weather,” explores the ease with which comfortable people can shut out the darkness around them. Frey pulled its punch before he sang a note: “Try not to be too serious; it’ll kill you,” he cautioned the audience apologetically--before playing the most serious-minded song of the night.

The Eagles hit “New Kid in Town” was rife with ironic possibilities for a rocker who, in a sense, has lived the song’s story line, in which the “new kid” is pop’s coveted commodity one day, old news the next. But Frey didn’t make it resonate with any immediacy. It was just another well-rendered oldie, a piece of pop history rather than a revelation of feelings in the here-and-now.

Of course, unlike the “New Kid,” Frey managed to do quite well over a long run--16 years passed between “Take It Easy,” the Eagles’ first Top 20 hit in 1972, and “True Love,” the song in 1988 that was Frey’s most recent hit. With fame and fortune already secure, Frey remains enough of a pro to represent his songs well, but not a deep enough artist or a sufficiently fiery singer to make them more than pleasant, passing moments.

Frey has written most of the songs on his post-Eagles albums with Jack Tempchin. The San Diego-based songwriter, a Jerry Garcia look-alike who also wrote the Eagles hits “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and “Already Gone,” opened with a solo acoustic set that revealed an idiosyncratic, enjoyably off-kilter streak that seldom has surfaced in his work with Frey.

Tempchin’s 40-minute performance offered some dry, oddball humor, a sure hand with blues slide guitar and country-tinged melodies, and a sense that a set of songs ought to lead somewhere.

“Late Night TV” was a sometimes funny but ultimately haunting account of a man living in isolation with a channel-changer in his hand. It grew intense at the end with Tempchin repeatedly wailing the words “late night TV” over a two-chord vamp that echoed a passage from Lou Reed’s “Heroin”--a similarity that well might be coincidental, but would be even more impressive if deliberate, given that the themes of addiction and escape-into-oblivion in “Heroin” dovetail neatly with the themes in Tempchin’s song. “Shut Up and Get Me a Beer” was another black-humored look at mean, pitifully limited lives.

As a counterpoint, Tempchin offered a couple of warm but far from saccharine songs celebrating friendship, an anthem declaring his embattled hopes for “A Better World” and, in closing, the romantic ballad “Slow Dancing” (which Tempchin first recorded with his ‘70s band, the Funky Kings. In 1977, it became a Top 10 hit for Johnny Rivers).

Tempchin sang in a plain but sturdy voice. Some of his folk- and country-leaning songs would have sounded better if he’d switched from a National steel guitar (which sounded fine on slide-blues material but kind of clunky on some other numbers) to the regular acoustic guitar he took out only for the set-closing “Slow Dancing.”

Tempchin remarked early on that “I make a couple of personal appearances every decade to let people know I’m still here.” But, in his low-key way, he clearly knows how to handle himself on stage and how to relate to an audience (even if too many folks at the back were jabbering through most of his set). The Southern California music scene would be the richer if he’d come around more often.