As a cartographer of the human heart, especially tides of romance advancing, fading or gone, Jackson Browne served as a sextant for people coming of age in the 1970s. Onstage at Nashville’s hallowed Ryman Auditorium — with sixteen acoustic guitars, two Oriental rugs, a Mission chair and an electric piano — the southern Californian who merged social consciousness with the yearnings of ardent souls offered the truest sacrament: standing unadorned with only one’s songs.
The sellout crowd — largely in their late 40s, 50s and 60s, with several handfuls of twenty-and-thirtysomethings — came looking for something. Their idealism? Youth? Faith in a greater reality? Hard to say, although Browne’s “Something Fine”, performed early in the second set, offered: “You know, I’m looking back carefully, ’cause I know that there’s still something there for me.”
Indeed, “Something Fine” poured out in a cascade of single acoustic guitar notes as almost a confession of tentativeness about one’s quest. And the night’s closer, “Running On Empty”, surrendered its once-frantic urgency to become a haunted, haunting reminder of the cost of moving too fast and living beyond one’s means, whether fiscally, emotionally or morally. It was a coda for a time spent, squandered, lost, and gone.
Browne has always been the gentle tug of knowing better. Opening with “The Barricades Of Heaven” and dipping into the ecologically grounded “Before The Deluge” and “For Everyman”, he made a compelling case for the magnificence of awareness. On “Drums Of War”, one of two new songs, he cogently questioned what our society is built on, conveying the need to consider the deeper truths of why peace is lost and who the profits are for. A challenging song of protest without haranguing, “Drums” illustrated how sharp Browne’s writing remains.
The obvious hits — “Doctor My Eyes”, “The Pretender”, “Take It Easy” — were played with romp and vigor. But it was in the quiet moments of loss and reflection — “Love Needs A Heart”, “Sky Blue & Black”, “In The Shape Of A Heart” — that reckoning became a source of mesmerizing beauty. Browne illuminated the cost of loss, the price of risk, and the pain of it all collapsing. Even the caught-in-the-moment “Late For The Sky”, a final gasp of what’s gone even if the parties have not physically departed the relationship that has long been emotionally abandoned, ached with a staggering plangency.
“I sing soft songs, some say very well,” an obscure folkie named Alex Bevan once wrote. On this chilly night, none better than Jackson Browne could be imagined.
