If this doesn’t make your heart feel joy, you might be dead inside

Joe Pug onstage with the Levon Helm Band and Elvis Costello, swapping jubilant verses on “The Weight” last week in Vancouver.

Joe’s face emanates the same pure, unfettered joy I see here. Go kid, go.

Justin Townes Earle and Joe Pug knocked my boots off last weekend

Today as I drove from Ohio to Indiana and pondered what a Hoosier actually was, I listened to two artists who seemed to embody those snowy midwestern hills and endless highway: Justin Townes Earle and Joe Pug. I paired their CDs together as homage to the fantastic concerts I saw last weekend in Denver: one at the Bluebird with the both of them, and then a house concert on Sunday night with just Joe Pug in a breathtakingly intimate living room setting in Boulder.

Relentlessly polite and wholeheartedly earnest, Justin Townes Earle seemed to have landed from another era completely, but his music rang true and struck directly. If I were casting a movie set in 1940s Atlanta, and I was looking for a counterweight to the golden guy that the girl is going to marry, a man who shows up perhaps selling hairbrushes or snake oil with a half smile and the promise of adventure – I’d cast JTE in a heartbeat. His lanky, super-slim frame draped with a classy suit just a fraction too short as he threw himself wholeheartedly into the performance of his songs. The cover art of his 2009 record Midnight At The Movies shows Justin sitting next to a gorgeous starlet in a movie theater, drenched in green light and a flickering glow, and in so many ways that is how his music feels.

Justin fully seems to somehow straddle the world of WWII America and the bluegrass hills and Appalachians, as well as the modern alt-country rock scene – even some intangible nod to the punk aesthetic. I wouldn’t mess with him, but I’d believe him and let him buy me a drink so he could tell me a story.

His music surely feels old-timey, all waltzing rhythms and “yes’m” tips of the lyrical hat, but seeing him live cemented for me that his earnestness makes all the difference in making this still feel like a vital, youthful genre. There is no shtick that I could detect. This is the style of music he makes, and he means it no less than Nirvana or Thao Nguyen or any other number of young folks in passionate bands.

Justin dedicated a bittersweet end-of-the-night rendition of “Midnight At The Movies” to Chris Feinstein (aka Space Wolf), bassist for Ryan Adam’s Cardinals who died unexpectedly at the age of 42 in December. They were apparently NYC neighbors. The slow-wheeling song was one of the sweetest things I’ve heard out in the night air in many months – it was a 3am slow dance, the bartender wiping the tables, the snow falling somewhere very far away from these warm walls. But then lest you forget his range of influences, he also covered both Buck Owens, the Carter Family, and The Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait” (with stand-up bass and fiddle), alongside his own well-crafted tunes.

There’s a part in movie Crazy Heart that I’m probably going to misquote, but when Jeff Bridges is picking at his guitar, writing a song, and he asks Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character if she knows the song, and she’s sure she already does. “The best songs are always the ones you think you’ve heard before,” he tells her – and that’s precisely how I felt the first time I heard this song:

Midnight At The Movies – Justin Townes Earle

Justin also recently recorded a Dolly Parton cover with Brooklyn artist Dawn Landes:

Do I Ever Cross Your Mind – Justin Townes Earle & Dawn Landes

While on-stage, Justin also referred to opener “Joe Fucking Pug” as having put out one of the best albums of the year (an assessment I can get behind), and even though I only caught half his set due to a persistent snowfall, Joe completely blew me away. Again. As always.

Pug is a songwriter of uncommon weight and heft, and rare purity and conviction. If you’ve gotten jaded as to the effect that a simple well-written song can have when howled and emoted from the main stage, under the dust particles swirling in the stage lights, just go see Joe Pug (or Josh Ritter, for that matter) and have those convictions washed off and set aright. His set was an unrelenting cavalcade of identification with so many of the sentiments he elucidates, using only the right number of words and devastating acumen.

Then, two nights later I got to see Joe Pug again, packed shoulder to shoulder with 45 other people, on the couch and in the kitchen and kneeling on the floor in the living room of a home modestly-sized for half that many friends at best. I feverishly noted the setlist, since I had the overwhelming feeling that I was witnessing the best show I might see this year. Maybe ever. Hard to say.

JOE PUG – HOUSE SHOW
Nation Of Heat
I Do My Father’s Drugs
Unsophisticated Heart
Hymn #35
Nobody’s Man
The Door Is Always Open
Speak Plainly Diana
Called By Many Names (unreleased song)
These Days
Sharpest Crown
Hymn #101

I’ve never been to a house concert before Backforty Presents made this one possible. I was startled by the intimacy, as I think many of us were. I am used to (and prefer) my shows small and earnest, but often with the artificial barrier between performer and audience hedged cleanly by the drop-off of the stage to the sticky floors below. As eager as I was, it felt almost too intimate at times, especially given the songs he performs – sharper at excising things from my heart than any scalpel. It would be akin to kissing a stranger at a loud, smoky nightclub or kissing them on a quiet Sunday morning at the sun-drenched kitchen table. In such close quarters, there is nowhere to hide.

Joe is amiable and has grown, even in the last year, to become a more confident performer (no doubt a byproduct of the sheer insane number of shows he’s played). But again, the intimacy of this show and the immense wall of camaraderie reverberating back to him seemed to also take him a bit by surprise. As the final note from opening song “A Nation Of Heat” died out into the suburban condo living room, the thunderous applause that rained down like a tidal wave might have even made his eyes shine with a bit of extra glossiness as he broke into a wide smile, if my perceptions were correct. And I felt the same way.

“Not So Sure” is a gem of a song from the new album, chronicling a gnawing disillusion, with ennui mushrooming in its lyrics. When Joe stood four feet from me, stared somewhere intensely at the back wall, into space, while he plucked the opening notes and launched into lines like: “I bummed expensive cigarettes, I wrote John Steinbeck’s books / I undressed someone’s daughter, and complained about her looks” – I was done for. Then it happened again and again with his songs piercing us all, peaking at the final “Hymn #101” in front of my nose. That is such an incredible song, I couldn’t believe I was seeing it in an environment like that.

Not So Sure – Joe Pug (from his new album Messenger)

Hymn #101 – Joe Pug (from his Nation of Heat EP)

After seeing Joe Pug (twice) and Justin Townes Earle in the same weekend, I woke up Monday morning feeling a radiant, warm glow tingling around me like an aura. Did that really happen? Do shows like that still occur, despite the jadedness of life?

It did, and they do.

[See all of my photos from the show on the Fuel/Friends Facebook fan page; house concert photo credit Todd Roeth]

there was nowhere I could keep it … it got hard

Well, Joe Pug just did it to me again. I’ve been feeling a little dessicated these last few days, and not much like writing about music (happens to the best of us). And then I heard this new song “Unsophisticated Heart” via my effervescent friend Kathleen’s music blog, and it is just everything I am feeling tonight. I love Joe for this simple honesty; for the incisive accuracy he has with the words he pens, and the ache in his voice as he sings them.

In the same resigned way that Jeff Tweedy’s voice has when it cracks on the line as he covers Radiohead, “If I could be who you wanted….,” Joe’s voice here is so unvarnished so you can see right through to the parts of him that are fragile. I imagine some would say that having an unsophisticated heart is a detriment, and downfall, a liability — and it certainly can feel like it sometimes. But by the time Joe reaches the end of this song, I don’t mind mine at all.

Unsophisticated Heart – Joe Pug

Take a walk on Sunday, it ain’t that hard
take a walk on Sunday, it ain’t that hard

If my thoughts are hard to gather
if I don’t know where to start
it ain’t my mind that matters
for I have an unsophisticated heart

Tried to trust a stranger, it got hard
you know I tried to trust a stranger
it got hard

Now I see things like a soldier
and I’m jealous of the dark
but if my eyes have only gotten colder
I still have an unsophisticated heart

Oh my eyes will hardened, my voice will be guarded
my mind so bewildered and buried in the garden
you may still know me by just one part

I tried to keep your secret, it got hard
There was nowhere I could keep it
it got hard

And there’s one thing that’s for certain
when they come with their dogs and their guards
I can hide behind the thinnest curtains
for I have an unsophisticated heart
for I have
for I….

Joe Pug’s first proper full-length album (after slaying me with two previous EPs) is finally out on February 16th and will be called Messenger.

In the weeks surrounding the album release, Joe is on tour with Justin Townes Earle (for reals) and they come to Denver on my half-birthday February 19th. Yes, we celebrate things like that ’round here, and that show will be a fine way to commemorate another half-year gone.

Fuel/Friends favorite things of 2009

Speaking of snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, I worked my last December day of the year on Friday, and now am settling into two luscious weeks of time off over the holidays (one of the hidden benefits of working in academia!). Before the college closed, I went to the radio studio on one of the snowiest and coldest days of the year and recorded my third year-end appearance on NPR’s World Cafe with David Dye. We chatted about some of my favorite albums from this year, and you can listen on Friday January 1st, at 2pm/ET on the radio or 3pm/ET on the XPN website — or stream the archived show through the NPR site shortly after it airs. Whee!

Now in the waning countdown before Christmas, as we open our advent calendars and go on walks to look at the lights, I revel in concentrated time to do things I enjoy — like talk to you all about some of my favorites things in 2009, this last year of the decade.

FUEL/FRIENDS FAVORITE THINGS IN 2009: TEN ALBUMS

THE XX, XX

Hands down, this is my favorite album of the year. They’re barely twenty, but The xx have created a stunningly complete, addictively good album. I cannot get enough of this London band, formed around the female/male pair of Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim — best friends from school since they were age three. Their self-titled debut album fuses sparse, effortlessly cool beats and a new-wave sensibility, with thoroughly delicious male/female vocals that play off of each other like the best doo-wop or soul duets. Their playful back-and-forth chemistry (oddly) reminds me of an analgesic, blissed-out Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, in the perfection of the duet. Romy’s voice is very malleable, an immensely flirtatious alto, and in every place, Oliver’s is the perfect counterweight back.

Recorded largely in a garage at the XL studios, over the course of many nights and in the wee small hours of the morning, the album is meticulous and quiet, but it also laden with space and echoes that get under my skin. It is an unabashedly sexy album, full of insinuating bass-lines that propel the songs forward, and clever bits of minimalistic drum machine or coy xylophone melodies. Everyone that I play this for, even if it’s on in the background, instantly wants to know who it is. I think it would be near impossible to not be drawn into this album. It’s like a sticky spiderweb.

Basic Space – The xx

MUMFORD & SONS, Sigh No More

I first heard this indie-bluegrass folk band from London while prepping for SXSW early in 2009. The friend who sent me the link knows of (and is largely responsible for) my love for The Avett Brothers, and here in the music of Mumford & Sons I found the wrenching honesty of Frightened Rabbit blended with the banjo-plucking soul and brotherly harmonies of the Avetts. I was completely sold from the very first listen, and I have listened to this album more than almost anything else this year. Sigh No More is out in the UK now, coming to the US on Glassnote Records in early 2010.

This young band makes honest, compelling music that veers towards triumphant even as they chronicle the litany of life’s difficulties. It’s epic and substantial music, loaded to overflowing with truth that crawls under my skin with its vulnerability. And perhaps it’s the multiple voices rising together of all the band members, but there is a distinct feeling of kinship here, almost like a gospel choir or a Greek chorus, a community vibe that lends some sort of strength through such raw lyrical content. As one who often mulls over issues larger than I can get my head around, I appreciated this year how folks like David Bazan, Mountain Goats, J Tillman, and Mumford and Sons all truthfully explored matters of God and grace and falling and seeking in their music. Mumford and Sons are intensely wise in their lyrics, seeming to bely a personal understanding of God’s grace to a broken world, but also an intense, brutal struggle. As I wrote to a friend, “I love how they sing both about grace and the Maker’s plan, but also bald-facedly sing, ‘I really fucked it up this time.’”

The Cave – Mumford & Sons

FANFARLO, Reservoir

Fanfarlo exploded this year from Sweden and the UK, with a shimmering, hard-driving, gorgeously colored album. There’s so much brilliant light in their songs that they’re almost like the anti-xx to my ears this year. I first fell in love with their song (and video) for “Harold T. Wilkins” right before SXSW this year, and then was sucked into their debut album deeply and irrevocably. It is rich, primal, earnest, and effervescent. Although I was first enticed by the thumping drums and the cathartic yell-along lines, they use a hugely expressive palette of instruments — heavy on the shiny trumpets, the dazzling saws, mandolins and accordion.

Lead singer Simon Balthazar has a distinctive voice that’s absolutely evocative of a young David Byrne; all swoops and vibrato, but powerful and clear. The songs often feature time-signature shifts and a loosely-corralled sense of musical primal anarchy that reminds me of Arcade Fire at times, but with a greater effervescence (like a sheer wash of fluorescent color dripping down). It is a stupendous album, first song to last.

Harold T Wilkins, Or How To Wait For A Very Long Time – Fanfarlo

HANDSOME FURS, Face Control

Several albums I loved this year fused fascinating, seemingly disparate sounds together to make new amalgamations of awesomeness. Handsome Furs come from Canada via Seattle’s famed Sub Pop label, and have a very simple formula behind this fantastic album: raggedly anthemic electric guitar and howlingly visceral vocals (from Wolf Parade’s Dan Boeckner) with sexy-as-hell electronic drum machine beats (from the whipsmart bombshell Alexei Perry).

Face Control is unrelenting, often veering from effortless cool to earnest anthems in the same song – laced through with a seething mutual lust between these married two that melts the paint off the walls. The album radiates an icy Eastern-European aesthetic that the duo talked fascinatingly about when we chatted in July. I was hooked from the first time I popped the promo CD into my car stereo player on a roadtrip earlier this year, the yellow lines on the highway flying past to their immense beats. And to watch these two create their music live together at the Larimer Lounge (see: Favorite Shows This Year) was scorching, and somehow even more fantastic than this supernova of an album. It all sounds good to these ears.

Talking Hotel Arbat Blues – Handsome Furs

ROMAN CANDLE, Oh Tall Tree In The Ear

I like the way the world looks through a Roman Candle album. You stop to listen to the birds and frogs and cicadas, and see the beauty in every streetlight and every moth, and notice the millions of stars. Oh Tall Tree In The Ear is a fine bluesy Americana album full of richly literate lyrics that keep giving to me, even as I’ve listened to this album dozens of times. It’s hard to think back now in this cold winter weather, but not too long ago this was my soundtrack for the entire sticky warm months of July and August, driving around with my windows down and this sweetly unaffected album playing on my car stereo. It ranges from upbeat, windows-down tunes like this one (which I think channels some Mick Jagger) to slow, easygoing slow-dancing-on-the-back-porch tunes.

Although living in Nashville now, Roman Candle has roots that go back more than a decade in the Chapel Hills, North Carolina area, and those roots intertwine with folks I love like Ryan Adams and Caitlin Cary, which is what made me initially take a listen. I was summarily knocked off my hammock this summer by this thoughtfully-crafted little album, and its real attention to detail. You can listen to the lyrics like they’re poems. The title of the album is taken from a Rilke sonnet, and many songs are woven much more densely with subtle wisdom than you might pick up on first listen through. There’s a mature wisdom in the lyrics about love, attempting to balance growing up and growing old with someone, and that desire to go off and see Rome and watch the river go by, or hearing a song on a radio that makes you want to hop a train. As easygoing as it feels on initial listens, it keeps yielding up new rich appreciations every time I listen to it.

Eden Was A Garden – Roman Candle

LANGHORNE SLIM, Be Set Free

Langhorne Slim takes his first name from the rolling farmland town in Pennsylvania, and he makes a delightfully anachronistic blend of music that seems half a step outside of our time. Yet he’s got a youthful passion that I very much relate to, the same stuff I hear in any of the young rock bands I love. Langhorne’s not even thirty yet, but a lot of his songs seem to capture this weight of another generation. There’s a ramshackle, loosely-hinged folk glory on Be Set Free, with threads of everything from soul-stirring gospel to old brokedown blues in his music. It’s all held together with his vulnerable, emotive tenor that’s reminiscent sometimes of Cat Stevens, but with the ragged folksy storytelling chops of the sixties folk troubadour generation. There’s also a larger cinematic quality on this release, where Slim tries broad additions to the recorded sound, whether it’s a horn section or a rootsy group of folks stomping along to his songs (and even a vocal duet cameo from Erika Wennerstrom of Heartless Bastards).

Langhorne is a very charming, earnest man, and this past September as we shared his bottle of wine in the old-fashioned Boulderado Hotel, one thing he said that stuck with me was how all the songs he writes are love songs. On this, his third album, those loves can take so many forms — from bidding farewell on heartbreaking songs like “I Love You But Goodbye,” to the convincing swagger of “Say Yes,” to one of my favorite lines of the whole year here on this song: “You can have my television, long as I got lips for kissin’ you, nobody but you…” over that huge shiny Wurlitzer explosion and the gospel handclaps. I’m a total goner.

Boots Boy – Langhorne Slim

LISA HANNIGAN, Sea Sew

I first fell in love with Lisa Hannigan’s haunting voice when she contributed mournful duets throughout fellow Irishman Damien Rice’s debut album “O” in 2003 – I think she infused an immensely gorgeous, heartbreaking weight to songs like “The Blower’s Daughter.” So after the two parted ways a few years back, I’ve been waiting for this album of her solo material and it was completely worth the wait.

There’s an unvarnished air of clean-scrubbed honesty and clever inquiry on Sea Sew. I got to see Lisa play an acoustic set the day after Halloween, at a Denver bookstore in the middle of the afternoon, where she captivated everyone effortlessly. In addition to playing really every instrument I could think possible in the live setting (most of which I don’t know names for) she manages to blend whimsy and beauty without being silly, which is very difficult to do. There’s a charming imagination in her songs, a pristine and heartbreaking depth to her voice, and an incisive emotional honesty to this album that kills me.

I Don’t Know – Lisa Hannigan

KAREN O AND THE KIDS, Where The Wild Things Are Soundtrack

It’s a daunting task to take a beloved children’s book, especially one with only a few dozen pages, and make it into a full-length movie that both kiddos and adults can enjoy. It’s even harder to make a soundtrack that fuses all those primal, wonderful sentiments that course hot through Spike Jonze’s vision in the film, and capture the innocence of youth without sounding child-like. I dislike most kid’s music (no Raffi, no); it’s why my little guy likes things like Wilco and the Avett Brothers. Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and her band The Kids, have made an album we both loved wholeheartedly from the first enchanting singsong melody, which both of us have been humming around the house for months.

This is also a completely palatable album for those who never get near the small people, but who still connect with some of the urgency and imagination of youth. The earliest previews of this film featured a more wild, acoustic version of the Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up,” with the lyrics about “our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up.” Perhaps their early involvement in my initial impression are why mentally I get a very similar and marvelous sense from this album, in a year where I also finally truly got into Arcade Fire (!!). This soundtrack takes us to another place, “through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost a year to where the wild things are.”

Building All Is Love – Karen O And The Kids

MAYER HAWTHORNE – A Strange Arrangement

One of my students interned for a semester at the stellar Numero Group in Chicago this past Spring, they of the Eccentric Soul series and countless badass reissues from the lost vaults of cool. For a fresh-faced twenty year-old, Ben has formidable musical tastes, so when he told me to listen to Detroit whippersnapper Mayer Hawthorne, I took his advice immediately.

Mayer Hawthorne is only in his late twenties, and comes from a background of hip-hop/DJing, and despite a lifelong affinity for the sounds coming out of his dad’s old car stereo, he only started making this throwback doo-wop soul stuff just as a joke. Even the label heads couldn’t believe this was new material (not decades old) when Mayer first played his demos for them — even more amazing since he plays all the instruments, and recorded his swell songs on A Strange Arrangement at home in his bedroom. His music feels fresh and deliciously enjoyable – makes you wanna put on your good Sunday slacks and a healthy daub of Brylcreem and come buy me a mint julep.

Your Easy Lovin’ Ain’t Pleasin’ Nothin’ – Mayer Hawthorne

DARK WAS THE NIGHT – compilation album

It’s hard to cohesively talk about this double-disc compilation album, curated by The National’s Dessner brothers to raise funds and awareness for HIV/AIDS. The range of Dark Was The Night is so vast and all so beautiful, so achingly perfect in the variation. The overall mood in the 31 tracks (from a stunning variety of most of my favorite musicians) is mostly melancholy – although there are a few bright shiny spots from folks like Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings.

But from Antony covering Bob Dylan (and breaking my heart), to the duet with Conor Oberst and Gillian Welch that still sounds the closest to perfection that you can imagine –not to mention contributions from Bon Iver, Cat Power, The National, Grizzly Bear, Feist and Jose Gonzalez– this album is oozing with more flashes of talent than many albums this decade. So many things to love here, no wonder Dark Was The Night has already raised over $700,000 for HIV/AIDS. Beautiful.

So Far Around The Bend – The National

2008 ALBUMS I SNOOZED ON
I didn’t really hear these until 2009, but they sure as heck would have been in the running for my tops list.
- BLIND PILOT, Three Rounds And A Sound (sublime warmth)
- THAO, We Brave Bee Stings And All (sharp and smart and catchy)
- TALLEST MAN ON EARTH, Shallow Grave (newish discovery; I’m addicted)
- ANTHONY DA COSTA & ABBY GARDNER, Bad Nights / Better Days (oh man)

FIVE SINGLE TRACKS I’VE PROBABLY LISTENED TO MOST THIS YEAR
Song Away – Hockey (hot dang)
When You Walk In The Room – Fyfe Dangerfield (I want you endlessly)
My Body’s a Zombie For You – Dead Man’s Bones (whoa-ohhh)
July 4, 2004 – Jason Anderson (I am, I am, and I love this part)
Quiet Dog Bite Hard – Mos Def (there it go like simple and plainness)

FAVORITE COVER
Los Angeles’ Local Natives covering Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia” in a backyard, banging on trees with sticks. This is pure joy, and helped turn me on to their marvelous sound. They’ve released Gorilla Manor on Rough Trade in the UK, but it won’t be out in the U.S. until 2010 (on Frenchkiss Records). I have high hopes for this album next year, once I get some time to sit with it.

Cecilia (Simon & Garfunkel cover) – Local Natives

FAVORITE SHOW:
Mumford & Sons at SXSW.

I wrote this of their set in the open-air Spring humidity of Texas: Theirs was one of my most anticipated shows and Mumford & Sons didn’t disappoint. They opened with that new song “Sigh No More” that I posted last week and it absolutely slayed me. The chorus sings of “love that will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free — be more like the man you were made to be.” I felt more like me, only better, when their set spun off at full tilt. Jawdroppingly pure.

RUNNERS UP/FAVORITE SHOWS:
- Okkervil River at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco (specifically the last song, “Unless It’s Kicks”)
- Handsome Furs at the Larimer Lounge in Denver
- Bat For Lashes at Outside Lands in San Francisco (with Josh Groban standing nearby, oddly enough)
- Denver collective Everything Absent or Distorted singing their final song together as a band, “A Form to accommodate the mess,” and hugging when it is over, representing everything that is right and good in the Denver music scene – and in the world of music in general.
- Finally seeing Lucero play “I Can Get Us Out Of Here Tonight” live, and being baptized into that cult.
- The Big Pink melting all of our faces off at the Larimer, a sonic wall of wonderful sound.

FAVORITE MUSIC-RELATED FIELD TRIP

Luckenbach, Texas (ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain)

FAVORITE NEW MODEL OF MUSIC DISTRIBUTION

The Dust Jacket Project

FAVORITE INTERVIEW

Joe Pug and I sitting on a Boulder park bench on a quiet summer evening, talking about the burden of the artist, the art of songcraft, and the places where youth and hopefulness intersect. Joe’s had a great year, and I still feel like he could maybe become a key songwriter of our generation. Talking to him felt eerily prescient, like being in the fledgling presence of someone who knows where he is going.

Hymn #101 – Joe Pug

And finally….. FAVORITE USAGE OF AN MC HAMMER SONG
- This.

That about wraps it up for me this year. Bring it, 2010.

We promised too much and gave it too soon (Joe Pug interview)

Last month, I sat down with the marvelous Joe Pug (previous post here) on a park bench in Boulder, and we talked about life while the twilight got deeper.

Joe said things like this:

“I think what a lot of people don’t necessarily realize… I mean, there’s no question that as you get older you get wiser. I’m not wiser than anybody else. But I think with youth there’s a certain greater willingness to say these things I say in my songs, whereas when you get older, you’ve experienced so much and you’ve seen so many contradictions in your life that you rightfully are hesitant to say anything out loud because you’ve seen everything proved wrong, at least once, you know what I mean?

In youth, you can make broader declarations, but also at the same time – there was one artist who said, “The entire job of the artist is to not get beat down by the meanness of the world.”

And I’m not talking about hope, or hopefulness. Art can be about that, but doesn’t necessarily have to be about that. It does have to do with believing things, though, whatever those things are. Whether they are the bleakest thoughts on the face of the earth or the most hopeful, you have to believe in them. And even if it’s temporary – even if you just believe them for those five minutes when you wrote the song, or if you’ve believed it since you were three years old until you pass on. So maybe it’s easier to believe in things when you’re younger.”

Joe makes me believe in things. He has a free EP of new music available, and please go read the rest of my interview with Joe over here. Joe plays Denver’s Mile High Music Festival Sunday July 19th at noon.

VIDEO: Hymn #101, live in Boulder
VIDEO: Ol’ 55 (Tom Waits cover), live in Boulder

i’ve come to test the timbre of my heart

I cannot get this song or this artist out of my head. Joe Pug is a young man from Chicago, with a mop of curly hair and songwriting that injects fire and ache into my veins.

Hymn #101 – Joe Pug

His whole name is only six letters, pops off the tongue quickly. This 24-year-old carpenter crafts folk songs steeped in stories that stop me in my tracks, and laden with lyrics that feel weightier than your standard fare: “The more I buy the more I’m bought, and the more I’m bought, the less I cost.”

Pug cites a love of stark authors like Whitman and Steinbeck, and that rugged depth cracks out of his music as well.

I want to listen to his Nation Of Heat EP over and over, because I keep getting something new out of it each time I listen.

UPDATE: My interview with Joe Pug is here.

Also check out his videos on My Old Kentucky Blog’s rad Laundromatinee project. Pug plans to release his debut full length record in 2009.

JOE PUG TOUR DATES
* with M Ward
# with Horse Feathers

Apr 18 – Hope College Holland, Michigan
Apr 27 – The Phoenix Toronto *
Apr 28 – Le National Montreal *
Apr 29 – 7th Street Entry Minneapolis, MN #
Apr 30 – Univ of Madison, Der Rathskeller Madison, WI #
May 1 – Schubas Tavern Chicago, IL#
May 2 – Schubas Tavern Chicago, IL#
May 3 – Canopy Club Champaign, IL#
May 4 – Rumba Cafe Columbus, OH#
May 5 – Mohawk Buffalo, NY #
May 6 – Bug Jar Rochester, NY #
May 7 – TT’s Boston, MA#
May 9 – The Bellhouse Brooklyn, NY #
May 12 – Joe’s Pub New York, NY #
May 13 – World Cafe Live Upstairs Philadelphia, PA #
May 14 – The Black Cat Washington DC #
May 15 – Local 506 Chapel Hill, NC #
May 16 – Drunken Unicorn Atlanta, GA #
May 17 – The Basement Nashville, TN #
May 19 – The Bottleneck Lawrence, KS #
May 20 – Bluebird Denver, CO #
May 21 – B-Side Lounge Boulder, CO #
May 23 – Summer Camp Festival Chillicothe, IL
Jun 13 – Bonnaroo Manchester, TN
Jul 4 – Bukta Tromso Open Air Festival, Norway Tromso
Jul 9-12 – Winnipeg Folk Festival Winnipeg, Manitoba
Jul 14-15 – Cisco Ottawa Blues Festival Ottawa, Ontario
Jul 18 – Mile High Music Festival Denver, CO
Jul 25 – 10,000 Lakes Festival Detroit Lakes, MN
Aug 1 – Pickathon Portland, OR

[photo from SXSW by Lizz Kannenberg]