Sun writer Nick Madigan saw Jackson Browne at Pier Six Pavilion. Here is his review:
Jackson Browne was never the kind of performer to call attention to himself.
For four decades, and without fanfare, he has been delivering his heartfelt tributes to enlightenment and lost love to packed houses of the faithful, all the while doing his utmost to avoid the harshest of the public spotlight's glare.
That reticence, born of profound and often sorrowful introspection, was never more clear than on Tuesday night, at Baltimore's Pier Six Pavilion. Pairing up once again with his longtime collaborator David Lindley — the virtuoso stringman who was at his side for much of his early career — Browne not only started off with songs by other composers, Warren Zevon and Bruce Springsteen, but ceded the stage entirely to Lindley after just four numbers.
However, upon returning with his full band after an intermission, Browne — still improbably youthful at 61 — proved that the vagaries of age and the passage of time have dimmed neither his energy nor the pleasure he takes in his adherents' adulation, even if much of his audience — this reviewer included — long ago sprouted gray hair and crow's feet ...
Before the concert, talk in the crowd had turned to Browne's resilience.
"The question is, do people like him still have the voice?" asked Greg Dunn, in tie-dye shirt and beard, who recalled being at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia when Browne and Lindley recorded part of the album "Running on Empty" in August 1977. "David Crosby's voice is almost gone," Dunn said, "and the Grateful Dead never could sing, so it wasn't an issue."
As Tuesday's concert progressed, any doubts about Browne's vocal stamina were laid firmly to rest, as Dunn acknowledged when it was all over. With "In the Shape of a Heart," Browne stirringly aroused memories of vanished affections, while a wrenching version of "Your Bright Baby Blues" brought even the most vocal chatterboxes in the audience to silence, its lyrics a haunting echo of youthful misdirection — "No matter how fast I run / I can never seem to get away from me / no matter where I am / I can't help feeling / I'm just a day away from where I want to be."