Co-writing (with T Bone Burnett) “The Weary Kind (Theme From Crazy Heart),’’ which won both an Oscar and Golden Globe as best original song, the soundtrack has catapulted the 29-year-old singer to the front of the wrangler cowpoke pack.
During a 95-minute, sold-out show at T.T. the Bear’s, he and his Dead Horses met the hype head-on, with a hail of slide guitars and stomping, rough-and-tumble songs about open roads and closing doors. One of the set’s quiet moments was a hushed acoustic guitar-and-mandolin reading of the song we were all there to hear, and it really was a burnished beauty. It was a testament to his confidence that he didn’t reserve “The Weary Kind’’ for an encore, knowing he had plenty more material where that came from — if none quite as comely.
Guitarist/mandolinist Corby Schaub offered some Duane Allman-esque slide guitar on opener “Day Is Done,’’ which went from wistful to walloping before fading back into contemplation. That’s how a lot of his songs worked: rising, cresting, and crashing in a beautifully bleary sprawl akin to a freight train — or Uncle Tupelo — coming off the rails.
But the string of several selections — namely “Hard Times,’’ “Depression’’ (a promising number from a new album, “Junky Star,’’ due out this fall), and “Endless Ways’’ — brought their melodic similarities to the fore. Proof positive that there’s always room for improvement — even when you’ve got an Oscar to polish.
Opener Marc Pinansky, flying solo from fronting ’70s-style local boogie-rockers Township, got things rolling with a charming 30-minute acoustic set of shaggy folk-pop.
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