O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Browne Rides High Country : She Continues Her Hot Steak in Concert With Gaffney

You didn’t even have to open your eyes to know that Jann Browne’s dynamo was humming Friday night at the Coach House. Her expenditure of energy registered in the difficulty she sometimes had catching enough breath for her folksy relating of between-songs tales and tidbits.

Such high-gear showmanship is nothing new from Browne, long the sweetheart of the rodeo in Orange County country music circles. This wasn’t the first time she ever grabbed the fringes of a miniskirt and kicked up her heels with rowdy pleasure. But it is rare to see any performer’s artistic metabolism run as fast as Browne’s has lately.

In concert, there isn’t much that can derail a performer of Browne’s energy, ability and experience when she also commands a body of original songs as strong as the dozen multifaceted gems that make up her flawless 1994 album “Count Me In.” Browne the singer has had to wait, patiently or impatiently, for the belated domestic release she promised is coming this year for the album, which so far is available only in Europe and Australia.

But Browne the songwriter has been revving her dynamo while she waits. The thrilling new results, debuted during her show, were so immediately striking that they may have sent some listeners home humming after a single hearing.

Browne’s 80-minute set headlined an O.C. country-and-roots summit that also featured local hero Chris Gaffney. She could have made the show a pause to relish the achievements of the past year. Instead, she made it her declaration of a creative hot streak that won’t allow her to pause at all.

The five new songs played by Browne and her band, the Dangerous Neighbors, were on a par with the eight drawn from “Count Me In.” The new ballads, “Cold Here in London” and “Mrs. Murphy,” were especially strong, with soaring choruses that were richly emotional and supremely catchy.

At the start, Browne may have been a little too primed for this show, her first Orange County concert in nine months. If there had been a V.U. meter above the stage, its needle would have been pinned in the red “overload” zone as her overdriven high-range vocals on “Hearts on the Blue Train” hit with some shrillness (as for the song itself, while it’s always risky to try to pick hit singles, this jangling anthem sounds like a prime candidate).

But Browne quickly found a more comfortable groove, a satisfying blend of hues in which piercing tones packed tremendous urgency, softer dynamics conveyed sweetness or plaintive melancholy, and the husky grain that runs through her voice spoke of the grit and guts of someone experienced enough to have seen some wreckage, and tough enough to have crawled out of it.

It’s not the sort of pure, gleaming voice that is the standard for mainstream country success, but it’s an ideal voice for bringing alive songs that probe more deeply than most mainstream country artists are willing to go.

Browne did offer exuberant twanginess with “Trouble’s Here,” a feisty, smiling-amid-troubles number that pays tribute to the rockin’ Bakersfield country sound of Buck Owens. “Red Moon Over Lugano,” an encore with Gaffney doing a guest turn on accordion, was a fetching love-letter, all sweetness and charm. “Rita (Queen of Postcards),” written with her alternative-rocker stepson Jake Stebner, was a zestful, chunky rocker sparked by sharply ringing guitars and Beatlesque harmonies. Otherwise, Browne mainly explored darker patches of experience.

Old fans may have missed the traditional-country slant of the two albums Browne released in a bid for mainstream country success in 1990-92. But nobody could argue with her decision to ride the hot streak she has been on since deciding to ignore commercial conventions and write (with frequent collaborators Matt Barnes and Pat Gallagher) for her own satisfaction.

Browne’s new phase strikes a balance between country traditionalism and rock ‘n’ roll muscle and drive. On stage, the rock drive--supplied mainly by lead guitarist Barnes and the active drumming of Frank Cotinola--often overwhelmed the acoustic decorations of the recorded versions of Browne’s songs.

Dennis Caplinger, an ace who plays just about everything with strings, picked or bowed away on mandolin, banjo, guitar and fiddle, but his contributions were largely lost in the mix. So were those of Rick Shea, a veteran of the Southern California progressive-country scene who sat in on steel guitar.

While some of the playing could have been reined in, the band’s clout clearly spurred Browne. Straining upward on her toes, with hands reaching above her, she appeared at times to be trying to levitate her tiny self to the intense frame of feeling her songs were probing.

The keening “Cold Here in London” portrayed a homesickness that over-spills ordinary bounds and becomes a deep cry of desolation. “Count Me In” and “One Tired Man,” two dark and trenchant rockers from Browne’s album, were paired back to back. Then she lightened the mood with band introductions (revealing that she and bassist Eileen Doyle had years ago played in an all-female band called Custom Built) followed by a speeding bluegrass fiddle workout featuring Caplinger.

In the emotional topography of Browne’s recent work, energy and exuberance alone can’t carry her across the dark ravines that open before her. At that brink she falls back on spirituality. The show’s final phase included an eloquent bluegrass prayer, “When The Darkest Hours Pass,” and the show-closing “Mrs. Murphy” in which Browne began by acknowledging the pain of old age and impending death, but took comfort during a glowing chorus that reaffirmed the wisdom born of faith. One could quibble that the song’s verses sound a bit too much like the Band’s classic “The Weight,” but Browne is in a creative zone right now that doesn’t leave room for much more than quibbling.

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The 50-minute set by Chris Gaffney and the Cold Hard Facts underscored both the virtues and limitations of being barroom lifers.

Players who can last long and keep their creativity on the bar circuit, as Gaffney and band have, usually are endowed with extremely well-honed skills, an uncommonly deep love of music, and the wide-ranging tastes and eagerness for experimentation that allow them to stay amused and interested while knocking out multiple sets night after night.

But barroom marathons leave them less than prepared when it comes time for a sprint on the concert stage. In concert, the substance in the music comes across best if served with a showman’s sizzle.

The wild card Gaffney holds is a two-album catalogue of original songs in which every number is a keenly observed, imaginatively conceived, indelibly melodic slice of experience. Combine material like that with a summa degree from the school of higher barroom learning, and you’ve got the credentials to walk on any stage. Criticizing the laconic Gaffney for not being a stage-stalking, hip-shimmying, patter-spieling showman is a little like faulting a championship shortstop such as Ozzie Smith or Bert Campaneris for not walloping tape-measure home runs to round out a repertoire that already features gold-glove fielding, base stealing and high-average hitting.

Even without the visual sizzle, Gaffney’s set had plenty of musical heat. Drummer Tucker Fleming drove the band with crisp, firm authority, keying a set given to hard-charging performances. Doug Livingston, on steel guitar, had a wonderful night. His playing went far beyond the familiar sighs and teardrops of the pedal steel lexicon as he mustered a bright, exuberant, presence-filled tone on solo after solo. Listening to Livingston’s work on a delightful run through the Philly-soul oldie “Cowboys to Girls,” one started to wonder how any of the great soul bands ever got by without a steel guitarist.

Lead guitarist Danny Ott suffered in the sound mix and wasn’t as perpetually hot as he is on Gaffney’s recent European release, the live album “Man of Somebody’s Dreams.” But Ott’s solo on “Cowboys to Girls,” so idiosyncratic it defies description, vouched for his adventurous spirit. Several numbers, notably the swinging run at the Louis Prima nugget “Buona Sera” and the show-closing “Fight (Tonight’s the Night”), showcased his ability to sound simultaneously sweet-toned and searing. Gaffney himself is a deliciously brutal, untutored but high-impact lead guitarist when he wants to be--a sort of Nudie-suited Johnny Thunders.

Gaffney was in good voice, deploying a firm, understated approach in which justified confidence is placed in the songs and no attempt is made to strain for effect. He was at his best on the ballad “Man of Somebody’s Dreams.” It’s a shame that the otherwise up-tempo set couldn’t have been extended to include a few more of his slow, sad catalogue nuggets.

Gaffney is scheduled to record his third studio album later this month with producer Dave Alvin (with whom Gaffney wrote “ ‘68,” a brilliant, four-minute tragicomic novella of a Chuck Berry-licks rocker that tells what happens when good buddies go off to a terrible war). Maybe Alvin, who has the on-stage stature and dynamism to lend his own vividly etched character studies some extra vibrancy in performance, can give Gaffney some pointers in the subtle art of being theatrical without being blatant.

Maybe Gaffney and band finally will get a deserved chance to do the extensive touring that would provide the practice band members need to make a successful shift from bar-marathoners to concert-sprinters. But it won’t be a tragedy if Gaffney remains where and what he is--a hometown hero with a terrific band, a national reputation among the grass-roots cognoscenti for songwriting excellence, and the chance, every two years or so, to add to that reputation with another album.