Singer/songwriter Damien Jurado has been doing his solo folk act since the early 90's.  The opener Laura Gibson introduced him as she left saying that, "He will break your heart."  The tattooed musician got on stage and sat on a drum throne while he set up.  He never looked out or around and just suddenly started playing without warning.  The song was mellow and melancholic like most of his work.  After a couple others he played a new song that he wrote back stage at the beginning of the tour.  He still had good lyrics and presence in his voice, which often is what his songs are centered on instead of the music. 

I realized sometime in the beginning that Jurado's solo act was literally just him this time.  Nothing else was set up, so this would restrict the song choice, but it was going fine so far.  A few songs later Jurado reached one of his more distinctive songs, "Ohio", but the harmonica was missing.  The song was still one of the stand outs of the set.  After this, Jurado finally looked out at the crowd and said he was usually more talkative, but was short on time.  He went on to saying that he usually equated early shows with punk music, since that is what he did in his youth.  So because of this he was envisioning shaved heads, sweatshirts and Mohawks at The Casbah, but then he thought how did he get from those days to what he was playing now and blamed it on getting old.  Jurado then played one of his shorter songs.

The next song was "Abilene" which was another stand out song.  Jurado said before playing another song that this one was an example of the trouble he has all tour where he writes songs he cannot sing.  He said, "If I fuck this up, I'm sorry."  It was a pretty good one and nothing was F-ed up at all.  He played a song from his rockier "I Break Chairs" album that he described as the only one from the record that sounds okay without the band.  After finishing he said that it would be the most upbeat song of the night.  After one more sorrowful song he said he would play one more song and was serious, but added it would be an upbeat one.  He was true to his word and was done.  He held up fine by himself, but seeing him with a band before, I felt those who had not missed out on another aspect of this great musician.  A mixture of both would be best, but I am just thankful he came around again to the best venue in San Diego.