POP MUSIC REVIEW : Uncle Tupelo Mixes It Up at Bogart’s

Uncle Tupelo and Freedy Johnston, two acts on a lot of music insiders’ people-to-watch lists, showed their stuff at Bogart’s in Long Beach on Thursday. While neither seemed to be the kind of act likely to change your life, it was easy to see why each has inspired so much affection.

If a young Gary Cooper had rocked, he’d probably have been a lot like Jay Farrar, singer-guitarist of Uncle Tupelo, a St. Louis trio recently signed to Warner Bros. Records. Farrar, and to a slightly lesser extent bassist-singer Jeff Tweedy, bring a Cooper-like plain-spokenness to the group’s country-folk/post-punk hybrid that draws a line from Woody Guthrie and the Louvin Brothers through Gram Parsons and Neil Young to the Minutemen and Dinosaur Jr. Augmented at times by a fiddler-mandolinist, the band started with rustic acoustic material, nostalgia for a time and place where hell is in a bottle, heaven is in Jesus and life is just about that simple. Impressively, that directness remained intact when the band switched to electric instruments.

Kansas-via-Hoboken singer Johnston and his three-piece backing band also emphasized simplicity and directness, but with a combination of innocence and impetuousness that called to mind Alex Chilton. Johnston, newly signed to Elektra, attracts with a sweet naivete, but hooks with an underlying sense of fear and wonder that even gave new life to Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman” in one of Thursday’s surprising highlights.

Uncle Tupelo opens for Johnny Cash tonight at the Rhythm Cafe in Santa Ana.