Letting Her Roots Show

If Linda Perry were a publicly traded corporation, she would have been forced by now to fire herself as CEO.

In market terms, the San Francisco-based singer’s stock has turned to junk since she divested herself of her hit band, 4 Non Blondes, and went solo. The lone 4 Non Blondes album, released four years ago, has sold 1.6 million copies in the United States, according to SoundScan. Perry’s solo debut, “In Flight,” has sold a wing-clipping 11,000 copies since its August release.

But what’s bad for business has been good for Perry’s artistic soul as she substitutes moodier, deeper-probing, more personal songwriting for the obvious blooze-rock moves and surface flash of 4 Non Blondes. And her declining fortunes in the marketplace don’t seem to have done her spirits any harm.

Playing to perhaps 200 people Friday at the Coach House, Perry was the happiest trouper in show biz in a strong concert powered by her impressive pipes and the high drama inherent in her new songs.

Perry festooned the stage with flickering candles, but her songwriting couldn’t hold a single one of them to her sometime sound-alike, Johnette Napolitano. Still, her music was sufficiently varied in style and dynamics to carry most of a nearly two-hour show.

Perry’s simple, declarative lyrics are only slightly less obvious than her thefts from classic-rock sources, which in concert and on her new album included songs or passages cribbed from the Band, Blind Faith, Queen and Led Zeppelin.

But this tiny tomboy diva in a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey and thickets of curls was an undeniably commanding figure who could knock you back with the force of her voice (so much sound from such a small person!) or draw you in with the offhand friendliness of her manner and the obvious pleasure she took in singing and performing.

Vocally, Perry sustained interest with an unpredictable assortment of tactics, ranging from throaty Janis Joplin-like blues rasps and body-armored Grace Slick power moves, to a more fragile, ornamented high range that recalled Phoebe Snow or Joan Armatrading.

As she sang, her face was a beguiling and ever-changing landscape of smiles and flashing-eyed looks. Perry’s bearing amplified her delight as she strummed a guitar with flailing arms and pumping torso, or bopped and bobbed like one of those springy old Beatles figurines.

She took frequent walks onto the club’s long tables to serenade her fans at close range, and took them into her confidence as she parodied rock-star poses or humorously mocked the tired rock-band ritual of leaving the stage before an encore that already has been programmed into the set.

Before the night was through, this accessible star had even inherited a mascot--a young woman named Dorita who jumped on stage to dance and, after Perry chased off a bouncer with a stern look, stayed around for the last 20 minutes of the show.

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Perry’s ebullience balanced the searching tone of most of her material. She played 11 of the 12 songs from “In Flight,” most of them questioning her direction in life and career, or dwelling on the dangers of high-living excess (the hit song, “What’s Up,” was the only one drawn from her 4 Non Blondes days). At one point, without a hint of smarminess, the San Diego-raised singer thanked her mother, who was in the audience, for standing by her through her youthful drug-fiend period.

Perry’s serious intent came across with dramatic shifts in dynamics and intense instrumental swirl-ups that were perfectly executed by an excellent five-member band featuring strong soloists on violin, organ/piano and lead guitar.

For contrast, she was able to draw on the jaunty, Beatles-do-vaudeville (or was it Small Faces-do-”Itchycoo Park”?) bounce of “Fruitloop Daydream,” and the dreamy sway of “Taken,” which sounded like Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them” as Phoebe Snow might have sung it.

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The set hit a flat stretch before the encores, as the novelty of a forceful voice and a winning manner wore off and the lack of lyrical imagination in Perry’s writing became apparent.

An unrecorded song in which she confronted a judgmental, distant father was meant to be emotionally naked, but her blandly prosaic lyrics (“How many times did you forget my birthday? . . . How many times did you forget to say, ‘Daughter, I love you the way you are?’ ”) made it sound like we’d just stumbled in on a family spat we’d prefer not to witness.

The band managed to rescue the number with a big, driving climax borrowed from Zep’s “Stairway to Heaven.”

Perry’s voice was mighty, but not infallible. She strained at times for high notes, and an encore cover of Elton John’s demanding “Tiny Dancer” was beyond her grasp. It was odd that a card-carrying member of the ‘90s strong-women-in-rock guild would be singing this condescending, if lovely, ode to a hanger-on groupie (“seamstress for the band . . . you’ll marry a music man”).

“I love that song. It makes me happy,” Perry explained, after she had finished, as if anticipating reservations about subject matter and singing out of her range. Obviously, this is a woman willing to do what it takes to make herself happy, even when the consequences are more severe than missing some notes.

There was an appealing camaraderie between Perry and Phil Cody, her opening act and Interscope label-mate. He blew some harmonica and added humorous interjections during “What’s Up.” In turn, Cody got to borrow half of Perry’s band, plus her mandolin-strumming roadie, to augment his own backing duo.

The sharp support paid off, giving this obviously Dylan-smitten singer a pliant, full-sounding springboard of “Blood on the Tracks”-style folk-rock.

Cody, who wore a terrible wool cap that Mike Nesmith wouldn’t have been caught dead in, added a bit of Steve Forbert high-range to his prevailing thin, scruffy Dylan intonations. He declared himself “feisty,” and so he was, singing with humor and spunk even as he played the role of a soured idealist-turned-fatalist who surveys the social landscape and finds only triumphant, immovable greed and corporate culture gone amok.