I’ve found my wings and I’m ready to fly
Some things in life are better left unknown
Or there would be no wonder no why
But as I travel through this world
I want to give all those things a try, yeah

“Left Home”

With temps in triple digits, it’s been unusually hot this month, even by Austin standards. Outside at Threadgill’s, an understandably mellow crowd languished in the heat, waving homemade paper fans and downing gallons of water and beer to try and wash the sweat away. But when Sarah Jarosz took the stage, an opening slot for The Greencards, we’re reminded why we have ventured out in such trying conditions. The eighteen-year-old Texan has that quality that no amount of technical talent, which she possesses in droves, can teach you – crowd-hushing natural magnetism. It’s an unforced charisma balanced with an old soul sensibility that renders her impressive debut album, Song Up in Her Head , splendidly spunky, yet utterly timeless.

In the liner notes to Song, Chris Thile describes a seven-year-old Jarosz asking him for an autograph and, says, “During that brief encounter she sweetly and frankly expressed her hope that she would get to play music with me someday.” Jarosz certainly has had that true artists’ drive in gear from a young age, and on this album, the gravitational pull of that energy has drawn quite a line-up: Thile, Tim O’Brien, Abigail Washburn, Mike Marshall, Jerry Douglas, Ben Sollee, and Sarah Siskind, just for starter, as well as superb up-and-comers like Alex Hargreaves, Paul Kowert (The Punch Brothers) and Samson Grisman (son of David). On stage, she spoke of how exciting it was to work with her “musical heroes,” saying recording the album was, “a dream come true and a great learning experience.”

Jarosz really lights up a stage, and I tend to be the type that’s more sold on live performances than studio recordings, but Gary Paczosa and Jarosz’s production on Song captures that illumination nicely, while utilizing the tools of the studio to create a well-crafted sonic dream. At times the notes mingle in sweeping washes, such as the gorgeous “Long Journey,” where Jarosz’s building piano lines begin taking off, but then gather the other instruments around the current in a full, deep immersion. Meanwhile, the stirring title track and the rolling instrumental “Mansisinneedof” both show a great interplay with Jarosz and two mando maestros – Thile and Marshall respectively. The lines twist and dance, winding together like river channels searching for the sea. The other instrumental track, “Fischer Store Road” brings in Douglas, Hargreaves and Grisman in a toe-tapper that shows how deep her clawhammer skills can drive that spike. Throughout this record, her playing is rich, but never showy. But besides her chameleonic instrumental skills, I count six instruments she plays on this album, as O’Brien points out in the liner notes, “While her instrumental talents are formidable, let’s make one thing clear: Sarah is a singer. She’s just flat got it.” I concur. She has an intuitive sense of delivery, with decided subtlety and moments of muscle. The recording captures the soul that shimmies through her voice when you see her perform, and man, she can sing and stomp some blues with the best of them.

Texas certainly has produced its share of great songwriters, and Jarosz has the elements to be a slugger in this league, nodding to that tradition onstage at Threadgill’s with a choice Patty Griffin cover of “Long Ride Home.” On the album, those classic themes of time, distance, and questions of how love will survive across these variables are all woven through Jarosz’s words. She throws in those cool twists and turns in lines like, “Public transportation is my private ride, yeah” (“Left Home”) or, “The middle of the floor feels safe tonight,” (“Edge of Dream”), that reveal a little something in the midst of the travelling, unique views disclosed. Meanwhile, “Broussard’s Lament,” a song about Hurricane Katrina, is conscious, but not heavy-handed. In her stage banter, Jarosz said she was inspired to write the song as a fourteen year old watching an interview on the news in the aftermath of the hurricane. To compliment the original material, the two covers on her record are intriguing, rather leftfield choices, Tom Waits’ “Come On Up to the House,” which has some especially chewy bass by Grisman, and The Decemberists’ “Shankill Butchers.” The latter is appropriately ominous, with the toy piano affecting a creepy carnival tinkle. You can just imagine the maniac cackles in the night. It’s the darkest track on the album, and it will be interesting to see as her career evolves how she may tap into that blacker and weirder vein of Americana.

If there’s an overriding theme, it’s that of the journey. The take presented here is personalized, joyously reflective. It strongly evokes a certain time in my own life, an image of myself as a freshman in college at UVM, staring out bus windows or bumming rides from folks with cars to see shows on the weekend, getting to know an unfolding east coast landscape from my new base in Burlington. As my external world widened, so did my internal geography. There was excitement, wonder, and a feeling of an unwritten future, a feeling that I try and hold on to no matter what has happened in my life since I was eighteen. This album gives me those expectant butterflies, a reminder never to let those beating wings die. When The Greencards - who, for the record, played a fan-freaking-tastic show – excitedly brought her on stage at Threadgills to throw down on some numbers, including a great take on “Blue Night,” to loud cheers, it was obvious that the fluttery feeling is infectious. Last I read, Jarosz is off to Boston’s Berklee School of Music in the fall, a college that has been a meeting place for many great musicians (Two High String Band were spawned here in their earliest incarnations for example). Wherever Jarosz goes from here it’s going to be her own journey, and may she keep that sense of wonder shining strong