Modern singer songwriters strike me as an ephemeral sort of creature. Specializing in an art form the output of which lasts roughly four minutes, their careers seem similarly compressed and abbreviated... like fruit flies among the other fauna of the artistic world. They are born in large numbers, largely anonymous, typically gone before anyone notices they were there at all.

So it's interesting to me that last Sunday I played my tenth anniversary gig with Noe Venable, at the KPFA Crafts Fair in San Francisco, simultaneously broadcast on the air. We did this show simply as a duo: Noe singing and on the guitar, with me on the violin. It was a low-key affair unlike the full-band record-release show she did at the Cafe Du Nord this summer, which was highly publicized and totally packed. After the pedal-steel player (who was on before us) was done, we simply situated ourselves in front of the microphones on the makeshift stage, in front of maybe 30-40 folks (and anybody tuned into KPFA at the moment), and started playing.

A Noe Venable performance is a different sort of animal from your standard singer-songwriter performance. This is not merely a gal with a guitar playing a bunch of songs. Noe isn't background music. She demands your attention. And when she has it, she plays your mind with every bit the same command as she plays her guitar. In 40-60 minutes, she takes you on an journey spanning a year's range of emotions: she makes you laugh, cry, rage, and dance the two-step, sometimes all at once. She stretches your brain with her angular, mind-expanding poetry, sung in exquisite melodies with the voice of an electrified cherub. When you return from your travels, you are not quite the same.

My job, as I see it, is to make Noe... "Noe-er". I try to hear the undercurrents of the music and give them form. I strive to act as an amplifier for the id, to add mania to the manic and tragedy to the tragic in each song. I try to choose my moments, snaking in subliminally, or madly wailing as the song requires. I'm not sure I always succeed, but, well, it's been ten years and Noe still has me fiddling beside her. And Noe has her pick of musicians, so I must be doing something right.

Ten years, five records, a dizzyingly long list of songs, months of tours, hundreds of performances in dozens of cities, and an ever-changing stream of band members from the "A" list of young professional session players. The music and the lineup have evolved over time: in 1997 we were a six-piece Americana-tinged troupe playing dive bars in North Beach. A year or so later, we were a loud five-piece rock band playing at the Bottom of the Hill. From 1999, the primary lineup was acoustic-trio-with-electronics (featuring bass-monster Todd Sickafoose), eventually touring most of the Western US. Noe's song production, pouring out at the rate of a dozen-a-week in 1998, slowed to a less manic pace over time... and the result is that the power of the songs became concentrated: melodies as examples of Zen balance and expression, every twist of lyric full of intention.

A decade -- an eternity in singer-songwriter years. And a front-row seat to watch a young punk-wunderkind's gradual transformation to mature artist.

A long, strange, and wonderful trip... one well worth taking.