I had arrived at a bed-and-breakfast in the Smoky Mountains where after dinner the owners asked if the guests wouldn�t mind being entertained by their daughter and her friends. Then the kids get to playing and you wonder to what planet you�ve been transported.

Although she came to music via a bluegrass style, Jarosz�s style is expansive and seems to be moving toward the singer-songwriter direction as evidenced by the melancholy-tinged maturity of the observational �Gypsy� and the spiritual reverence of �My Muse,� both performed solo. The latter sounds like it could have been penned by a backpacking poet on the shores of the Indian Ocean.

With the guys back on stage, Jarosz woke up all the roosters in Ireland with Tim O�Brien�s �Land�s End/Chasin� Talon.� She stayed in thatneck of the woods � though in a much darker thicket � with her foreboding cover of the Decemberists� �Shankill Butchers.�

Before closing with a cover of Tom Waits� �Come on Up to the House,� the endearing young virtuoso asked the audience to help her out on the chorus and even pitch in with some harmonies if they felt up to it. With her bandmates slopping some slinky funk on it, Jarosz poured honey all over Waits� gravel and had the newly converted aching to testify in the secular church of the Hill Country that for one night was rebuilt in the Austin City Limits studios.

The evening had special significance for me, as I was one of those people who saw the preteen Jarosz sitting in with her mother