Chris Pierce performs at The Muck in Fullerton, Calif. on Feb. 3, 2022. Photos courtesy Chas Alm.

FULLERTON, Calif. — Chris Pierce showed the simple power of a voice at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center on Thursday night. Pierce wowed with powerful political anthems and astonishing vocal acrobatics, accompanied only by his guitar.

He opened with “American Silence,” his powerful condemnation of inaction in the face of injustice. He followed with “The Bridge of John,” written for the late Congressman John Lewis. Pierce said he wrote the song to remind everyone that they can still walk alongside Lewis and honor his legacy. He spoke about playing the song recently at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on the week of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Pierce’s most recent album, American Silence, addresses difficult topics like wage theft and mass incarceration, but his gorgeous tenor was the sugar that made the medicine go down easy on Thursday. His voice was warm and compelling, whether singing a protest or love song. He was disarmingly accessible and chatty between tunes, explaining backstories and telling anecdotes.

Chris Pierce performs at The Muck in Fullerton, Calif. on Feb. 3, 2022.

“We Can Always Come Back to This,” which was featured on the NBC show “This Is Us,” was a crowd favorite, and was accompanied by a humorous tale of spending 14 hours on the set of the show in ill-fitting bell bottoms.

“Suddenly, there I was, singing with the NBC orchestra onstage!” he said of performing at the Television Academy in Hollywood in 2017.

Pierce has an amazing set of lungs, and he demonstrated a dazzling falsetto and an ability to hold and control a vibrato for a stunningly long time on multiple songs like “Young, Black and Beautiful.” He also sang scat on a few songs, including “It’s Been Burning for a While,” recalling Jeff Buckley. The set included dips into numerous genres like blues, pop, folk and jazz, and Pierce looked like he was having fun through it all.

Chris Pierce performs at The Muck in Fullerton, Calif. on Feb. 3, 2022.

The artist, who said he’s about to head into the studio to record his next album, played unrecorded songs “Batten Down the Hatches” and “Ain’t No Better Time.” The latter was a hopeful song made for emerging from a pandemic, and Pierce noted that it “might make a good album title.”

Pierce has seized his moment, touring constantly since pandemic restrictions eased enough for him to do so.

“I just said yes to everything last year,” he said. He ended with merry single “Call It a Day,” from his side project Leon Creek, which resulted in a mini-singalong with the attendees.

Follow Rachel Alm at Twitter.com/thouzenfold and Instagram.com/thousandfold.