st. louis: jarrod gorbel (of the honorary title)

i'm somewhat of a newbie to the whole realm that is the honorary title and jarrod gorbel, but that doesn't lessen the intensity of my love affair. when my friend matt suggests music to me, i take it to heart because our tastes are one and the same. so when he suggested a plethora of "titles" to me, (working and honorary respectively) i immediately hopped on to itunes and dropped a couple bucks. and was it worth it? you betcha. i have yet to be let down by any of his suggestions. much to dismay though, a mere two weeks after i purchased two honorary title albums, the band broke up. just my luck.

luckily though, i troll venue websites like a psycho and discovered jarrod would be heading out on a bit of a solo tour. so i bought his ep, bought a ticket to the show in st. louis, and that was that. i later blogged about my excitement for said show, to which my friend raul immediately texted me about asking "where is jarrod gorbel playing?!?!"  so after a brief exchange of conversation, we had an entire weekend trip to st. louis planned.

raul and i were two of four people in attendance when the doors opened and i couldn't believe it. i have a habit of thinking that the bands i like are bigger and more popular than they actually are, but this was just ridiculous! people eventually showed up though, and i'd say there was a crowd of about twenty or thirty by show time. nice and intimate, just the way i like it. especially because of the fact that it was just jarrod and his guitar, nothing more. and HOT DAMN does this man have a voice. i was absolutely floored by every song. musical and vocal perfection. literally. not a single mistake, not a single waver, absolutely nothing. it was gorgeous and it was breathtaking. his stage banter was pee-in-your-pants hysterical too. he had some real gems that i wish i could remember. he compared his newer songs to the birthing process... i'll spare you the details because it was disgusting. but he had the whole lot of us cracking up and i think i wiped a few tears from my eyes from laughing so hard. during the very last song, he unplugges his acoustic, came out in front of the monitors and sang completely unplugged to the small group of us gathered around. it was goosebump-inducing. raul came away with the set list, i bought a t-shirt, and we were headed back to columbia. great weekend.

setlist (taken straight from the paper -- decipher how you like):

snow crunk
optimism
thin
far
EXTRA
I'll do gtar

(Rulng?)
(Stuck?)

stay
FRAME
INDIFFERENCE
HOW-LONG
10 yrs
ONLY
CATS

check out jarrod's tweets here.
and his myspace here.
and his fantastic daytrotter session here.
and the honorary title daytrotter session here.

FREE music! go get it!