Why we were an hour late to the Iron & Wine show last night

No reason. Just stupid.

Well, there is actually a reason, but it's a stupid reason. The website said "Doors 6:30/Show 7:30" but since that seems so ridiculously early, it became transmuted in my own head to "Doors 7:30/Show 8:30." I mean, I go to some shows that don't even start until 9:30, so how could I be expected to understand that this show started at 7:30? So at 7:30, we were sitting at the bar at Lucky 13. That's where we were at 8:30, too.

Anyway.

So we walked in to the Swedish-American Hall around 9:00 or so, I guess, and of course Sam Beam was already on stage and playing to a hushed, reverential crowd. Just him and an acoustic guitar. 300 people up in that bitch and you could hear a pin drop. I was scared to breathe.

The first song he played after we walked in was his cover of "Such Great Heights" by Postal Service, which is probably his best-known song since it was in the Garden State soundtrack and in an M&M's commercial. He killed it. Then he played a bunch of other songs I didn't know. He's got a really hypnotic, beautiful voice, and one thing that I think people don't appreciate about him is that he's really a pretty incredible guitar player. And he's funny. His between-song banter was hilarious. I wish I had taken notes so I could reproduce some here, but it just wouldn't be funny written down anyway.

I guess we saw like 6 songs. We agreed afterwards that more than 10 probably would have been too many.