Joe Pug: Schubas, Friday 5/2

Friday night the little wife and I were lucky to win 2 tickets to hear Joe Pug (with Horsefeathers opening!) at Schubas. It was a great show in many, many ways. One particularly wonderful thing about it is that you all can hear it for yourselves. A guy standing right next to me with a big pole caught the whole thing on mic and uploaded it to Internet Archive which has an excellent open source audio section. So, Justin, whoever you are, thanks! And I have to say, the quality is really awesome as well. I usually don’t fuss around listening to live audio, it bugs the shit out of me to hear all that clapping and bad sound quality of most live recordings. But this concert recording is top-notch. Go hear it here.

This was my favorite song of the night,Hymn #35, although there were many that were full of emotion and humor and wit and sadness. Joe is a gifted songwriter, a true folk artist with a talent for summing up the meanings of life events in words that you wished you had thought of and then doing what you couldn’t even imagine — putting it to music. The crowd loved this man, you knew right off that this was his home turf. And if you listen to that concert til the end, you’ll hear the crack in his voice as he thanks us for coming out that night. Performer and audience embraced that night in a warm, tight hold…. we can’t wait until he comes back home.

Go buy Joe Pug’s album, Nation of Heat

Here’s the setlist: (from the Internet Archive source)

01 How Good You Are
02 Hymn 35
03 I Do My Father’s Drugs
04 Banter
05 Call It What You Will
06 Lonely Heart
07 First Time I Saw You
08 She’s A Messenger
09 The Door Was Always Open
10 Nobody’s Man
11 Speak Plainly Diana
12 Tuning
13 Not So Sure
14 Hymn #101
15 Bury Me Far>Nation Of Heat
16 Ol’ 55 (Tom Waits)

You will also notice in this recording that the crowd at Schubas (which is a top notch place to see an intimate show) was ridiculously loud and chatty not only between songs but throughout! We moved three times to avoid two women who just. would. not. shut. up. People! If you’re going out to a gig, please consider that the music is not on tape and being displayed on a screen for your listening pleasure. It’s live. The performer can hear you jabbering to your friend about gawd-knows-what, and so can everyone around you who wants to enjoy the music. Shut up already.

Don’t let that keep you from enjoying this wonderful recording of Joe Pug. I actually heard more of it from Justin’s recording than I did at the show. That’s saying something.

Horsefeathers were beautiful, and I mean beautiful to listen to. Justin Ringle’s vocals are crushingly good, piercing your soul. And Nathan Crockett amazed me on violin and saw (!) with his concentration, grace, and angelic voice. Catherine O’ Dell’s cello made me ache and was just the perfect accompaniment to the whole sound of what Horsefeathers is. And of course there’s the banjo and mandolin and such played by Sam Cooper, which only made me so sad because  his skill reminded me of Meursault and the fact that I’ll never get to see them play,  it seems! But Horsefeathers (being a totally different kind of band, mind you) eased my pain that night with their melodies and their particular form of folk music, in it’s tingly, plucky, exquitiste joy.

The mp3 file here is exactly the same as the flac file found for free download on the Internet Archive, only converted to mp3 format. If that bothers you, and you happen to be the copyright owner of that music, please just email me, thanks.