POP MUSIC REVIEW : Asleep at the Wheel Loses Velocity

Imagine this scene in a ‘30s cartoon: A beat-up old nag hobbles to the starting gate, and when the race starts it becomes a streak of lightning and wins going away. On the other side of the finish line, it sags again and resumes its creaky gait.

That’s sort of how Asleep at the Wheel’s show at the Crazy Horse Steak House on Monday went. When the veteran band played its Western swing and boogie-woogie tunes, things sailed along nicely.

When it stopped to let leader Ray Benson talk, they ground to a halt. The tall, scraggly singer-guitarist wasn’t obnoxious or unintelligent, but his conversation tended to meander and lose focus, sticking on little jokes and asides and generally dashing any momentum.

And this particular Asleep show should have had more steam than usual, since it was centered on the Western swing music of Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys.

In a sequence of songs from its new tribute album to the legendary bandleader (sung on record by such stars as Vince Gill, Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks and Merle Haggard, among many others), the Austin-based group captured the range and infectiousness of Wills’ synthesis of old-time country fiddle music, blues and big-band swing.

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Beyond that segment, it was pretty much Asleep at the Wheel business as usual, a blend of honky-tonk, rock-flavored novelties such as “Hot Rod Lincoln” and Benson’s brief juggler’s tribute to Elvis. It’s the kind of amiable, cornball stuff that’s kept the band in business at a steady but minor level for a couple of decades.

With its rich instrumentation--fiddle, pedal steel, sax and piano joining Benson’s guitar and the rhythm section--the sound was fairly dynamic, though few of the solos really soared.

And considering the music they were making, most of the musicians looked surprisingly grim, as if they’d just come off a bad bus ride.

This is one of those rare cases where you’d actually like a band to be a little showier, even if it meant being calculated--not to cover up weaknesses, but to brighten the atmosphere to match the brightness of the music.