Browne plays fast and loose

Somebody yelled for "Free Bird." Jackson Browne called his bluff.

The singer-songwriter with a catalog of songs going back more than 40 years then launched into a straight-faced version of Lynyrd Skynyrd's signature tune, with Browne's guitar tech joining on slide guitar.

It's the sort of thing that only happens when an artist puts himself in a position to be spontaneous, and that's what Browne did during this acoustic and mostly solo performance before a crowd of 2,180 at Ruth Eckerd Hall.

It's not often a crowd sees a performer admit he can't remember a song, as Browne did after trying to play Danny Kortchmar's "Shaky Town," only to have his guitar tech hustle on-stage with a print-out of the lyrics. "Can you bring my glasses, too?" Browne asked. He got them. And he wore them while reading the lyrics, and finishing the song.

Requests came fast and furious between songs. One suggested Browne play what he want, to which he smiled and responded, "I pretty much always do play what I want."

That meant plenty of hits got shunted to later in the set or not played at all, and that less familiar songs got the attention Browne thought they deserved. You could argue with his choices, but his dedication to the songs, well-known or not, was undeniable.

It also meant he could salute his late friend Warren Zevon with two numbers, "Don't Let Us Get Sick" and "Lawyers, Guns and Money." It meant he could precede those songs with "These Days," a song he said he wrote at age 16, "but I wrote it again at 21."

Browne, 61, looked as if he's just stepped out of 1978, with the same haircut and possibly the same size jeans. His voice displayed only the slightest rasp on some notes.

The almost mathematical precision of his compositions was present on the newer material although his more topical songs lacked - perhaps inevitably - the poetry of his more personal tunes. But there were far more of the latter than of the former.

Browne isn't the quintessential '70s singer-songwriter he seems to be. His songs are full of questions, doubt and fear, and don't offer easy answers. The melodies of "Running on Empty," "The Pretender" and "Before the Deluge" may be comforting, but the messages are more unsettling.

That's why Browne's best songs continue to resonate decades after they were written and why Friday's performance offered a lot more than nostalgia.