Willie Nelson tried for years to fit within the well-established structure of Nashville's music business, but it was only when he broke the rules by moving to Texas, growing long hair and building a hybrid audience of rednecks and college students that he found his place.

Thus it is appropriate that when Nelson finally made his Hollywood Bowl debut Friday, more than 45 years into his career, he did it in a way that toyed with the confines of musical structure.

Nelson, whose 1978 album of standards "Stardust" spent more than 10 years on Billboard's country chart, appropriately began the performance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mixing traditional pop songs with his own creations, including "Night Life" and "Funny How Time Slips Away," Nelson demonstrated a major part of the influence that propelled his career. Riding thick arrangements and an orchestra's instrumental mass, Nelson appeared way out front in the mix, placing the focus on the material in a manner as intimate as the Bing Crosby records he heard in his youth.

But symphonies, because of their size, are extremely choreographed; thus, while the orchestral pieces showed the adaptability of Nelson's songs, they also kept him constrained as a musician.

Adroitly, Nelson disbanded the symphony after seven songs and came back after intermission with his eight-piece group for a more flexible run. Much like its leader, the Family Band is an unusual ensemble: Drummer Paul English's kit consists of just one snare drum, played subtly with brushes, but he combined with percussionists Billy English and Micah Nelson, who collectively played as many as four shakers at a time, creating a sturdy, understated rhythm.

That's important, because Nelson is noted for his vocal playfulness. He expands, contracts, rushes and delays phrases, practically rewriting the material as he goes -- flattening a melody at will, or ricocheting musical intervals like a pinball wizard. He approached his beat-up guitar "Trigger" with the same on-the-fly attitude, rolling out cliched rock riffs and ragged Wes Montgomery chords in the midst of his typical trills and chromatic moments of drama.

Nelson always has had a unique voice -- highly nasal, an acquired taste for many. But as he has aged, the sound seems to come a tad more from his throat. His voice is a bit lower, with a fuzzier quality that he enhances by trailing off at the ends of phrases and by accentuating his vibrato. The result is a weathered, experienced presence that worked particularly well on such backward-glancing pieces as "Healing Hands of Time" and "Always On My Mind."

Despite a certain predictability in his repertoire and his sound, it is still obvious that Nelson is living in the moment, making it up as he goes along. Undergirding it all is a sort of wisely imparted confidence: If you know what you're doing, you can test the boundaries and still come out structurally sound.