Seattle’s Damien Jurado drew a healthy crowd for a dose of expansive, classic rock. His high, sweet voice soared gracefully over shimmering organ and unexpected iPad accompaniment. He appeared to show admirable restraint by not milking any local feeling in his eloquent, Washington-name-checking ‘Working Titles,’ but that lack of crowd interaction was to sour the end of the set. As the performance went on, sections of the crowd (myself included) were surprised as his high, keening falsetto gave way to gravel-voiced rock heroics from a most unlikely Jim Morrison wannabe. But they were even more surprised when the set simply stopped and the band left the stage.
And, while the vagaries of festival timings might be beyond Jurado’s control, trying to explain to or even communicate with the audience isn’t. ‘Are you fucking kidding?’ was the response one particularly aggrieved female listener insisted I note down.
*UPDATE* As you can see in the comments below, Damien Jurado kindly explained the sitch:
“the set time being so short, was beyond our control. we were originally given 40 min. however, due to other bands before us going longer and careless sound engineers, we had a half hour to play our set. i wish it could have been longer. on a side note: i interacted as much as time would allow. beyond, “thank you for coming out”, and “how is everyone doing” there wasn’t time for much of anything else, than to play. .. what the fuck indeed.” – Damien Jurado
Note From the Editor:
This is a HUGE problem at festivals and maybe something for another post, but how can we stop this? When other bands run over their time allotment or show up late, the next band gets jipped. And the next. And the next. What the eff?
Any ideas on how to deal with this? Or if you work in festival (or venue) production, tell me what I’m not getting!
