Jay Farrar Saves the Day at the Tractor on Saturday

Thank the powers that be for Jay Farrar. Honestly. If not for him, the night could have turned into a total drag.

We knew when Anders Parker started doing the live looping thing, this could either be really cool or go really wrong really fast. Unfortunately, Parker went with the latter.

A lot of musicians do the live looping thing. Sometimes it works beautifully (Andrew Bird, KT Tunstall) and sounds like an entire band or orchestra backing up an artist when it's really just one person onstage. Other times, the three-chord progression that may have been innocent enough at the beginning of the song becomes awfully grating by the end. On top of that, the musician piles more and more obnoxious three-chord progressions, tries adding a bassline without an actual bassist present. Gah! We don't like it when that happens.

And when the artist lets the loop keep playing, as he removes his guitar and gets ready for the next song...well, it just looks like things are over before they should be. Or maybe they should be over before they are.

That's what happened with us during Anders Parker's opening set on Saturday night at the Tractor. We were about to head next door for the Hattie's Hat five-side-items goodness we love so much, when alt.country legend Jay Farrar hit the stage. Farrar is living proof you don't have to have charisma to be a great performer. Hell, you don't even have to have facial expressions. Just write good songs, and then play them for people.

Not that Anders Parker doesn't write good songs. We're pretty sure we heard a few that sounded pretty good. We just didn't care anymore after that whole live looping incident. Thankfully Farrar shut off our ADHD and got us refocused on the task at hand: rock out to some sweet alt.country.

He played some of his solo work and threw in some classic Son Volt tunes. Then he took a break and came back out to rock some more with his new band Gob Iron. We're so cynical that, earlier in the night, we thought Gob Iron was a terrible name for a band. But again, it really doesn't matter. If you write good songs, and then you sing them for people, you can name your band any damned thing you want. You'll still be playing good music, you'll still put on a good show.

So we here at Seattlest would like to officially thank Jay Farrar and Gob Iron for taking a lame excuse for a show and turning it into a night worth driving from the Hill to Ballard and back.