Fogerty keeps on chooglin'

Midway through his show Saturday night at the Tower Theater, John Fogerty strummed through Rick Nelson's "Garden Party." The 1972 hit, featured on Fogerty's new country-leaning collection of covers, The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again, is about an artist who learns his fans want to hear only the old hits.

"If memories were all I sang," he concludes, "I'd rather drive a truck."

Well, the 64-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer sang a lot of memories during his two-hour performance. Though he has done some of his best solo work in recent years, the set leaned heavily on his late-'60s, early-'70s work as the creative force of Creedence Clearwater Revival - mostly songs he wrote, from "Hey Tonight" and "Who'll Stop the Rain" through "Fortunate Son" and "Proud Mary," but also roots chestnuts he revived, such as "The Midnight Special" and "The Nighttime Is the Right Time."

Rarely, though, did the evening seem like an exercise in empty nostalgia.

You can avoid that when you have at your disposal one of the greatest catalogs in rock history. Creedence's music has aged as well as Fogerty himself. He's still trim and still wearing those plaid shirts, but he bounds around the stage with a youthful exuberance he rarely showed in his Creedence days. And his bayou-by-way-of-California howl remains as robust and distinctive as ever.

The infectious joy he exudes manifests itself in a continuing effort to refresh the material. Unlike the four-piece Creedence, the singer-guitarist is backed by a seven-piece band that includes keyboards, fiddle, and steel guitar. Anchored by the powerhouse drumming of Kenny Aronoff, it's a unit well-equipped to bring out the various roots strains in Fogerty's songs, especially numbers such as the twang-happy "Lookin' Out My Back Door."

Creedence's hits were all about crisp conciseness, and Fogerty generally kept them that way. But he also delved into some of the group's extended pieces, such as "Ramble Tamble" and "Keep on Chooglin'," that gave the band room to run.

One of the post-Creedence originals he pulled out was "Big Train (From Memphis)," about Elvis and the birth of rock-and-roll. In an extended instrumental interlude, Fogerty and fiddler Jason Mowery - he had several big moments throughout the night - faced off with solos that touched on everything from "Deep in the Heart of Texas" and "Ramblin' Man" to "Old Joe Clark." But the song, like the show itself, never lost any of its exhilarating, chugging momentum.

If you couldn't be there, you can get a good approximation of what it was like through Fogerty's new live DVD: Comin' Down the Road: The Royal Albert Hall Concert.