POP MUSIC REVIEW : Tritt Mixes Country With ‘70s Rock

The Eagles’ “Hotel California,” Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page,” Peter Frampton’s “Do You Feel Like We Do,” Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way.” . . . The playlist at a classic rock station? Trivia contest answers at a ‘70s nostalgia club? Maybe, but those were also some of the songs that country star Travis Tritt dropped into his set on Sunday at the Western Connection in San Dimas.

Tritt’s detour into the mainstream rock of his youth did less to stretch the boundaries of country music than to define him as something of a free spirit--albeit one with erratic taste.

In “Put Some Drive in Your Country,” he outlines his mission: “I made myself a promise when I was just a kid / I’d mix Southern rock and country. . . .” That mix is still a little lumpy at this early point in the Georgian’s career. The pure country coexisted well enough with revved-up extensions of same, but the Walsh and Frampton tunes (the latter inflated with interminible guitar soloing) were puzzling, pointless entries.

Tritt (who concludes a two-night run at the Crazy Horse in Santa Ana tonight) has a plain, straightforward voice whose strongest trait is intensity. It couldn’t do a thing with Merle Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving Her Again,” but it was serviceable when centering the strong grooves of his five-piece band.

A new song with a resoundingly bitter refrain (“Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares”) should become a Tritt staple, and his hit “Country Club,” a distant, earlier cousin of Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places,” was solid enough. Its chart successors, though, were a study in contrasts: the transparent achievement mantra “I’m Gonna Be Somebody” and the genuinely self-effacing “Help Me Hold On.”

Self-effacing is not something this bearded, baby-faced maverick tends to be. With his cranked-up country and a bit of a wild streak, he seems taken with the renegade stance of Hank Williams Jr., but he doesn’t provide enough artistic vision to make it more than gimmicky. He’s not arrogant enough to be fascinating, but too self-absorbed to be appealing.