Yearwood adds a few surprises

Trisha Yearwood (pictured in LA last month) sang some obscure songs as well as the hits. (Matt Sayles/associated press)

LOWELL - Trisha Yearwood is moving at a different, more relaxed pace these days, a real switch from the 1990s when she was one of the most popular female artists in country music.

That may have something to do with the fact that she is now Mrs. Garth Brooks. Whatever the reason, one by-product seems to be performances that don't hew to the mainstream country template, judging by her appearance Sunday evening at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium.

Yearwood remarked early on that instead of the usual greatest-hits set, she would be doing a mix of old and new stuff, including songs that her audience doesn't usually get a chance to hear.

For the new, she sampled her current release, "Heaven, Heartache, and the Power of Love," and instead of playing just the new single and maybe one or two other songs, she played five, including the delightful Western swing of "Cowboys Are My Weakness."

For the old, she's not only including material she doesn't often do live, such as "There Goes My Baby." She's also letting her audience help determine what she plays by voting for songs on her website.

That proved to be no mere pro forma exercise when Yearwood gamely tackled "Nearest Distant Shore," a song from her first album that she had never performed live before. She confided that she had forgotten some of the words during sound check and then predicted she'd do the same onstage. Sure enough, that's exactly what happened.

Needless to say, Yearwood didn't entirely neglect her past hits, but even then she deviated from the usual, tweaking the delivery with a roughed-up "Wrong Side of Memphis" and a gorgeous, hushed, acoustic version of "Walk Away Joe."

She did close with one of her biggest hits: the treacly Diane Warren ballad "How Do I Live," a song that typifies what a lot of her music was about in her heyday.

But those moments were the exception, which meant that for those who have always felt that Yearwood's magnificent voice could be put to better use, it was Sunday night.

Lori McKenna, "playing her home field," as she put it, along with Mark Erelli on mandolin, preceded Yearwood with a fine half-hour of her music.