Pop Music Review : Country Writers Step Behind Microphone

Is there something special about hearing a song sung by its composer? That theorem has generated a variety of showcases putting the writer in the spotlight, but Wednesday’s gathering of country tunesmiths at LunaPark didn’t really test it. Pat Alger, Jill Colucci, Jon Vezner and Kostas came off not as behind-the-scenes scribblers forced into public, but as casually comfortable and experienced performers.

The show was linked to Liberty Records’ new “Songwriters Series,” whose initial release comprises an album by each of the four. Their collective output includes four of Garth Brooks’ No. 1 records, Travis Tritt’s first hits, a string of Dwight Yoakam entries, Wynonna Judd’s “No One Else on Earth” and assorted hits for Patty Loveless, Hal Ketchum, Kathy Mattea, et al.

Seated in a row across the stage, the four took turns at the mike while the others provided understated guitar accompaniment or merely listened. This being ‘90s country, the music reflected as much of the pop-folk singer-songwriter tradition as hard-core country elements.

In this company, Kostas was the wild card--a bearded, Belushi-like fellow who dropped in off-the-wall remarks and puns and sang in an evocative, wheezy tenor that was utterly incongruous coming from this bearlike figure.

The evening’s missed opportunity was the chance in this informal setting for the writers to describe some of the nuts and bolts of the process--the struggle to transform experience or imagination into song, or the song’s often tortured path from completion to artist to record to radio.

Colucci alluded briefly to a friend’s experience before singing “He Would Be Sixteen,” a mother’s wistful reflection on the baby she gave up for adoption, and Vezner outlined the real-life scene that inspired his Grammy-winning “Where’ve You Been,” a tear-jerker about an inseparable couple who, in their old age, are separated and then reunited.

More talk would have lengthened the show, of course, but the set zipped by so fast that it could have easily absorbed more of those moments.