Leon Russell @ the State Theater in Falls Church.

by Alan Greenblatt

Leon Russell resembles a boozy, kind of hipster-looking Santa Claus, with his great white mane of hair and heard, his "Christmas in July" department store sales sunglasses, and a big red and white shirt. So he appeared, at any rate, last night at the State Theater in Falls Church, Virginia.

Russell was in a fairly benevolent mood, even addressing the crowd, however briefly. In recent years, he's just come out and run through his hits, one right after another ("Hummingbird," "Tightrope," "Delta Lady," etc.), playing with great speed and separating each with the quickest of "thank yous."

He actually paced the show this time, slowing down for ballads like "Lady Blue" and letting his band leave the stage so he could accompany himself on the electronic keyboards on "Over the Rainbow" and "This Masquerade." Russell's intensity on the piano has never let up over the years, his wonderfully firm and rollicking blues lick playing still the anchor of his swamp-pop country fried rock sound. Leon has a famously raspy, high-pitched voice and is one of the great screamers in rock.

His guitar player looked like a cross between a ZZ Top wannabe and one of the guys standing in the wrong place at the bar in a Clint Eastwood movie who gets shot. The bass man was balding but had sunglasses and a leather vest over a white tee-shirt. Leon's son Teddy Jack banged away unsubtly on the drums and his daughter Shugaree Noel slapped at a head-like percussion instrument she held at belt level, her eyes and black tee-shirt covered with glitter. She was skinny. (She was also wearing black leather pants and, as a fashion note, I will mention that earlier this month I was in Montreal and red leather pants for women was a big look.)

Many of Leon's hits have been covers of other performer's songs, and in this show he seemed especially loving in performances of tunes by Tennessee Ernie Ford ("Sixteen Tons"), Patsy Cline ("Sweet Dreams"), Bob Dylan ("A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall") and George Jones ("He Stopped Loving Her Today"). His encore was Wilbert Harrison's "Kansas City."

He was so intense the first time I saw him, circa 1983, in a small room in the San Francisco State University student union building, as though he couldn't ratchet down his performance level from the stadiums he'd played a few years before. Then, as I said, he seemed in recent years to be going through the motions, pumping out the hits his fans demanded.

Now he seems a benevolent presence, touring with his children and playing the sort of songs, one wants to think, that first got him interested in music. There are many worse fates for old rock stars a few months shy, as Leon is, of their 60th birthday.