“Okay, so this is a rock show. Not a college course,” Johnathan Rice said shyly looking into his microphone before adjusting it. The Tractor Tavern is unforgiving to up- and-coming musicians with rows of folding chairs lining the walls. At first he was coy, but Rice quickly changed his tune. “So you’re going to have to stand up and move closer.”

Rice fit the Saddle Creek bill booked for this Sunday evening. And if you have never heard of the incestuous record label, try to keep up. Nik Freitas, who opened the show, also provided the guitar playing for Johnathan Rice’s band, while Maria Taylor herself—tonight’s headliner—manned the drum kit. A scheduling glitch it was not. This is the roadshow that is Saddle Creek and why they are the most organic record label in the land.

Rice, a native Nebraskan incessantly touring behind 2007’s Trouble Is Real-which is more pop than his live version suggests—focuses on the music, but perhaps even more so on creating a mood. It’s what makes him such a likable stage performer.

With Rice’s breaking out party in 2007, his 2008 has been a comfortable one. It showed in his performance. Also in his attire, which consisted of a plain V-neck t-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. Opening with “Further North” Rice already seemed bored with his own product. He tinkered a little, and altered songs on the fly, keeping his bandmates (the members of tonight’s other two bands) in line. He then moved on to greater things with “The Middle of the Road” and his (current) masterpiece about a fictitious twin brother his tipsy girlfriend beds in “It Couldn’t Be Me.” Currently between albums, he used the small, loose and very comfortable Tractor to not only showcase new material but also issues that worry him: his doubts as a lover and father, the ability to love a country that is run by morally bankrupt men, and his firsthand beliefs that karma does in fact exist.

Maria Taylor was a little more introverted. And although she was comfortable with disappointing her man in “Clean Getaway,” she was not so flip about her audience. Now a confident and comfortable 32-year-old artist on stage, she still left more of her feelings deep within the songs. Taylor wisely skewed some new cuts made with long time collaborator and Saddle Creek producer Andy Lemaster (“Leap Year” and “Tell Me” from her current EP Savannah Drive, along with dusty tunes such as “Song Beneath the Song” from 2005’s debut 11:11) to keep up with the antsy performers of the evening and their inability to keep their hands off their own songs.

Taylor also played some new material from an unnamed album whose release is unknown. “I really am not much help” she widely smiled as she strummed, staring glumly at her cowboy boots. It was a theme of the evening. Tonight was about the sounds between the notes the musicians play. You could hear the audience’s bated breath. Taylor—just like Rice—shied away from the upbeat and poppier tunes that made her famous, realizing she was standing before an audience that “got” what she was trying to do. Tonight was about quality songwriting, not the audience buying into something they didn’t want to.

For more information about Maria Taylor go here. For more information about Johnathan Rice go here. For more information about Nik Freitas go here. Photo courtesy of Maria Taylor.