Jackson Browne pleases MCA fans Musician proves he’s alive and well with acoustic, piano performances

Looking relaxed and impossibly young for his 53 years, singer-songwriter Jackson Browne served up generous and rich helpings from his 30-year recording career Monday night at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono.

Browne, on the second night of a 22-date tour, was in fine voice, accompanying himself with selections from an arsenal of nine acoustic guitars and his Yamaha electric piano, which was set up to sound like a well-miked baby grand. The solo acoustic setting showcased Browne’s voice, with its perfect pitch and a dynamic range that often got lost on his later recordings.

The only time age betrayed him was on the occasional falsetto part, and on songs that called for holding a note, which he would instead cut short. Yet late in the second set, Browne belted out a powerful, moving version of “Late for the Sky” that might have eluded him in his younger days.

He opened the show with “I’m Alive,” the title song from his 1993 album. Then came “Nothing But Time,” the song that opens with the lyrics, “Rolling down 295 out of Portland, Maine/Still high from the people up there and feeling no pain.”

At times, the concert felt like a private show for a group of fans, as Browne ignored a set list and indulged one shouted request after another. Twice he had set down his guitar and began walking over to the piano, when a request stopped him in his tracks, and he returned to the guitar for a particular song.

The tone was set early when Browne began telling a story about the set list from the previous show, and interrupted himself to accept a 2-by-3-foot “set list” from a member of the audience.

While it was a generous response to the dozen or so people who shouted out song titles, Browne began to resemble a human jukebox, and the middle of the first set suffered a bit with the inconsistently selected tunes. It was impressive, though, to hear him confidently render songs that he said he had not played in a long time.

Though he probably had planned it for later in the show, Browne stopped one of his walks to the piano to return to the guitar for a stunningly gorgeous version of “Song For Adam,” a song about the death of a friend, from his first album.

Browne said he worked recently on mixing a DVD version of his multimillion-selling “Running On Empty,” and with the modern format, conversations among band members could be included. Laughing, he said one of the conversations caught on tape, as the tour bus rolled out of one city, was a band member saying, “Just think, Jackson: Now that we’re leaving, all the best-looking guys in this town can go back to being the best-looking guys in town.”

In introducing “The Next Voice You Hear,” Browne said the song was commissioned for inclusion in an unnamed movie, but ultimately not used, perhaps because the film’s ending was changed after Browne wrote the song, using the original script as inspiration.

The first set included two other songs from the first album, “Looking Into You,” and “Something Fine,” an early ’70s coded reference to marijuana use, which elicited a story that had Browne chuckling about his son experimenting with the drug in Amsterdam on a trip to Europe.

The only weak moment in the first set came when he agreed to perform “Linda Paloma,” from “The Pretender,” when it was requested, a song that doesn’t lend itself to a concert setting.

He finally relented to playing “Rosie” after several calls for it, and the results were solid and drew an enthusiastic response from the nearly full house. Other standouts in the first set were “For A Dancer” and “Fountain of Sorrow.”

Browne opened the second set with an especially strong “For Everyman,” the title track from his second album, released in 1973. The second set and encore included fine versions of “Doctor My Eyes,” “The Pretender,” “In The Shape of a Heart,” “These Days” and “Running on Empty,” sounding remarkably strong with just an acoustic guitar.

In fact, some of Browne’s songs from the ’80s, a period when he flirted with a polished, pop sound, sounded especially fresh and strong in the solo acoustic setting. After deflecting requests for “Somebody’s Baby,” saying that some songs weren’t very satisfying to perform without a band, he relented, saying that he had composed the tune on the piano, so it ought to work with just that accompaniment.

It did.

Browne said he booked the current tour thinking he would have finished a new album, but work continues on it. He played two new tunes, one of which might be called “The Naked Drive Home,” which was both funny and sad.

Before closing with “Take It Easy,” the song he co-wrote with the Eagles’ Glenn Frey, he told a story about the many versions of the song that have been recorded with different lyrics, from the sacred to the profane.

Though he hasn’t released an album of new material since 1996, Browne’s show proved his consistency as a masterful songwriter, which bodes well for the new album.