I want your flu baby, not just your cough.

Photo by Michael Halsband

More than a year ago I went to something that I could have sworn I wrote about on here before, but apparently failed to. My girlfriend was living up by Columbia, and they have this little room in the basement of St. Paul's Chapel on campus there (they call it PostCrypt) that they use for performances on Friday and Saturday nights. She had seen an ad for a special night with some special guests, so we went.

So three singer/songwriter types sat up on little stools and took turns telling stories and playing songs to a standing room only crowd of less than 100. The reason the guests went unnamed, I guess, was that one of them was Suzanne Vega, but the one that left the most lasting effect on me was someone I hadn't heard of before that night: one Richard Julian. He'd played a song about the fictional screw-up son of Jesus that would pop into my head randomly for months after that night, and I've been making efforts to see him when he plays in New York ever since.

I was about to write about what I like so much about him, when I found this quote, which I think sums it all up more nicely and concisely than I could. WFUV's Claudia Marshall:

Julian's guitar playing is athletic but subtle, and his secret weapon is his voice — not a croon so much as a plaintive wail that serves his songs well. He's my favorite New York singer-songwriter, period.

There's a 45 minute interview and 4 songs performed in-studio from WFUV where that quote came from. Highly recommended.

Anyway, Richard Julian is going to be playing at The Living Room in NYC every Monday in the month of November, hitting the stage around 10 pm. I'll be there at least once. You should too.