O.C. POP WEEKEND : Comfortable Country With Clint Black : Performance before 10,000 fans at Irvine Meadows is rock-solid, letting good material speak for itself.

Trendy is the word associated with country music these days, and while that may bode well for the cash register, it’s not necessarily good for the art.

Sales boom aside, there is a trend in Nashville that couldn’t be more dismaying--the defection of country’s most insightful and adventurous young songwriter/performers.

Mainstream country couldn’t find a permanent place for the likes of Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, Rosanne Cash, Steve Earl and k.d. lang (all defectors from Nashville labels and exiles from country radio playlists) or for Austin’s Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Costa Mesa’s Chris Gaffney, both of whom knew that even to try their luck in Nashville was pointless. Such an enterprise has a trend going, all right--one that results in dullness and superficiality.

Unlike them, hot-selling Clint Black is one of Nashville’s favored sons right now. But, happily, the word to associate with Black’s show Saturday night before some 10,000 fans at Irvine Meadows wasn’t trendy , but solid -- rock-solid (except, that is, for the hokey, less-than-solid-looking ersatz desert rock formation that served as a stage set and backdrop for Black and his band of seven players and three singers. It looked so much like a leftover from an old “Star Trek” episode that one kept waiting for Kirk and Spock to beam down beneath its fake natural arch. Black practically beamed down himself to start the show, making a grand entrance through that archway amid thunder and lightning effects).

Black’s dimpled-Adonis looks may fit the current country hit formula, but hey--the guy can’t help it if he looks like somebody a TV actress would want to marry. What’s important is that Black’s presentation showed pure class, finding a pleasing medium between butt-wiggling, misplaced bar-rockers like Billy Ray Cyrus and stolid, cigar-store Indian traditionalists like George Strait and Randy Travis.

The stage set, with its steps, ramps and platforms, did give Black pathways to roam among the musicians, and he used them judiciously. While he spent most of the show at his microphone, in key moments Black exploited the stage, bopping a bit while he strummed a guitar, or taking the showman-like lead by a-wailing and a- stomping as he blew a kinetic harmonica intro to “Put Yourself in My Shoes.” Between songs, unfortunately, Black showed no raconteur’s spark, as he stuck with the usual thankful platitudes.

As a singer, Black was controlled and firm, letting good material speak for itself without trying to show off or over-dramatize. His solid talent showed in classic, catch-in-the-throat maneuvers during high, plaintive ballad passages, and in some bluesy vocal slides at the end of “Put Yourself in My Shoes.”

Black’s band was powerful and beautifully drilled, kicking hard on rocking-country tunes and swinging confidently on Texas swing numbers. While the arrangements didn’t call for elaborate soloing, there was plenty of sharp interplay as leads got tossed briefly from player to player. Black might do well to spotlight individual band members like lead guitarist Hayden Nicholas more. The singer remarked during personnel intros that the band’s acoustic guitarist, Martin Young, is a fine player but doesn’t get to show it. So why not let him show it? In a show that lasted only 75 minutes, some instrumental stretching wouldn’t have been out of place. Electric bassist Jake Willemain was impressive without being flashy as he prodded the band with firm, propulsive lines.

The concert was helped along by an intelligent structure and by the adventurous bent (by Nashville standards, anyway) that the Black/Nicholas partnership sometimes takes in its songwriting.

Nashville’s commercial song factories simply don’t come up with material as dark, personal, and strange as “Wake Up Yesterday,” which explored deep intimations of mortality and feelings of existential dread, without appending a false sense of uplift. The song received a strong reception--evidence that country fans don’t need to suck on formula all the time; they have mature enough musical palates to enjoy a good mood piece.

Black also showed a bit of a heretical streak when it came to paying proper homage to that country shrine, the honky-tonk barroom. “The Good Old Days,” with irony so subtle that some in the crowd may have taken it as a celebration of the barfly life, and the more up-front “Nothing’s News,” both suggest that people who spend most of their time looking for good times in country nightspots are perhaps not so well-equipped to lead a fulfilling emotional life. Black should have played them back to back to allow the songs to resonate against each other.

Otherwise, his show was nicely constructed. It opened with a three-song overture of styles, proceeding from rocking country to Texas swing to a honky-tonk waltz. Black devoted most of the concert’s midsection to songs about his favorite theme, lost love lamented, stringing them together in different tones and tempos, from the reflective (a solo-acoustic rendition of a new, unrecorded number, “Happiness Alone,” about a guy whose party excursion to New Orleans is shadowed by unshakable thoughts of his most recent ex) to the contemptuous (“Burn One Down”).

In there somewhere, Black also inserted “A Better Man,” his winsome hit about the 51st way to leave your lover (that is, with appreciation, and no recriminations). For a change of pace, he offered “Straight From the Factory,” a hard-swinging, wryly ebullient number about finding one’s perfect fit in a mate.

Black and band exited on a trio of thoroughly satisfying rocking-country numbers, including crowd faves “Killin’ Time” and “We Tell Ourselves,” that achieved a fine mutuality of sock and twang without falling into that common contemporary pitfall of blatantly ripping off the Eagles or Lynyrd Skynyrd.

While hardly immune to conservatism, cliche and stock sentiment in his writing, Black appears to be one of the last, best hopes mainstream country music has to develop a star songwriter/performer with a distinctive personal vision (Garth Brooks, while a magnetic stage personality, seldom writes his own songs, and the ones he chooses tend to be conservative--otherwise he would be covering John Hiatt and Elvis Costello instead of Billy Joel). It will be interesting to see whether Black can follow his most interesting, unorthodox inclinations--and if so, whether he will pay for it by being run out of Nashville.

Given little more than 20 minutes of stage time, second-billed Aaron Tippin didn’t have a chance to show much dimension. Backed by a fine, fiddle-driven band, Tippin offered an interesting, reedy and rusticated voice that harked back to the George Jones/Hank Williams tradition more than most ‘90s arrivals on the country scene.

But like the broken-down old jalopy in his humorous set-closer, “There Ain’t Nothin’ Wrong With the Radio,” Tippin showed a tendency to overheat, with too much pose-striking, arm-waving, and over-excited yammering that made this apostle of Charles Atlas come off like Gomer Pyle with muscles. Given the short time he had, though, it’s understandable how Tippin might have opted for pumping up the energy level as his best shot at making a quick impression, thereby sacrificing his sweeter side.

A song entitled “I Was Born With a Broken Heart” would seem to offer a shot at contrast, with its sketch of a born loser who makes something of his travails by turning them into songs. But Tippin’s jaunty performance didn’t inspire confidence in his boast that it was “one I’ve certainly lived.”

“You’ve Got to Stand for Something,” a hit that became associated with the Persian Gulf War effort, was a decent anthem in support of living by strong principles. A more daring artist would temper its black-and-white worldview by juxtaposing it with songs that acknowledge life’s daunting tendency to swerve into gray areas, the moral conundrums that turn the principled ground we would all like to stand on into so much swampland.

Twenty-odd minutes was too much of openers Little Texas. On record, they are an innocuous enough bunch of slick, faceless harmonizers whose undisguised thefts of the Eagles, Poco, et al, make them sound like a cover band from 1975. On stage, they looked, acted and sounded like six guys who would rather have been Bon Jovi, but since that job was taken, they settled for being a so-called country band.

A Jerry Lee Lewis medley in which keyboardist Brady Seals made a studied display of his tight-jeaned rump, surfed atop his instrument, and stripped to the waist to show off a side of beefcake ranks as one of the low points of the concert season. During his surf-and-strip routine, Seals wore a strange, detached, zombied-out look on his face. Somebody ought to investigate whether he’s pandering voluntarily, or being held against his will as a sex-symbol slave.