Way back before Beck became the toast of alternative radio with the smash single "Loser," he’d been cutting his teeth on the folk circuit, setting his Dylanesque word collages to acoustic-guitar arrangements that, like Dylan’s, acknowledged folk’s great debt to the blues, especially the more free-form "talking blues." Dylan himself has always been fond of the talking blues, and whether it was Beck himself or his producers at the time — the cut-and-paste mavericks the Dust Brothers — who made the connection between that and hip-hop doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that the connection was made, not in some academic essay about the history of African-American music but in a pop song that three creative white people turned into one of the crucial slacker, beat-poet hits of the ’90s.

Since then, Beck has transformed himself into a more Princely white funkmaster with two turntables, a microphone, and some nifty dance moves, not to mention a crack band who nail every groove he brings them. He’s also dabbled on the pure pop side of the white/black music divide, reaching back to Brian Wilson–style ’60s arrangements on Mutations (Geffen) and even hooking up with diehard indie-rocker Calvin Johnson for the some lo-fi acoustic fun on One Foot in the Grave (K Records).

That’s probably the closest Beck had come to a return to his roots project before this summer, when he embarked on a solo acoustic tour that hit Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre last Friday night. The major difference is that if he used One Foot in the Grave as a brief respite from the pop world that so quickly embraced "Loser," then this acoustic tour is his way of reintroducing his core audience to his acoustic side so it won’t be completely alienated when his relatively funkless (but not quite unplugged) Sea Change hits stores on September 24. It’s also, as he pointed out midway through the set, something he’s been wanting to do for eight years.

This was, then, a chance to see the wild Beck in its natural habitat, on stage in a rumpled black suit jacket, meandering from acoustic guitar to acoustic guitar between songs, introducing the audience to the other tools of his trade (the Wurlitzer electric piano, the harmonium, and an hilarious toy sampler with which he actually generates a cool groove), and just generally trying to be himself as he ran through almost two dozen tunes, some new, some old, some borrowed (including a Hank Williams tune), and some bluesy.

What stuck out most of all was how effective he is even when he strips away all but the thinnest veneer of the irony that he’s used so effectively. As anyone who’s seen him perform knows, Beck can really sing — even like Al Green when he needs to. He can also move like some comic raggedy white imitation of Michael Jackson. And for all the mismatched outfits of his slacker beginnings, he’s got style.

At Sanders, his only real concession to that style was the red leather "flamenco" shoes that he jokingly showed off at one point. For the most part, he confined his comic showmanship to between-song comments about what he’d learned at "unplugged school" and little ditties he made up on the spot about playing a hall as hallowed as Sanders (something he apparently got a big kick out of). At one point, after he’d been joined on stage by his long-time friend, guitarist Smokey Hormel, he even did a little dancing as he freestyled stream-of-consciousness rhymes. And when he sat down at the Wurlitzer, he played the key musical hook from "Where It’s At" before going off on an extemporaneous jazz odyssey that included rhymes about him working out at the gym. All of which provided the perfect balance for an evening of otherwise serious song, and a little reminder that when he’s done with this mini-tour, you can expect Beck the showman to return to active duty as he sets out to support Sea Change.