Patty Griffin isn’t the first name I’d associate with gospel music. After hearing her perform tunes from her recent foray into that genre, the CD “Downtown Church,” Thursday night, that probably won’t change any time soon.

Not that the show was bad — on the contrary, there was much to recommend.

Buddy Miller and Patty Griffin performing live at Power Center Thursday night in the opening mainstage event for the 2010 Ann Arbor Summer Festival.

Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com

Anyone familiar with Griffin knows she is an amazing performer, and her band — which included veteran Americana singer/guitarist Buddy Miller — was excellent. Many of Griffin’s songs have a delicateness to them that’s perfectly served by her heartbreakingly lovely voice.

Still, something seemed missing. At one point, Griffin acknowledged being “a lapsed Catholic,” and talked about recording the CD at the request of a record company exec, so maybe her soul just isn’t 100 percent into gospel music. And, with apologies to the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, which presented Griffin and Miller at Power Center to kick off its 2010 season, such a low-key act may not have been the ideal way to lead into its annual — and usually generally upbeat — event.

True, the band cooked up a wicked groove for the classic “Wade in the Water.” Organ riffs on “The Strange Man” added a traditional gospel feel to the night, while the beautiful “Heavenly Day” was marred only by someone’s ringing cell phone.

Thankfully, non-secular tunes such as “Get Ready Marie,” about her grandparents’ sex life, and the cheeky “I Smell A Rat” provided some much-needed relief from the show’s otherwise generally melancholy tone — cases in point, the downright cheerless “Mary,” the dirge-like “Death’s Got a Warrant” and the heartbreaking “Never Grow Old.” I like these songs fine on their own, but an entire evening of mostly similar fare was a bit much.

Miller — who appeared here as part of the Ann Arbor Folk Festival in 2008 with Griffin, Shawn Colvin and Emmylou Harris as “3 Girls and their Buddy” — kicked off the evening solo with Tom T. Hall’s “That’s How I Got to Memphis,” then was joined by the band and Griffin for songs such as “Somewhere Trouble Don’t Go” and “Wide River To Cross.” Miller, a seasoned pro, is always a pleasure to hear, and “Gasoline and Matches” (heard recently on an episode of the TV series “True Blood”) was a highlight of his set.

Buddy Miller and Patty Griffin performing “Gasoline and Matches” live earlier this year (clip):

After nearly three hours of mostly melancholic music, I was pretty much ready to move on. Other concertgoers seemed to feel the same way — as the end of the show drew near, there seemed to be a constant trickle of people getting up to leave. Maybe they were anxious to check out the basketball game between the Celtics and the Lakers. Griffin seemed to give in to the competition, saying she was going to set the “basketball fans free to see the rest of the game,” before coming back for a two-song encore that closed with “Up to the Mountain (MLK Song),” poignant to be sure, yet nothing to send one singing out of the theater.

Finally, what was up with that shameless sack dress Griffin was wearing? It looked like a “Project Runway” reject. Ouch! Sorry, Patty.

I wish I could muster up more enthusiasm for a show that was fine in many respects. I guess you could say I just wasn’t feeling the spirit.

Roger LeLievre is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com.