Steve Hochman on January 14th, 2019

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Back when Beck was but a teen in the early 1980s, he read about a place called McCabe’s — the Santa Monica music shop and folk-centric concert venue — and hopped a bus to cross town for a pilgrimage. Not long after he was making the same trek to see his first shows there, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot one night, Tom Paxton another.

On Friday night, he reminisced about that on the stage in the back room of that very spot, how on that first visit all those years ago he found a whole world opened to him in this shrine containing such exotica, he recalled, as “zithers and Turkish flutes.”

McCabe’s, he said, is a bastion of something in threat of fading out. “They talk about Old Weird America,” he said Friday. “There’s an Old Weird Los Angeles, which is disappearing every day. It amazes me that McCabe’s is still here.”

He, in fact, was here to do his best to make sure that McCabe’s remains here. He was performing a $200-per-ticket benefit for the venerable institution, finding itself celebrating its 50th anniversary in this locale (and 60th since its first incarnation opened) in the shadow of the various digital entities dominating business. Beck’s show wrapped up a series of celebratory shows that kicked off a year ago with a Richard Thompson appearance and featured Dave Alvin, Peter Case, Syd Straw, Henry Rollins, Tom Paxton, an Inara George/Van Dyke Parks pairing and Jackson Browne, among others, along the way nicely adding to a vast and storied legacy. (More shows both in the shop and in other venues are being planned throughout this coming year.)

As Beck started, he noted that in 1993, before “Loser” made him a winner, he got to play on that stage for the first time, opening for a Soul Asylum/Liz Phair bill. So with that in mind, he thought he ought to open this concert with three songs he was pretty sure he’d played that night more than a quarter century ago: “Pay No Mind” (the song through which many first experienced his folk roots and irony-free songwriting skills), the wry wordplay fest “Cyanide Breath Mint” and the bluesy, fingerpicked “Hollow Log.”

Those laid the foundation for a strong set of his most accomplished, most earthy songs, joined by longtime collaborators pianist Roger Manning, Jr., and guitarist Jason Falkner (the latter having opened with a charm-filled half hour set). This was Beck the melancholy balladeer, by and large. And movingly so. This was not the “Devil’s Haircut” guy with his pop ironies and colorful quips, but the one to whom many (who may have entered through the big hits) came to mean so much more.

The vast majority of the songs he chose for the night are poetic mixes of heartbreak and heart-mend: “The Golden Age,” “Lost Cause,” “Guess I’m Doing Fine” among the highlights, each drawn from the somber, inner-turning 2002 album “Sea Change,” and several others of similar musical tone from 2014’s “Morning Phase” (winner of the Album of the Year Grammy Award) including “Heart is a Drum” and “Blackbird Chain.” And throughout, his roots in and connections to the mystique that drew him to McCabe’s in the first place were strong and evident, in both spirit and music, a belief in the power of song to move, to effect, to inspire, to express difficult emotions and voice experiences and feelings at once deeply personal and truly universal.

In between songs was a mix of bright nostalgia and his signature quick, offbeat wit. It wasn’t so much a contrast of moods as a complement. Even with that he was at his most personal, comfy and clearly thrilled for this opportunity in his first performance of 2019, following 16 months of touring his big-rock-extravaganza set-up. Looseness ruled, with much banter between him and his on-stage cohorts, and some with members of the audience. There seemed to be a setlist in use, but much straying from it occurred, including some honored audience requests.

So it was somber songs, predominantly, but never dour. And he had a ton of fun along the way, some tied to McCabe’s memories, some not. He made two aborted attempts at Ramblin’ Jack’s “Beautiful Brown Eyes,” giving up when he couldn’t remember the words. He gave a spontaneous, if rough, go at the flat-picker’s standard, “Wildwood Flower” (“That’s the worst Carter Family ever at McCabe’s,” he said, explaining teasingly that while Falkner immersed himself in Led Zeppelin riffs as a teen, “Maybelle Carter, that was my riff!”). He demonstrated how having forgotten to put on a capo during soundcheck he’s accidentally discovered a darker alternative version of “Lost Cause” (dubbed “Lost Goth” when he played some of it during the show, though later he seemed to realize that “Goth Cause” made for a better title).

The biggest diversion from the tone of the night, or so it seemed, came toward the end of the two-hour set, when a fan shouted out for “Debra.” The song is a veritable Prince homage with its funk and falsetto, but at the same time a loving tribute to Beck’s home city — you know, the song with the reference to Zankou Chicken. After he, Manning and Falkner sorted out how to get the groove going with a piano and two acoustic guitars, the tale unfolded finely with a journey through L.A., with a digressive discourse on the disappearance of potpourri from our culture and then the protagonist’s trusty chariot (a Hyundai) taking flight over the freeways, lovingly listed by the Angeleno narrator on stage.

And then, digressing on the digression of the digression, as Beck is wont to do, he shifted from Prince tribute to the real thing with “Raspberry Beret,” which he’d been doing as an acoustic interlude on the tour. Of course, he asked the crowd to sing along on the chorus. Of course he didn’t really have to ask. This was McCabe’s after all, where singalongs are almost a given. And this was, truly, folk music.