Cosmic Cowboy Gilmore Spins From ‘Sun,’ Moonlight

There are persons, particularly of my creaking generation, who think that the light has passed from the world and that musical giants such as there were in the ‘60s and other hallowed times just don’t come around anymore.

While that certainly is a convenient excuse to cocoon ourselves away with a video of “The TAMI Show,” the truth of the matter is that there still is remarkable, splendid, life-gushing music out there. The only difference is that the radio used to bring it to you, and today you have to go looking for it.

Consider Jimmie Dale Gilmore, who performed at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on Tuesday night: One couldn’t hope to hear a more authentic, human and ultimately satisfying voice in music today, yet his current album is nowhere to be found on radio playlists.

Further, consider opening act Jann Browne, whose excellent new songs should give any record label talent scout cause for joy--as indeed they have, in Europe. The long-striving country singer/songwriter from Orange County has just signed a record deal overseas but has no outlet here in the nation that created country music.

But enough grousing, because the music is still there; it just takes some shoe leather to find it. Those who made it to the Coach House on Tuesday (the bill also featured singer Joe Henry) took in one of the best shows played in the county this year. Actually, it would stack up against the best of any year.

Though its pure, high, quavery sound is nearly without precedent in country music, Gilmore’s voice has a timeless quality, modern yet so deeply grooved with American tradition that one wouldn’t be surprised to hear it coming out of an old Victrola. When the lank-haired, high-cheekboned Texan sings, he is the lonesome whippoorwill of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and its midnight train as well.

Along with taking a moonlight walk through the classic Williams landscape, Gilmore also covering the Jimmie Rodgers-era trad “Mobile Blues” and “Deep Ellum Blues” and early Elvis’ “I Was the One,” lacking only the Jordanaires to match the thrill of Presley’s performance. But, expressive an interpreter as he is, his own songs are the ideal match for his voice.

It’s not entirely in jest that some critic has dubbed his music “Zen country.” There is an ethereal, questing quality that butts up against daily life in his songs. In “Tonight I Think I’m Gonna Go Downtown,” Gilmore (who lived for a time in an ashram) muses: “I told my love a thousand times that I can’t say what’s on my mind, but she would never see that this world’s just not real to me.”

He sang most of the selections on his current “Spinning Around the Sun” album. The second song of the set, his own “Where You Going,” was interrupted by a sound system breakdown, which he took in good-natured stride.

You could probably kill the 500 best guitarists in Austin and still have more great pickers there than anyplace else on earth. There were four guitarists in Gilmore’s band (counting him), and not only did each play with passion and a plenitude of chops, but they never got in each other’s way. Norwegian-born Geir Sundstol, particularly, excelled on Telecaster, Dobro and mandolin. And local country light Rosie Flores tore off some hot electric solos when she joined Gilmore for Townes Van Zandt’s “The White Freight Line.”

Second-billed Henry might be worth a second chance, but he sure didn’t impress much in this performance. There are some workable ingredients in place: intelligent lyrics, good hair, a band striving for, if not quite achieving, a valid and unique sound. But the New York-based North Carolinian’s performance had a coldness and an air of self-importance that, in combination with his limited vocal range, didn’t help his songs reach the listeners.

His country-rock hybrid takes pains to set itself apart as something distinctive, reminding a bit of toned-down Clash or tarted-up Freedie Johnston. Eric Haywood’s pedal steel guitar had a thick saturated sound that swept through the eight songs with assurance and sensitivity but, live at least, most of them didn’t seem to warrant that much care. Only on “A Friend to You,” a song about a one-way love, did Henry’s singing impart much sense of feeling.

Opener Browne’s music hones much closer to mainstream country yet proved far more distinctive. As with actors, the communication in music is often not in the large gestures but the small, real moments of expression that reach across. The music of the Laguna Hills resident doesn’t try to turn country music on its ear, but she sure can melt the wax out of it.

Browne proved her music can be radio-friendly with her 1990 “Tell Me Why” album, which yielded two modest country hits and lingered on the charts for six months. But when her second album didn’t fare as well, she found herself without a contract.

She gave a nod to those major-label days, applying her strong, tobacco-filtered voice to the hit “You Ain’t Down Home” and “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” a Jim Lauderdale song off her ill-fated second album that George Strait subsequently recorded and took to No. 1.

Most of her set was devoted to new songs, due on an as-yet-untitled album in Europe in late December, and boy, are they good. Writing with guitarist-neighbor Matt Barnes, Browne has come up with a beautiful, heartfelt batch of tunes to which she and her band did full justice Tuesday.

“Red Moon Over Lugano” may have the distinction of being the only country song about a Swiss lakeside town, and it was given a whimsical Italianesque treatment, with Flores joining Browne for the vocal. “Count Me In,” meanwhile, was as feisty as anything Carlene Carter has done, with lusty shouts from Browne and hot picking from her monster of a band, particularly guitarist Barnes and multi-instrumentalist Dennis Caplinger.

Caplinger’s mournful Dobro was the sole accompaniment to Browne’s vocal on “The Last White Rose,” a stark yet lovely allegorical ballad about the death of a 6-year-old cousin. As gutsy a belter as Browne is, the night definitely belonged to her ballads, particularly another new one, “I Have No Witness.” Reminiscent of the heartbreakingly beautiful ache Bonnie Raitt brought to “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” Browne’s vocal on this look back at a failed love had the sad determination and finality of a love letter slowly being torn in two.