Kevin Bronson on July 9th, 2011

2

no images were found

You wouldn’t blame me for having an attack of nostalgia, would you? Jackson Browne was my first concert. The show was in the 1970s, in a place built for basketball, but it felt like the shaggy-haired Californian, whose T-shirts I’d bought from the classified ads in the back of Rolling Stone, was singing directly to me, the shaggy-haired Midwesterner who hadn’t yet moved away from his hometown and who had worn out the singer’s cassette tapes during long nights delivering newspapers out of the back of a Ford Pinto.

You wouldn’t blame me for choking up during “Fountain of Sorrow” on Wednesday night at the Satellite, would you? Browne, whom I’d seen only once since, was maybe 6 feet away from me on keys. Even though I steer clear of oldies these days, “Sorrow’s” words came back to me in an instant, sung directly to me, the gray-haired Midwesterner who barely remembers his hometown but still keeps the singer’s cassette tapes in a cabinet in the garage with some of the other artists who changed everything, the Beatles, Neil Young, Todd Rundgren, Al Green and our hometown’s hero, Dan Fogelberg.

But a funny thing happened on the way to a mawkish traipse through the past. The cherubic faces of the present intervened, turning the three-hour surprise show, which was announced only the night before, into a celebration of the Laurel Canyon sound that felt almost like a baton-passing.

Feeding off the estimable energy of his new backing band – the young Malibu-bred quartet Dawes and 36-year-old guitarist Jonathan Wilson – Browne, 62, sounded only marginally less boyish than in his heyday, following an opening set by Dawes/Wilson with two hours of hits (and some choice covers) that featured remarkable rapport with his young charges.

“These guys have some songs I wish I’d written,” Browne told Wilson and Dawes frontman Taylor Goldsmith at one point.

What could Goldsmith say? After a moment’s hesitation, he smiled and replied, “Likewise.”

The idea of installing Dawes and Wilson as Browne’s backing band was a fairly recent one – in fact, there were but five days of woodshedding prior to Wednesday’s show, which served as a warm-up for three dates Browne will do in Spain.

As they had earlier this year during a stint as Robbie Robertson’s backing band, Dawes (whose sophomore album “Nothing Is Wrong” came out in June) proved up to the task. The loose performance was highlighted by Griffin Goldsmith’s ferocious drumming and, especially, dueling guitar leads from Wilson and Taylor Goldsmith, early on during the Dawes song “My Way Back Home” and later during Browne’s signature “Running on Empty.”

Wilson, the Goldsmith brothers and Dawes mates Wylie Gelber and Tay Straitharn proved adept harmonizers too. And by the time they nodded to Warren Zevon during the encores and deviated from the setlist as if they were playing a living room, you got the feeling this concert could have been taking place in any of the past four decades.

Browne allowed as how he lived in Silver Lake when he first moved to L.A. (“My house isn’t there anymore”) and that although he had attended many a show at “Spaceland” – OK, he was not up to date on the venue’s name – it was the first time he’d performed there. He should come by more often. And not for old time’s sake.