Saturday night at the Bottleneck in downtown Lawrence, undervalued country virtuoso Junior Brown entertained an absolutely packed house for more than two hours with his self-styled blend of honky-tonk, rock and good time humor.

Junior Brown performed Saturday night at the Bottleneck in Lawrence.

Brown is pure show business. Everything about the way he presents himself is a contrivance. With his slick suits and white cowboy hat and his novelty songs about truckers, cops and dangerous women, Brown creates a very deliberate pastiche. Far from being, as the Texans say, “all hat and no cattle,” Brown uses all of his shtick to deliver the goods. This man can just plain play.

Like a countrified counterpart to the B 52s, Brown creates an impression of kitsch from another era. It’s not a faithful rendering of some nostalgic time or place, but a judicious use of the accoutrements of late ’50s and early ’60s roadhouse country to create a bit of theater.

The music is utterly contemporary in it’s synthesis of styles and influences. The result is more like 40 years of making 1960 better than a trip back 40 years. If Mayberry was Brigadoon, this is the band Barney would take Thelma Lou to Mount Pilot to hear on a Saturday night.

Junior Brown

Playing his one-off, custom built “Guit-steel” which marries a lap steel guitar and a Telecaster-styled electric in a single body, his deft fingers move fluidly between the two sets of strings. At any moment Brown might be playing country licks, surf riffs, Hawaiian slack key or psychedelic rock.

Signature pieces with titles like “Brokedown South of Dallas,” “My Wife Thinks You’re Dead,” “Highway Patrol” and “Hillbilly Hula Girl” paints a clear picture of the world Brown writes and sings about.

The extended closing rave-up, generically known as the “Surf Medley” became an impromptu class in music appreciation as Brown cleverly and deliberately drew a road map connecting the styles he incorporates in his playing. Beginning with surf classics “Walk, Don’t Run” and “Pipeline” he slid into Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western film music, the theme from “Bonanza,” “The William Tell Overture,” and “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”

Junior Brown

The medley veered back to surf music for “Rebel Rouser,” into outer space for themes from Twilight Zone and Close Encounters before landing on solid ground with “Secret Agent Man,” the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” and Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady.”