Damien Jurado

indie folk · singer-songwriter · alternative rock

Damien Jurado is an American indie folk singer-songwriter, born November 12, 1972, in Seattle, Washington. He began in the mid-1990s issuing lo-fi folk recordings on his own cassette imprint, Casa Recordings, and was brought to Sub Pop's attention by Sunny Day Real Estate singer Jeremy Enigk. Waters Ave S. appeared on the label in 1997, followed by Rehearsals for Departure in 1999, which set fingerpicked solo pieces beside full-band arrangements, and Ghost of David in 2000, whose title came from a dream in which his friend and former bandmate David Bazan had died. He moved to the Indiana label Secretly Canadian, debuting there in 2003 with Where Shall You Take Me?, and stayed roughly fifteen years. The most consequential relationship of that period was with producer Richard Swift, who oversaw Saint Bartlett (2010), the loose narrative record Maraqopa (2012), Jurado's tenth album, and Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son (2014), pushing his songs toward reverb-heavy, psychedelic textures well outside the singer-songwriter frame he started in. That thread continued through Visions of Us on the Land and The Horizon Just Laughed (2018). Since founding Maraqopa Records in 2021 he has released his own work at a high rate, including collaborative records such as Did Something In Me Break?, made with Lilly Miller, and has extended the practice past albums, issuing Private Hospital as a book. He has also recorded for Loose Music. His writing is largely character-driven, built on other people's stories rather than confession, and he performs mostly solo or in small configurations at listening rooms and clubs including Ardmore Music Hall in Pennsylvania, Felton Music Hall in California and The Grey Eagle in Asheville.

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