{"id":11541,"date":"2012-03-16T13:31:51","date_gmt":"2012-03-16T17:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/?p=11541"},"modified":"2012-03-16T14:52:01","modified_gmt":"2012-03-16T18:52:01","slug":"jesse-ruben-at-rockwood-music-hall-stage-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/16\/jesse-ruben-at-rockwood-music-hall-stage-2-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesse Ruben at Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jesse Ruben<\/a> headlined a set at Rockwood Music Hall<\/a> Stage 2 last night. It\u2019s been seven months since we\u2019ve seen Jesse perform. The last time was also at Stage 2, covered here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"JesseRubenGuitar\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The last show included a full band. Last night was (nearly) 100% solo. I was surprised, as Rockwood 2 tends to feature bigger sounds (many exceptions) and the one solo set that I saw of Jesse\u2019s was at Rockwood 1.<\/p>\n

Surprise aside, Jesse was great and the entire set was a joy to listen to. It\u2019s nice to know that I won\u2019t spend a second in the future thinking about whether to attend one of Jesse\u2019s shows based on whether he\u2019s solo or complemented by a band. \"Smile\"<\/p>\n

Jesse opened the show with a comment that reflected the sentiment that he tweeted earlier in the day:<\/p>\n

Jesse Ruben ? @jesseruben<\/a><\/p>\n

twitter makes me forget that there are in fact other things happening on earth besides sxsw.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Amen brother. When you follow as many musicians as I do, your timeline blows up<\/strong> during the week of SXSW. In fact, since I follow a bunch of tech people too, the problem is even larger.<\/p>\n

Jesse declared this set to be the Anti-SXSW<\/strong> show. Well, I would have accepted that, except that the single most important piece of information that I\u2019ve gleaned from the billions of SXSW tweets is that there are more beards<\/strong> in Austin at the moment than there are in all other cities in the world, combined.<\/p>\n

Jesse was sporting quite the beard himself last night. If he truly intended this to be the Anti-SXSW show, he should have shaved. \"Winking<\/p>\n

The point of telling you all that (aside from having an excuse to praise Jesse\u2019s beard) was to highlight Jesse\u2019s stage presence, something I\u2019ve written about glowingly twice before. He\u2019s warm, funny, quick, without overdoing any of it. It flows and works.<\/p>\n

So, I already told you that Jesse was great. In a few words, all of which are repetition from past posts, the reasons are:<\/p>\n