O.C. MUSIC REVIEW : With Willie Nelson, It’s Good-Hearted Playing : Despite a poor sound mix at the Celebrity Theatre, his singing and guitar playing showed intimate connections with the material.

As he has since the dawn of time, Willie Nelson opened his performance at the Celebrity Theatre Sunday night with “Whiskey River.” He reprised the tune near the end of his performance, and hit all the equally predictable marks in between. Whiskey or no, Nelson’s performances are indeed like a river, in that they’re ever the same, yet ever changing.

His song list, his personnel and his stylistic approach have shifted only minutely over the last decade, but instead of becoming as robotic as many hard-touring vets do, Nelson often as not makes his performances seem musically fresh and emotionally vital.

His 90-minute show Sunday was a case in point. Despite a nearly ruinous sound mix, his craggy voice and inimitable guitar playing made intimate connections with many of the 33 songs. Backed by his six-member Family--including the fine stylists Grady Martin on guitar and Mickey Raphael on harmonica--Nelson even managed a couple of small surprises. For example, he played “Good Hearted Woman” as his third song instead of later in the set. To a veteran Willie watcher, that’s tantamount to the sun rising in the west.

Another small variation from the norm was backup singer and rhythm guitarist Jody Payne getting to sing an extra song, “Old Flames,” in addition to his staple “Working Man Blues.” Then Nelson, in the middle of singing Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night” and “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again),” interjected a novelty tune about the effect of alcohol on one’s aesthetics (“I ain’t never went to bed with an ugly woman/But I sure woke up with a few”).

As he usually does, Nelson also included some different tunes near the end of the show. This time he offered a couple that are due on a new album early next year: “She’s Not for You,” a remake of his minor hit from 1965 about deceitful love, and a mushy new tune about valentines and chocolate hearts. He also played an unfamiliar minor-key tune, apparently titled “Steal Away to Me,” that has an ominous driving mood.

Other than that, it was all the usual suspects, including “Crazy,” Bob Wills’ “Stay All Night,” “Me and Paul,” “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,” “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys,” “Bloody Mary Morning” and on and on. The surprises weren’t the songs, but what took place within them.

Nelson, who was clad in black, required a few numbers to get up to speed, but by the sixth song, his classic “Night Life,” he was taking off with an all-too-knowing vocal and a bluesy, hard-pushing guitar solo. Nearly alone in country music, Nelson plays an amplified nylon-stringed classical guitar; in his hands the battered Martin is one of the most unusual-sounding instruments in popular music.

Like his voice, the tone of his guitar is on the tinny side, yet he can make both speak with great warmth and weathered eloquence. Although “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” and “Blue Skies” are songs Nelson has sung hundreds if not thousands of times, he gave each an emotional reading Sunday, with beautiful, searching vocals and remarkably lyrical, inventive guitar solos that made the Celebrity seem the most intimate of barrooms.

That was some feat, considering that even after a few years of getting used to the place, the Celebrity remains a difficult room in which to connect with an artist. It’s theater-in-the-round approach means no one is very far from the stage, but it’s sort of like seeing a performer on a time-share plan: As the stage turns, you only have the artist facing you for a short time. And in some strange exception to physical laws, wherever you’re seated, you always get the impression that you’re seeing less of the artist than those seated elsewhere.

Sunday, Nelson’s band stood onstage for half an hour after it was supposed to begin while some problem or other was being fixed. Whatever was fixed, it certainly wasn’t that sound mix, which was inexplicably awful throughout. The chief problem was with Bobbie Nelson’s piano: The audience mostly heard just an echoey rumble, as if the microphone had fallen off its moorings and was rolling on the soundboard.

Both Martin and Payne’s guitars were nearly inaudible while playing rhythm, and on the solos, Martin’s lower notes came out boomy and distorted. Bee Spears’ bass, meanwhile, sounded as if it was emanating from the far end of a shopping mall. Fortunately Nelson’s vocals and guitar were reproduced fairly accurately, though both sometimes were lost in the mud and feedback coming from the other instruments.