With three flights from New York canceled and some slick road conditions waiting for him in Chicago, Findlay Brown, arriving just before 10pm, was surprisingly chipper once he got going at Schubas last night. The former pugilist, who claims to have rediscovered ’50s music while laid up with a broken leg, led a small group of us through more than a dozen tunes in an acoustic set in the extra intimate setting that’s Schubas on a snowy Monday night. Brown, decked out in a western-style fitted jacket, joked spontaneously, and sometimes set himself up for jokes—pulling out a piece of paper from his pocket, he began to read it like a set list until he corrected himself, “Oh no, that’s my shopping list.” And switching to the twelve-string, “I’ll try this horrible thing. It it’s out of tune, we’re in for another half hour wait,” he remarked. He played some of his more elaborately record songs, such as “Love Will Find You,” in acoustic versions for the first time—offering that he had actually once played the single for his mom on acoustic and she liked it.

Brown’s love for the timeless, soaring pop of Roy Orbison or the strummy rave-ups of Buddy Holly is obvious. He aims for epic subject matter—usually in love songs and has an epic voice to match. If there’s a weak spot in the not-yet-perfect Findlay Brown, it is in his lyrics which aren’t quite unique enough, nor universal enough to get where he wants to go—rain is a fine motif to play off, but he seems to come back to it too often.

Unexpectedly, Brown’s acoustic fingerpicking and angelic voice sometimes recalls singers of another era—even Tim Hardin. But Brown, who spent most of the set in contemplative and downbeat mode—except for the upbeat “That’s Right,” didn’t want us to leave too quietly or easily. For his encore, he hopped off the stage, into the dark to shuffle and shimmy to his own take on Elvis’s “Mystery Train.” “I like Elvis,” he told us.