October 5 2006: Damien Jurado, Rosie Thomas, Casey Dienel, Drew O’Doherty – T.T. the Bear’s Place, Cambridge MA

This was an instance of perfection. Really.

I showed up with none other than my very own mother, straight from picking her up at the airport, and we sat at the bar during the first two singers (the first guy, Drew O’Doherty, sang a great rendition of the Clash’s “Straight to Hell”) and she drank tea and I drank Harpoon IPAs and how often does that happen?

Then for Rosie Thomas we went up to the stage and Rosie sang some absolutely beautiful songs (I hadn’t seen her in probably three years, and I definitely don’t remember her being as good as she currently appears to be) and I think the mom was genuinely enjoying herself.

And then Mr. Jurado came out, with a cellist I didn’t recognize and Eric Fisher on guitar/keyboards/drums, and that little trio is probably the best combo I’ve ever seen him play with. They were pretty much just flat-out fabulous. And I hardly even noticed that they did only four old songs (“Tragedy,” “Abilene,” “Lottery” and “Ohio”) – I don’t often really enjoy a show where the band plays 75% new songs from the yet-to-be-issued new record, but this was definitely an one of them. The new songs were just plain fuckin GREAT.

And the crowd! So good to be at a show where no one yells for old songs and no one sings along and everyone just shuts the fuck up and listens to a genius play his songs.