Simon Joyner Pays His Toll in Austin

Before Omaha became the indie hub of Conor Oberst and Saddle Creek, its greatest export was the enigmatic singer-songwriter Simon Joyner. Since his 1993 debut, Room Temperature, Joyner's songs have delivered dark, melancholy visions that conjure equal parts Dylan and Cohen with the ramshackle solemnity of contemporaries like Vic Chestnutt and Lambchop. Though championed by John Peel and cited as a seminal influence to some of today's most important artists (it's impossible not hear his voice in Bright Eyes' volatile and vulnerable style), Joyner has largely remained unknown beyond the underground.

2006's Skeleton Blues (Jagjaguwar) was perhaps Joyner's most accomplished album to date, balancing a subtle and literate tone with the fuller arrangements of his band, the Fallen Men. This year's reissue of 1994's The Cowardly Traveler Pays His Toll by Oberst's Team Love label best emphasizes Joyner's place in the canon of Nineties lo-fi songwriters like John Darnielle, Bill Callahan, and Will Oldham. Upon first hearing Cowardly Traveler, John Peel played the entire album straight through on his radio show, a distinction granted only one other time in Peel's 30-year run: Dylan's Desire.

It's been more than a decade since Joyner performed in Texas, but tonight he plays a last minute show at the Natrix Natrix house in South Austin (3222 John Campbell's Trail). With Cowardly Traveler in mind, there is perhaps no better setting to see Joyner perform than in the garage space of the local cassette tape label. The show is slated to begin at 8pm with openers Caleb Fraid from Houston and local longtime Joyner cohort Lonnie Eugene Methe.