Jude probably has the most beautiful male voice of any Singer Songwriter out there today. Jeff Buckley fans, eat your heart out.

Here's a little background from his site - linked above

Jude Christodal was born outside of Boston where, aside from a few years in Washington State, he grew up. As a boy, he was sung to sleep by his father with a guitar he still plays.

Jude moved to Los Angeles sometime in '93/94. He took his degree in philosophy and applied it to several menial jobs while he played his music around Los Angeles, eventually catching the ear of BMG Songs and with his 1997 acoustic debut 430 N. Harper Ave., originally released on the Fish of Death label.

The inclusion of Jude's hauntingly beautiful "I Know" on the multi-platinum City of Angels soundtrack propelled him into the public consciousness. He followed with No One is Really Beautiful, his first album recorded with Maverick Records, which was released in 1998 and received a "Hell yeah!" from the music press. Jude hit the road with some other folks (Train, Ben Folds Five, Tori Amos, Better Than Ezra) in support of the album, then returned to the studio to do battle with the record company, who insisted on "putting their greasy fingerprints all over my songs." The result was King of Yesterday, which hit stores in September 2001, notably absent of "Cuba," a stand-out track telling the story behind the record.

In 2004 Jude released Sarah, a stark and beautiful cycle of songs describing a relationship from start to fall. People like it a lot. The record tops CDBaby's online chart for weeks. In April of 2005, Naive Records releases Sarah in France, where Jude will tour this year.

Jude weaves a unique experience at every show mixing his personal songs with spontaneous humor, storytelling skills, and his angelic, captivating voice. These days, he is busy in the studio preparing songs for film and television, completing the writing phase for a next record, and working on various group projects. Much more to come.

One of my lucky friends got to go see him in San Diego last weekend - at the North Park Vaudeville, an old fashioned Candy Shoppe and Theatre (that holds about 40 people!)

During my visit to San Diego a few weeks ago, I opted to leave my friend my Minidisc Recorder. It was pretty much killing me to know that I was visiting San Diego, and was going to miss Jude's performance by a few days. And even though I've seen Jude twice I've never had an opportunity to get a soundboard recording. Over the last few years he's played the majority of his shows at the Largo, a small and intimate industy showcase in Los Angeles. Though the Largo is a fairly amazing place to see a show, they've got a pretty asinine taping policy and my recordings from the shows I've attended are stealth'd and not the greatest.

Plus, I take every possibly opportunity to turn my friend to the Geek side (kinda like the Dark side but with a whole bunch of electronic toys/devices involved.) With these two thoughts in mind, leaving behind the Minidisc was a no-brainer.

I'm sure glad I did.

01 Intro
02 Indian Lover
03 You Mama You
04 Perfect Plank
05 Our Break-Up Song
06 I Do
07 George
08 Gay Cowboy
09 I Know
10 Money
11 Dads Ditty
12 In Between
13 Cuba
14 Your Eyes
15 In My Sweet Babys Arms

Labels: concerts, indie, live mp3s, North Park Vaudeville, san diego, soundboard mp3s