Damien Jurado

“Who the hell wants to hear about me?” Damien Jurado quips. “My life’s boring. If I write about me, what am I going to write about? I work at a preschool, I live in Shoreline—that’s not exciting.”

With Jurado, what you see is what you—unapologetically—get. But amidst a pop culture of junkies addicted to a diet of empty entertainment, this very lack of pretense makes Jurado’s music and delivery refreshingly straightforward. And though his story isn’t exactly a VH1 Behind the Music mini-series, it’s still worth being told—whether he thinks so or not.

I ?rst met Jurado at a party in 1991; we discovered an affnity for the same punk band. In the days before mass-produced mall punk, encountering someone belonging to your secret tribe was rare, and immediate kinships resulted. During our conversation, Jurado told me he was the vocalist for local hardcore band Human Struggle. He’d recently experienced a Christian conversion, but faith and punk rock mix about as well as oil and vinegar. Consequently, Human Struggle was short-lived. The next time we met he was in a new out?t, The Guilty, with David Bazan of future Pedro the Lion fame. The Guilty played a ferocious, pro-Christian, speed punk/thrash hybrid.

After meeting at a few Guilty shows, Jurado and I became roommates with seven other bachelors in a rundown old house almost directly under Interstate-5 and a stone’s throw away from the University of Washington campus. Our hovel was affectionately dubbed “The House-o-Funk”—not so much for our shared love of James Brown as the collective lack of housecleaning abilities and the odor emanating from its walls.

Nearly all the household members were incestuously involved in one another’s bands; rehearsals took place in the living room surrounded by a land?ll-like mess of ratty furniture, half-functional musical equipment and a ?oor littered with empty beverage containers. Finding local venues to host shows for unknown bands was di?cult, so we created our own scene. We’d invite our friends over—cramming 50-plus sweaty bodies into the living room—and convert the place into a club, cranking the amps and rocking out until entirely unreasonable hours of the morning.

The Guilty eventually changed its name to Coolidge, and shelved the fast-and-loud delivery for something more amiable. Before long, though, the band threw in the towel. During this time, Jurado dabbled with the house’s shared acoustic guitar and began developing into a proli?c songwriter. Shifting musical gears—from some of the most abrasive, tinnitus-inducing punk to quiet neo-folk—seemed effortless for him. Despite his somewhat amateurish guitar playing, he had an uncanny sense of melody. And even though his lyrical subjects were frequently silly, Jurado summoned such an emotional delivery that his songs took on an air of profundity.