Though his baroque guitar skills have been rightly celebrated for more than a quarter century, Leo Kottke's performances are remarkably clutter-free. Onstage at his concerts are two guitars, which he carries and tunes himself, a microphone, a chair and the fifty-three-year-old Kottke himself, looking rumpled but ready in jeans, tennis shoes, an oxford shirt and a dark sport jacket. |He carries no opening acts, claiming that too often they're either terrible or terrific (either one being hard to follow), and eschews even roadies, noting that there's not enough work to justify the expense, and besides, he too quickly tires of their company. One has a mental picture of Kottke even taking a pass on the de rigueur backstage deli tray in favor of lunch at a roadside cafe before a gig to which he likely drove himself.

Hackles may have been raised when his most recent album, last year's Standing in My Shoes featured less slide guitar than his previous works, and an emphasis on drum loops and dance-floor rhythms courtesy of producer (and former Prince sidekick) David Z. But not to worry: On the road again -- seemingly without any promotional agenda in evidence -- Kottke is back to the basics of his solo performance and content to let his fingers do most of the talking.

For his performance at St. Louis' Sheldon Concert Hall, Kottke dipped deep into his old repertoire for audience favorites like "Vaseline Machine Gun" and "Pamela Brown," auditioned a few new numbers for an album he'll be recording in Minnesota in the coming months, and kept the crowd amused in-between songs with his mordant wit. Praising the Sheldon's hallowed acoustics, Kottke told a story of an architect who inspected a concert hall of his own design, then promptly hung himself. "Some people take their work too seriously," Kottke said dryly.

Kottke doesn't, but he takes it seriously enough, performing a dazzling array of instrumental numbers, defying genre boundaries between blues, folk and jazz, and making music that is extraordinarily percussive -- there's not enough space left open for you to miss a rhythm section -- yet wonderfully lyrical.

In terms of vocal numbers, Kottke makes the most of what he has, which is a shopworn baritone better suited for speaking than singing. Indeed, he's used it in voice-overs for Saturn, Nike and Inglenook wine commercials, and he even stopped the show briefly to audition a line from a prospective new client -- "Beck's: The best of what Germans do best." Still, he warbled his way through Paul Siebel's lament "Louise," Alex Harvey's "Rings," Randall Hylton's "The Room at the Top of the Stairs," and the Byrds' "Eight Miles High." On the latter song, long a fixture of Kottke's live set, he slowed the verses down and sang the words carefully, intensifying by contrast the flurry of notes he spewed out in the faster instrumental sections.

As good as the set proper was, Kottke saved the best for last. During the second encore, he told a long and moving story about a Slovenian lithographer friend whose father was held prisoner by the Yugoslavian government for twenty-six years. Unbeknownst to his family, who figured him for dead, he was held captive across the street from their apartment, and sustained his spirit by peering out a high slit of a window, catching occasional glimpses of his daughters as they played on their balcony. He was finally released to go home and die, and Kottke memorialized him with "Across the Street," a hushed and haunting piece that movingly evoked wasted time and tears. It was an odd and somber way to end an otherwise joyous concert, but with Kosovo still in the news, it was a bold and thought-provoking move.

DANIEL DURCHHOLZ(October 26, 1998)