Bacon Brothers Find a Loose Foothold in Mainstream

Success hasn’t spoiled the Bacon Brothers--actor Kevin and his older sibling Michael--but it hasn’t helped their band any. During the first of their two sets at the Troubadour on Monday, the prolific film star and the Emmy-winning composer offered an hour-plus of mainstream country-pop that at its best recalled the colorless, twangy soul of Loggins & Messina.

In front of an attentive young Hollywood crowd, the Bacon Brothers kicked off with the Temptations’ “Don’t Look Back,” harmonizing pleasantly while playing acoustic guitars, backed by a percussionist and a bassist. They bantered easily with the crowd, and the bigger-voiced Kevin was genuinely disarming, peppering the show with folksy anecdotes and doses of much-needed self-deprecating wit.

It’s almost too bad they had to go and sing their corny songs. The high points were the catchy “Old Guitars,” with its alleged 40-plus references to rock bands, as well as a good-naturedly self-lacerating tune about male bravado.

Otherwise, the set alternated between fluffy camp, such as a “canine love song” that actually included the refrain “that D-O-G is like a G-O-D to me,” and unbearably maudlin ballads, including the painfully sincere yet utterly sexist “Woman’s Got a Mind to Change.” Bringing it all home, they closed with the title track from Kevin’s breakthrough film, “Footloose.”

The Bacon Brothers reportedly would like to make an album, but they’d probably fare better selling their best songs to Nashville and hanging on to their day jobs.