Veterans don't come more gnarled and whiskery than the cast of Burrito Deluxe, whose five members have been plying their trade for decades. In steel guitarist "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow and keyboards wizard Garth Hudson they boast a couple of the most prestigious performers who ever played country music or rock'n'roll.

However, it's best to catch them playing live and give their recordings a miss. The new album, The Whole Enchilada, suffers from a cripplingly sterile recorded sound, shoving vocalist Carlton Moody's corny cowboy baritone way out front in the mix, as if this were a Jim Reeves album from 40 years ago. They sounded much more comfortable on stage, where there was plenty of room for improvisation and Moody was better integrated into the ensemble.

None of them is much of a songwriter, and there were only a couple of originals in the whole set: an instrumental showpiece for Kleinow and an insipid thing called Woman Like You. Otherwise, they had a whale of a time with a batch of country classics, some culled from the Flying Burrito Brothers repertoire, where Kleinow played them the first time around. Wheels loped along over an energetic groove supplied by bassman Jeff "Stick" Davis and drummer Rick Lonow, while Sin City was reserved for the encore. From the Gram Parsons catalogue there was a rumbustious Cash on the Barrelhead, and a Hickory Wind that sounded pretty good even without Emmylou Harris.

Hudson's finest moment arrived after he'd swirled through a virtuoso improvised passage on various keyboards, then dived into the introduction to The Weight, by his old compadres the Band. With its enigmatic lyrics and distinctive layered harmonies, the song still sounds like a mysterious puzzle handed down over centuries. Burrito Deluxe are basically a bar band playing covers, but with a sprinkling of legendariness.