Jackson Browne at the Civic Theatre

By PETER CALDER

Singer-songwriter Browne has been here twice before - on a crammed bill for a Rainbow Warrior concert and when he played an invite-only, radio-theatre concert.

But Monday night's gig, led with a short, well-received opening set by local songsmith Marvey King, was his first headline appearance and he made up for lost time with a 20-song, two-hour-plus show.

"They wanted us to take Auckland off the itinerary because it's so far to come but we wouldn't hear of it," Browne said to enthusiastic applause from the 1400-strong crowd.

The set list emphasised his later work - seven of the 10 songs on his new album The Naked Ride Home made a mid-concert stream interrupted only by the title track from his best-selling album, Late For The Sky.

That's hardly surprising since the on-stage lineup is the same as the albums, augmented by guitarist Val McCallum and backing vocalist/percussionist Catherine Russell into a solid, if conventional combo.

But the audience, sprinkled with a few younger faces who must have found Browne mid-career, included mostly diehard fans.

Though the applause for the new stuff was more than polite, it was the classics they had come for.

Browne made an easy and affable stage presence as he wrestled to tune an array of guitars, including a smudged and battered Gibson not much younger than the 55-year-old musician. The familiar songs were welcomed like the old friends they are and for the most part they landed shining like brand new.

These Days was rearranged from the slow original into a rolling, upbeat folk song and ended up seeming somehow inconsequential as a result - but early work such as Rock Me On The Water and a barnstorming second-encore finale of Doctor My Eyes were impressive, beefed-up facsimiles of the originals with Browne in fine voice.

The band, led by the unshowy guitar of Mark Goldenberg and powered by the driving and occasionally ornate bass of Kevin McCormick (who shares writing credits with Browne on the new album), was exemplary even if some of the later compositions seemed too slight to bear the sheer weight of the musicianship shovelled into them.

And the show, as a whole, lacked the light and shade that an intimate acoustic bracket might have lent it.

But Browne shouldn't have inferred the warmth of the reception from the crowd's timid, muted contribution to the 1960 Maurice Williams classic Stay.

He and that stunning back catalogue, in particular, are welcome back here any time.