Joseph Arthur

M and I have seen Joseph Arthur five times when he's come here in concert.  The first concert M and I went to (while dating) was Joseph Arthur on November 17, 2004. (Hey, I'm a girl and I'm good with dates.)  It was a very romantic night and Joseph Arthur is a special artist to us both.  When we found out he was coming in concert recently, we thought about going and decided that despite how good he is and how much we enjoy him, we decided to save the $20 ticket price and forgo seeing him this time around but it turns out that we did end up seeing him and we didn't have a pay a penny to see him.  M won an online contest which scored him two tickets to the show and so on Saturday, November 20th, almost exactly seven years since we had first seen him, we saw him again for our sixth time.

The show was at the Varsity Theater and while I just told you about the AWOLNATION show there and how they wrecked the theater and lights and sound, it wasn't true.  It was true for that show but this show was different.  The theater was back to its old self that I'm used to and the sound was just as I remembered.  There were tables on the main floor and we were lucky enough to share one pretty close to the stage with a couple of girls.  We also ran into one of our friends, Joey and his partner Chris, which was an added bonus.  Both of them love music as much as we do so it's always fun to sit and talk music that isn't stuff you necessarily hear on the radio, music websites and upcoming shows.

Michael, Chris, Joey, Me

Joseph played a lot of songs from his new album but mixed in some old ones too and he played for about 2.5 hours. He is truly an artist of all sorts. He paints while he sings and also did some spoken word.  He brought his main Minneapolis buddy, Kraig Jerret Johnson (Guitarist for The Lonely Astronauts, Jayhawks, Golden Smog and Run Westy Run) to the stage to help him with a few songs as he's done a few times in the past. After the show, a girl came up to Joseph and asked him if she could buy the painting he did while on stage for $500.  They hemmed and hawed for awhile as they said he could get $2-3K for that painting if they bring it back to his gallery but apparently it's a pain to carry them on the road with them so I'm unsure if they accepted her offer or not.  I looked on his art website and he had a 10' x 6 ' painting going for $20K.

Finally, if you want to do me a big favor today, listen to the song below.  It's on his new album and it's such a beautiful song.  If you can't tolerate the song, at least listen to until the 2 minute mark.  Thank you and have a nice day.