Shortly after the Largo jam session featuring Harper Simon and his circle of Silver Lake superstar friends, I got a text: “Was he at least as good as Jakob Dylan?” my friend asked waggishly.

Well, sure! Maybe! Sort of! No! But I did get to come home and listen to Hearts and Bones and Graceland and remember warmly the time I taught my son about metaphors using “Bridge Over Troubled Water” as our text. Good times!

If I were Harper Simon, I would be very annoyed by this.

Simon, a cute fellow of 36, looked more like Harland Williams or David Arquette than like his father, though there was a strong similarity in the voice, if mostly in the phrasing. (He sounded most like him in the lower registers, and strained for his high notes.) His originals were charmingly written, especially “The Audit” (which I thought was a Neil Young song, and I was wrong) and “Berkeley Girl,” a pretty bit about roses and amethysts which any girl would like to have written for her own self. It was very “Only Living Boy in New York,” and there is nothing not to like about that.

But Simon, whether from humility or generosity, gave the show to his friends: he started with a Nick Drake cover and only played a few songs before inviting his friends up to sing their songs instead. The beautiful Inara George and Petra Haden were there, Haden both playing violin and singing two old standards, while Charlie Wadhams, David Rawlings, and Jon Brion offered up two songs each. The really charming part of the show, though, was Simon’s accompanists, Benmont Tench on piano and Sebastian Steinberg on upright bass. Every time Simon stopped to shyly retune his guitar—or one of his friends sitting in began to retune each other’s guitars to their own likings—Tench stepped in with entr’acte music from a classical take on “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” to some Marx Brothers twinkles, punctuated with Steinberg’s thumps and Haden’s virtuosic bowing finishing his musical thought.

The show itself ended with a group sing-along of Jimmy Cliff’s thought: You can get it if you really want. It would have been nice if Simon had a little less humility and made us listen to his own thoughts instead.

Simon’s self-titled solo album comes out Oct. 13 on Tulsi Records.

—Rebecca Schoenkopf