POP MUSIC REVIEW : Salute to Country Songwriters a Brisk, Insightful Evening

Pretty clever.

Under the rubric of a fund-raiser for a worthy cause, the dozen or so hot young country vocalists who gave the first “Singers’ Salute to the Country Songwriter” on Wednesday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion also got themselves a timely lesson in how easy it is to find a great song.

If all else fails, just fall back on something by one of the honorees: Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, Hank Cochran, Harlan Howard and the late Roger Miller.

Patterned after the same organizers’ annual salute to pop writers, this show, also a benefit for the Betty Clooney Foundation for Persons With Brain Injury, was a brisk, two-hour trip that was as insightful as it was entertaining.

Most participants chose songs that played to their vocal strengths: Vince Gill singing Cochran’s yearning “Make the World Go Away,” Travis Tritt on Owens’ raucous honky-tonker “Sam’s Place,” Trisha Yearwood doing Cash’s aching “I Still Miss Someone,” Ray Charles reprising his 1963 hit with Howard’s devil-may-care “Busted.” Visible through almost every performance was how each veteran writer manages to relate a common situation or emotion in an uncommon way.

Too many latter-day Nashville songwriters look only for the lyrical hook, forgetting that a hook needs something real hanging on it. Above all, these writers speak simply, albeit often cleverly, of lives, loves and losses that have been lived, not fabricated.

Consider the almost Shakespearean power, elegance and economy in this verse from Cochran and Howard’s signature hit for Patsy Cline, sung beautifully Wednesday by Hal Ketchum: “I fall to pieces / Each time someone speaks your name / I fall to pieces / Time only adds to the flame.”

Pretty amazing.