Weiland Makes a Strong Solo Comeback

The first official solo performance by Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland since his highly publicized drug rehab added some flair to an otherwise business-as-usual acoustic benefit concert Monday at the Roxy. Headlining the seventh annual “Gimme Shelter” fund-raiser with an ad hoc band that included Daniel Lanois on guitar, Weiland offered a 30-minute set of new material that revealed an artist who’s not been idle at his craft during his time out of the limelight.

Wearing a red shirt and dark striped tie, the short-haired singer didn’t directly address his drug travails, but a couple of the songs featured junkies as characters, and others had a hallucinatory feel. Still, each tune displayed a different mood, from spare pop lullaby to gut-purging howl, as Weiland belted, writhed and posed at the mike, a cigarette occasionally dangling from his fingers.

Sobriety is a fragile state, not to be taken for granted, yet Weiland seemed in full command of his presence, not tentative but confident and at times even a little rock-star arrogant. His participation in this low-expectations setting might have been meant to show that he is clean, but perhaps more important, it confirmed his passion and commitment to his work.

Not every set carried the weight of Weiland’s, but passion was plentiful during the nearly four-hour program, which raised money for the Teen Parenting and Child Care Project. Singer-songwriter Michael Penn and his trio offered 25 minutes of emotive, Beatle-esque pop that didn’t clone the Fab Four so much as use their legacy as a jumping-off point, for everything from a paranoid love ballad to a staccato, traveling blues-rocker.

Blues-rock was the cornerstone of Chris Stills’ material, as the young singer-songwriter evoked the era, if not the letter, of rock-legend dad Stephen in his 20-minute solo guitar performance. Previewing some decidedly ‘70s-flavored material from his forthcoming debut album, Stills bashed out flashy blues licks with gusto, in truth recalling the late Tim Buckley more than his father, with a less-dulcet but serviceable voice.

The well-paced concert, which also featured sets by Lili Haydn, John Doe, Peter Himmelman and Nil Lara, took a weird turn with opening act Kim Fox. A couple of solo piano pieces were creepily compelling--dark and fanciful tunes that recalled Kate Bush, Tori Amos and Anne Rice--but her guitar work proved unremarkable. And her experimental “work song,” sung a cappella as she whacked a log with a hatchet, was memorable only for her utterly arbitrary sense of rhythm.