POP MUSIC REVIEW : Plain-Spoken Passion at Bogart’s

Uncle Tupelo and Freedy Johnston, two acts on a lot of pop music insiders’ people-to-watch lists, showed their stuff at Bogart’s 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 probably would 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 lesser extent bassist-singer Jeff Tweedy, add 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 from the recent album “March 16-20, 1992,” a casual folkie disc produced by R.E.M.’s Peter Buck.

In the context of young rockers doing the likes of the mountain gospel “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down” and the Louvins’ almost quaint “Atomic Power,” this was nostalgia for a time and place where hell is in a bottle, heaven is in Jesus and life is just about that simple. That directness remained when the band switched to electric instruments, even as the music and lyrical themes grew more complex.

The whole point of the band seems to be to show that something such as “D. Boon,” an urban-rock tribute to the late Minutemen singer-guitarist, doesn’t chafe against the rural aesthetics.

The defining number, however, may have been a version of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s spooky “Effigy,” making a strong case that the essence of art is dread.

Kansas-via-Hoboken singer Johnston and his three-piece backing band also emphasized simplicity and directness, but with a combination of innocence and impetuousness. Johnston 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, June Carter Cash and the Carter Family tonight at 7:30 and 10:45 at the Rhythm Cafe, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. $30.50 to $32. (714) 556-2233.