jurado

Photo courtesy Cary Norton

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine implored me to listen to Damien Jurado‘s music. She told me at the time that it was some of her favorite stuff and if I remember correctly, she even played on an album or two of his (am I remembering this right, Miranda?).  Well, I checked it out a couple of years ago and thought it was ok, but not overwhelming. For some reason, I went back to it over the last month or two and……wow. What the hell was I thinking back then?

Jurado is a Texas-based musician who rides a few different genre buses, but for the most part is a singer-songriter who mainly plays solo or two-piece acoustic music – but also will occasionally trot out the full band to great effect. Each is equally compelling. Often times the music is a little dark, but again, there’s enough there to satisfy you if the dark/brooding stuff doesn’t work for you. Exhibit A: the song Gillian Was A Horse:

Click play button to play:

[audio:horse.mp3]

If you do like the bluesy, darker stuff, there’s plenty for you to chew on as well. Given he’s a small budget artist, I didn’t think I could find any professionally produced music videos, but I was pleasantly surprised to find one for “Caskets,” which is on his latest album. I’ll post that here too. Between the song sample above and the video below, you’ll get a good sense of who this guy is. I’m going to make sure I try to see him next time he comes around. Just another example of the thousands of artists out there that are at least 100x better than whatever crap they’re playing on the radio these days. This stuff is real. Enjoy.