In black suit, tie and shirt, he strode shyly to the grand piano to play and sing softly and alone, except when he invited a few singalongs. "Highwayman," a hit for the country music outlaws Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, and the late Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, introduced both Webb’s low-key performing style and the outlaw theme of his new album, "Twilight of the Renegades," that unified his 75-minute show. He next quietly crooned "No Signs Of Age" from "Twilight," a melancholy meditation that the late Richard Harris planned to record, but died first.

Harris had a huge hit with "MacArthur Park," but Webb’s own rendition on Saturday was more satisfying. Harris’ cover seemed pumped-up, grandiloquent, compared to Webb’s spare, heartfelt reading, with the majesty of real emotion. Afterward Webb confessed he still has no clue what its cryptic "Someone left the cake out in the rain" lyric means.

Webb weaved his songs together with well-told tales, saying the upbeat "Up, Up And Away" contributed to his being thrown out of music school, gratefully recalling how his early success in commercial pop songwriting made the professor who had ejected him seem like a genius. In fact, Webb is the genius, of a very mainstream pop songwriting style and an engaging modesty onstage. He knew he couldn’t hit the high notes in "Up," so he asked the capacityplus crowd to do it for him. He also used his limited vocal range to compelling effect in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (recorded, he proudly noted, by Judy Collins Joan Baez, Shawn Colvin, Joe Cocker and others) when his voice cracked then rose in a thin falsetto.

His songs are more than familiar — "Wichita Lineman," "Didn’t We," "Time Flies," "Galveston" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" — but Webb noted "I never play anything the same way twice." Therefore, he promised, and delivered, "a unique product." He made this claim seem modest with a show unique in its intelligence and emotional power. Rich and round on the bottom, his voice thinned on top, but this injected a sense of distress or desperation into a quietly contained delivery. His piano playing was also carefully modulated, generally as unobtrusive accompaniment. But in the set-closing "MacArthur Park," it built up to an orchestral grandeur, then let his fans down easy.

"I’m coming back: I love this place," said Webb after his firstever Albany show as he signed CDs for a long line of fans — who loved him right back. Don’t miss him when he does.

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