Talking Points

Jimmie Dale Gilmore, the Texas troubadour who may be the folksiest philosopher in pop music, went “Seinfeld” one better Friday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. Gilmore put on a show about everything, and disguised it as a show about nothing.

No stray notion or irrelevant tangent went unpursued, no digressive chain of thought associations was left unpulled as the lanky singer with the sweet disposition and even sweeter voice talked his fill before letting the music have the ultimate say.

Gilmore would get set to play, then yet another thought would bubble up, yanking his strumming hand off the guitar so his right index finger could stab the air to try to harpoon the idea, like a toothpick in search of a cocktail frank.

This was fine with a small audience of about 100, whose attentiveness and appreciation (two standing ovations near the end; one bouquet bestowed) enabled Gilmore to make up in cult-artist perks what he lacks in mainstream appeal. His humorous monologues riffed on age and forgetfulness (Gilmore, in his early 50s, said he’s not immune to blanking out on names and song lyrics, but he seemed forgetful in an awfully canny way when one of the verses that momentarily eluded him went “I seem to forget half the things I start . . .”).

Gilmore is part of a Texas song-poets fraternity famed for its creative fertility and its obscurity to the uninitiated (his old friends from Lubbock, Butch Hancock and Joe Ely, are leading members; his set also covered nuggets by cult heroes Willis Alan Ramsey, Townes Van Zandt, Al Strehli Jr. and Paul Seibel). Making the best of his underappreciated lot--which has him without a record deal, touring solo because he doesn’t have the cash to pay a band, and contemplating an upcoming do-it-yourself release to be sold at gigs and by mail)--he kept circling back for wry embellishments on the idea that good taste and high standards are acceptable compensation for being marginal.

While his monologues were disarming and spontaneous, the gab-to-song ratio did get a bit out of hand, especially considering the wealth of good material he has written or made his own via definitive cover versions. Even Gilmore cheerfully admitted that he was meandering with “things that struck me at the moment as being meaningful, but weren’t.”

But the offhanded evening was a nice complement to Gilmore’s more-to-the-point past visits here with full-band backing. When he wasn’t amusing himself and the faithful with his rambling discourse, Gilmore impressively established that he was musically on his game.

He was a picture of focused intensity when he sang, his voice a distinctive, twangy nasal flutter that stylistically seems patched together from bits of Willie Nelson, Hank Williams and those old vaudeville tenors who crooned through megaphones. Like Nelson, Gilmore’s guitar playing had its own idiosyncratic sense of timing, and sometimes notes would linger on or fall behind the beat like children on a nature hike.

The opening song, “Tonight I’m Gonna Go Downtown,” sounded the Big Theme that Gilmore--a student of Eastern religion and philosophy who interrupted his musical career in the ‘70s to study under a guru--often pursues in his songs: the quest for ultimate understanding, and how journeying into the mystic can clash with the everyday constancy needed to sustain that less abstruse ideal, romantic love.

Gilmore’s between-songs persona as a friendly, unassuming scatterbrain supported his reputation as a Zen cowboy riding freely down happy trails of speculation, where, as one Hancock song he sang put it, “My Mind’s Got a Mind of Its Own.” It also removed any hint of pretentiousness from songs that typically are not simple country or folk-song fare.

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While he can be as earthy and simple as Williams or Nelson, the essential Gilmore comes out in elusive songs that lend themselves less to clear, transparent understanding than to being absorbed as impressions. But this was no philosophy lecture. Gilmore’s soothing, soaring voice and comforting melodies captured the ear and wove a yearning yet serene mood. A listener could grasp for deeper meanings, or just enjoy the caress of his ballads or the easygoing cheerfulness of the up-tempo numbers.

As he encored with the gorgeous “Sally,” written by the reclusive Strehli, Gilmore underscored his grand themes of questing and constancy.

“Sometimes my thinking gets so heavy,” he sang with a tender, tremulous sigh. With a balance between song lyrics that can be heavy or abstract, and between-songs extemporizing that was as light and jumpy as a water bug, Gilmore came up with a show about the deep mind taking its healthy exercise and becoming, for a while, a playful, even silly mind. Gilmore laughingly and repeatedly excused himself for going on about nothing, but his show was definitely something, and, for those drawn to his deepest lyrics, a chance to ponder everything.

Opener Mark Wood, who usually entertains in coffeehouses and bars, showed why he has been able to please audiences well enough over a long haul to make a living from music. He was personable and at ease, a confident, sometimes flashy guitarist whose strumming and picking burst with vitality, and a forthright singer.

Wood’s piercing voice, however, was not always large or supple enough to support his full-on dynamics. Lacking the control for the Don Henley-like grand gestures he attempted, he might have been better off with a bit of Nelson’s soft-pedaling approach.