O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Fumbling With ‘Words’ : Flubs Make Collaborative Show Just Somewhat Entertaining

If Johnny Clegg, David Baerwald, Lisa Germano and Freedy Johnston, the four participants in the latest “In Their Own Words” tour, were to form a real band and play each show the way they did Thursday at the Coach House, they wouldn’t be far wrong in calling themselves Murphy’s Law or the Keystone Kops.

“Words” is a showcase that brings together a group of highly regarded songwriter-performers to talk about what they do, then take turns doing it individually or in whatever collaborations make sense, given the blend of talents and personalities on hand.

This fourth touring edition featured enough good songs and solid performances to make for an intermittently worthwhile show. But it was a too-long, too-often irksome, off-kilter and disjointed evening that included many fluffs and fumbles and far too much dithering over what to play next.

The four singers, who have been on tour together for about three weeks, were relaxed and comfortable with each other. Probably too relaxed, because they lacked the focus and motivation to combine for a cohesive, well-paced show.

Collectively, the four committed an assortment of musical fluffs, forgetting lines, distracting each other, or starting songs that they didn’t know or remember well enough to finish. One or two such instances in a show can be charming. But this crew went way over the foul limit.

Most damaging of all, Germano, the crucial player if there was to be any hope of exciting musical interaction, threw an inward-directed snit and virtually took herself out of the game.

Each “Words” tour needs at least one accomplished instrumentalist to color and complement all the accomplished songwriting, and on this one, Germano was it. The veteran fiddle player has shown her excellent stuff as a member of John Mellencamp’s band, and hearing her adorn the work of other players was an anticipated treat.

But the sound of her plugged-in violin was murky on the night’s opening song, and Germano simply gave up. She put aside her violin and limited herself to strumming an electric guitar to accompany her own songs, and occasional percussion and harmony-vocal support behind the others.

She explained toward the end of the show that her usual violin amplifier was broken, and the one she was using wasn’t up to her specs. Funny thing, though: on the show’s fifth and final round of songs, Germano took out the fiddle for a dramatic instrumental in which the tone, if a tad harsh, was good enough to earn the evening’s biggest ovation.

She owed it to the audience and to the other musicians to cope with an imperfect situation by trying to deliver instrumentally as best she could instead of quitting. If the amplifier was inadequate, why not try unplugging the fiddle and playing into a microphone?

“I’m not in a very good mood tonight. I apologize,” Germano said at one point. At $18.50 a ticket, as Mellencamp would probably be the first to remind her, “I’m not in a very good mood” isn’t good enough.

The others had their problems, too. Baerwald couldn’t get his guitar tuned properly for his last song, leading to an irritating delay as the show moved past the 2 1/2-hour mark. Johnston was so nonchalant about the proceedings that he wandered offstage for long stretches. (During one of those, wonder of wonders, the fine rockin’-country performer, Rosie Flores, popped out of the audience and into Johnston’s vacated chair, staying long enough to turn in the strongest vocal performance of the night on a wistful homesick-ballad from her upcoming album.)

Clegg, the South African bandleader who was the crowd favorite, seemed uncomfortable and mildly irritated during his turns at speaking. Johnston, the Kansas-bred, New York-based newcomer whose album, “Can You Fly,” was one of the best independent-label releases of 1992, was indifferent toward the conversational part, more interested in getting in the occasional quip than in saying much to illuminate his life or his art. Germano’s disarming openness and Baerwald’s aptitude for spinning yarns were the highlights of the wordy part of “Words.”

Musically, there were some good contrasts.

Germano sang four brooding, introspective songs from her strong upcoming solo album, “Happiness,” with focused intensity. “Puppet” and “Everyone’s Victim” were not the best choices for solo performance because of their static melodies, which, on record, are fleshed out with strong arrangements. But “Bad Attitude,” with its combination of melancholy and sarcasm, and “Cowboy,” with its mild, dreamy, Cowboy Junkies-like lilt, were first-rate.

Johnston sang delicately drawn vignettes tinged with sadness--matter well suited to his plaintive, reedy voice, which vaguely recalled Neil Young’s. “The Lucky One,” a loser’s lament, and “The Mortician’s Daughter,” a sad, deeply felt reverie about a lost love, were his strongest cards (some sweet, melancholy fiddle adornment would have suited both).

The others also cajoled Johnston into singing a song about a dog named Sparky, an inane ditty that he said was the first song he ever wrote back in high school, although its deliberate naivete made it sound more like a grade-school effort. It made for a running joke that got chewed over long after the bone had lost what little savor it had.

Clegg and Baerwald, the Los Angeles songwriter who started out in the duo of David + David, provided an edgy, energetic counterpoint to Johnston and Germano.

Baerwald played competent bass behind the other singers, and rocked out with rumbling bass riffs borrowed from Hendrix during his own “AIDS & Armageddon.”

He self-destructed on the delicate “China Lake” by stopping to poke friendly fun at poor Clegg’s attempt at bass accompaniment, and got involved in that tuning fiasco at the end (by the time he got around to playing the song, a gallows-humor drinking ballad composed by Canadian Air Force combat pilots during the Korean War, it was anticlimactic).

But Baerwald brought a hard, tough edge to the anthem, “Swallowed by the Cracks,” and to “Nobody,” a taut portrait of a disillusioned, nerve-frazzled L.A. cop.

Clegg seemed reluctant to talk about the anti-apartheid politics and the South African culture that spark much of his music, perhaps wishing to be seen in a more universal light as he responded in clipped fashion to questions posed by moderator Jim Washburn.

But it’s his background that gives his music much of its authority. A sense of struggle, hope and affirmation came across in songs supported by driving guitar rhythms and the pumping bellows of a concertina.

Clegg’s stringy voice failed him a few times as he tried to leap into a high register, but each of his four original songs was infused with a conviction that lent weight and force to idealistic sentiments that would seem hackneyed coming from a less passionate performer.

The show ended with a nice comedic turn by Clegg and Baerwald: the American narrating a wry, ingenuous tale about a missing bicycle in spoken English, and the South African translating it into highly animated, energetically sung Zulu.