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*** Warren Zevon, “Life’ll Kill Ya,” Artemis. Like an aging athlete, the old Excitable Boy has lost a step or three, and so have his characters--now with no dad to send lawyers, guns and money to get them out of jams when life catches up to them. So rather than boast of macho misadventure in such foible-filled fables as “I Was in the House When the House Burned Down,” our hero now licks his wounds and looks for what lessons are to be learned--while more or less admitting that he lit the fire in the first place.

It’s not that Zevon has mellowed in middle age, but rather he has fleshed out the swaggering cynicism of his youth with sympathy and humanity.

And the unflinching sentimentality he embraces in a closing reprise of his older prayer “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” only enriches his self-deprecating musings. Zevon plays the Ventura Theatre on March 27, the House of Blues on March 28 and the Coach House on March 30.

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