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Me and Pete

I went to an in-store performance by Pete Yorn at Ollson’s in Dupont Circle a few weeks back. Pete was on a summer acoustic tour in support of his recently released album, Nightcrawler, and was doing in-stores alongside with the actual gigs. The event started at 7; I got there about 15 after - in time to catch the last 3 songs of his 6 song set. I was present for some new song, Strange Condition from Musicforthemorningafter, and a cover of Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind. Pete put on an entertaining show– he’s got a great voice and it looked like he was actually happy to be there. It was cool that he was basically there by himself and didn’t have a crew present save for his cousin who was chronicling the tour with a DV cam. A cool feature of the in-store was receipt of an EP, Westerns, with advance-purchase of the CD. Pete took about 10 minutes after his performance to chill and then came back out to do a meet and greet. I was close to the end of the line of about 60 people and for that reason I received a sweet Nightcrawler poster, which I later got signed along with my EP. I was a little nervous as my turn in line approached, not knowing what I would say besides “hey.” I knew Pete was in Portland the week prior as I was too, so I brought that up and we talked about the city for a bit. As for the EP, it’s solid and left me eagerly awaiting the release of Nightcrawler, which I haven’t picked up yet cause I’ve convinced myself it such a pain to get to Dupont. The tracks on Westerns have solid melodies and as the title of the EP indicates, are also very folky/country/bluesy. I’ve been waiting a while for another Pete Yorn record as his sophomore effort, Day I Forgot, was a major disappointment to me as compared to his first release, MFTMA. I think Pete concentrated a little too hard on song-writing on DIF, leaving the album pretty bland musically.