I walked in to the dimly lit church as Jubilee tapped out the rhythm of her last a cappella song on her knee. Her voice quivered as she sang a line about her little brother’s dinosaur shorts. I stood in the back and fixed a stare to the square frames of her glasses. I flashed a smile and waved to a few friends who I heard say my name. The metal chair she was sitting in and the wood floor beneath her were singing with her, the crowd’s silence was singing too. The song couldn’t have lasted more than a minute or two, but time stretched from wall to wall. I got a few hugs from people I hadn’t seen in a while between Jubilee’s set and Matt Pless. Matt, a dude I’d met a few times, was really on his game that night. The wild-eyed, curly-haired Yale grad is about as close as anybody could hope to come nowadays to 1965-66 Dylan. The amphetamine-fueled, powder- powered “Crayon Song,” railed the audience into a world of colorful melancholy. Think “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” but shorter and catchier. I wish I remembered more names of songs he played that night, they all bled into each other; he strummed and sang with an intimate rasp. There was one about the Grand Canyon I really liked and some stories he told throughout the set that I enjoyed. He has a record with a full band coming out in April. I hope nobody cuts the cords to the amplifiers. Matt’s one of those people, like Bob Dylan, whose pulsing electric dreamscapes can’t always be contained in the strings of an acoustic guitar, I’m interested to see where he goes next.

Ryan Harvey played after Matt. This felt like the millionth time I’ve seen Ryan play, but whether he’s in a church, a living room, or a bar, he always makes his work feel new. Shouting “Fuck yeah,” to his update of Woody Guthrie’s “Tear The Fascists Down,” called “Our Friends Are Gonna Crush The Golden Dawn,” is the most fun I’ve had being part of an audience that’s being used as a public choir. I’m waiting for the day that he gets famous enough for some conspiracy nut to make a YouTube video claiming that he’s really Ryan Gosling in disguise. All jokes aside, Ryan is one of the most earnest performers I know. The suburban-born son of Aus-Rotten and Phil Ochs is one of the only people whose songs can consistently bring me to tears. “Eucalyptus,” which he wrote for Mark Gunnery, is one such tearjerker. He explained when he played it that night that he based it off of a song that Mark wrote about missing friends on the East Coast when they moved to Oakland together. Ryan moved back and wrote his version. I didn’t know anyone could pluck such sentimentality from six strings.

I talked to my new friend Becky for most of Douglas Fur’s set. Doug picks a mean banjo, he had kids square dancing and stomping their feet in the middle of the set. Becky and I kept talking through all that. That’s one of the funny things about having heart-to-hearts with a kid you met at a show, your conversations and interactions become part of the music. That and the conversation I had in the car with my new friend Shannon on the way there felt damn-near serendipitous. Catching up with my old friends Isaac, Allison, Anya, and Dharna was pretty awesome too. I don’t think there’s anything better than celebrating the audience at a show as much as the bands. Maybe one day I’ll be able to write about what we said to each other.

Pat the Bunny played last. For me, his set was bookended by sweaty hugs from him. It was great to see him back in the same spot after about a year and a half. Shouting the line “Forgiveness from those that we hurt in this world never was guaranteed,” with a new friend holding my right hand, an old friend holding my left, and tears smearing my foundation as they rolled down my cheeks was the most liberated I’d felt in weeks. He also played “Vampires Are Posers,” from Live the Dream/Die the Nightmare live for the first time. Some kid shouted out a request for an old Johnny Hobo song, but Pat politely said he didn’t want to play those songs anymore. If he comes to your town and you want him to play an old song, you can ask him, but don’t expect him to say yes. I heard some ignorant-ass kids gripe about that as they walked out of the show, but it makes complete sense if you actually listen to the work he’s done since he’s been out of rehab. Be nice to my friend, ok? We need more motherfuckers like him and we could always use more spinach.