The first time that I laid eyes on Andrew Bird was at a Metro budget show in March of 1999. It was a cheap ticket with four bands on the bill at $2.50 each and Robbie Fulks as the headliner. I had no idea that the show was actually a showcase of the finest architects of Chicago’s emerging alt scene; Scott Ligon, Heather McAdams, Johnny Doyle, Joel Peterson, Kevin O’Donnell, and Nora O’Connor were all relatively unknown and unheard at the time. But Bird blew me away and it was no wonder that I didn’t stick around for Fulks (nothing against you Robbie). Dressed in stovepipe jeans with a head full of black hair, dimples, and a “gosh-golly” politeness, from ten feet away he looked like he was all of 16. But when his band, the Bowl of Fire started playing western songs of the ’20s and obscure gypsy love songs and Bird opened his mouth to sing my brains literally melted.

Ten years and a month later he’s obviously had the same impact on thousands. He’s now close to a household name and if you have even a slight awareness of Chicago’s current scene you can’t escape the guy. A Northwestern grad who was a child prodigy, Bird played any and everywhere constantly—renaissance fairs, the Old Town School of Folk Music, even with the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Often gigging with other bands besides his Bowl of Fire, he would pop up all over the city [the Hot House, Nevin’s Live, home base the Hideout, the Old Town School] and he managed to be everywhere seeming to do everything at the same instant. Bird and O’Donnell, best friends at NU were always brimming with musical ideas and endless possibilities and constantly realized them with a charming touch of snark (playing at Market Days one year, Bird referred to the fest appropriately as “nipple fest”). With his mournful, swooning sirens’ voice and all of the eclectic sounds that he pulls out of his violin amongst other things. (I’m not kidding either; it was common to see him do a solo show with the violin in one hand, a xylophone mallet in the other, while starting a tape loop, with a guitar draped around his neck all in the space of one seamless song.) Bird’s performances live and otherwise were always enchanting, intoxicating, ruefully funny, charming, and seductive while being spontaneous and precise. Anybody else would sound both pretentious and canned but Bird has such a casual brilliance about his craft that he would hardly break a sweat.

After Ani DiFranco got her clutches on him (she was such a fan that she cold called him from L.A.—they had never met and he thought it was a joke), put him in her band, and gave him the opening slot on her world tour the rest was history. Word of mouth from Europe and appearances on Letterman and Leno are what packed Millennium Park last summer SRO and also the Civic Opera House for two sold out shows last week.

Bird’s latest, Noble Beast seems far removed from the expected “arrival” his new fame demands. It’s casual, elegant, smooth, articulate, and downright laidback. It still feels like Bird is holding back a smirk though. The cd opens with “Oh No” and closes with “On Ho”—a tip off that he’s still an introverted nut. Funnier still Noble Beast doesn’t build in any way conventionally and the songs wind up and down, implode, fade up and out, or dart into unexpected directions. It’s arty all right, charming as all get out, typically goofy in spots, and a little obtuse. On “Fitz and the Dizzyspells”—probably the most conventional song on the CD—Bird sings about the weather; not what it’s doing at that instant but the whole unseen universe as an abstract that can only be fathomed by the interference of objects (weather vanes, nightshades, lava). Hunhhh? On “Master Swarm” he sings, “He speaks with perfect diction/As he orders my eviction/As he acts with more conviction, than I.” “Not a Robot but a Ghost,” obviously a breakup song, propelled on a cushy bongo and guitar current gets only as close to the point as, “No we don’t want this anymore/I crack the codes you end the war…”

“Not a Robot” is as lively as it gets on Beast, and it would be too easy to let the CD play as background music. But like Paul Simon’s ’70s solo work (One Trick Pony, There Goes Rythmin’ Simon), Bird has such an engaging delivery that it’s almost impossible not to get sucked into his mini arias and engaged. He doesn’t have Simon’s aching sentimentality or sincerity, but hearing him sing in close harmony with Kelly Hogan on parts of Beast he makes it a wordy, gorgeous, pristine, pop mess. And though Noble Beast could hardly be called Bird’s promised masterwork he imbues it with such a searing wistful beauty that he turns it into an odd gem.

But if Beast sounds too polite for it’s own good, hearing Bird perform it live at the Civic Opera House (a brilliant booking if there ever was one) April 10 was an altogether different matter. Opening with the decade old “Why,” Bird—still “gosh golly” polite—got the evening off to a sly start. (He commented about the previous night’s show, where mid-set he managed to break his violin, saying, “Well, I got a little too into it.”) On “Fitz and the Dizzyspells” with his band onstage, a looped whistled riff and plenty of room in the arrangement to do those things he does with his violin, he got lost in the music. Shaking his head around like a stubborn child, eyes shut and waving his bow like a magic wand he made what sounded like a strange little ditty into an epic. The live version of Bird is the one that I think I’ll hold onto.