Music |
Josh Ritter: One Man Band
By
Published: Jan 01, 2007
Category:
Rock
Josh Ritter
The Allen Room, January 31, 2007
I’d never been to the Allen Room, “the home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.” For one thing, it’s not located at Lincoln Center — it’s at the new Time-Warner Center, a few blocks south. For another, the Time-Warner Center is also home to an urban shopping mall, three words that give me the willies.
But Josh Ritter was playing solo, and those are five magic words. I suggested that we make this the first Butler Field Trip of the new year, and several of you responded. So on a clear, cold night, off we went.
The Allen Room could not have been more spectacular. “Intimate” is an understatement — the room seats just 600. There are round tables near the stage, giving it a slight cabaret feel. And the stage itself is like nothing ever seen before in New York — it’s backed by two 50′ by 90′ walls of tilted glass.
This produces an odd effect. Josh Ritter comes on and sings to you, but on the first glass wall, you see the reflection of his back, and on the outer glass wall, you see another — it’s as if Josh’s twin is singing for an audience of invisible unknowns on the black, snow-dusted paths of Central Park. If you let your mind drift, you can imagine you are looking at this glorious sanctuary at any point in the last hundred years. Or you can look across the park at the trillion-dollar apartments on Fifth Avenue and imagine their lights are a distant Italian hill town. Or you could just get lost in layers of Josh.
Which is not hard to do. I know I have carried much water for this performer — here and here and here — and some of you are surely sick of reading about him. Others may profit from hearing me rave one more time. And those of who have surrendered to my rantings may be inspired to fire up the CD I made you buy and remind yourself what the fuss is all about.
Last night, Josh was wearing a light, striped, three-button suit with all three buttons buttoned — a style not available in any store I know. It looked like it came from the closet of some long-dead country star. No, wait: Mark Twain. Author of “Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer”, books that Josh cherishes, books so deeply imbedded in Animal Years that a college kid will someday write a paper on the Ritter-Twain connection.
And then there was the hair. Josh had just come from three weeks of recording in Maine, a state where winter, even in these strange times, makes bears of men. So he had the hair thing working overtime, like — well, like a young Kurt Vonnegut. Who is, for those slow to make connections on a chilly day, the closest thing we have now to Mark Twain.
I go on about such seeming superficialities because the room magnifies everything. Including the music — the acoustics of the Allen Room are superior even to the sound I get through my Shure E3c earphones. I thought I knew every word Josh has ever written; last night, I got the inflection and the emotion. And what I got was that Josh does what only the great artists can: He can take the temperature of his time and his place.
This is not to make a solemn case for Serious Artist — this guy is a total goofball. Near the end of a song, he is fully capable of making a perfectly timed but totally inept 360-degree twirl on one foot, like a kid who has just picked up a guitar and thinks he’s cool because he can play the opening notes of “Satisfaction.” He has a lovely way of laughing at his own stories. And then there is the occasional off-the-wall song — like the ditty about a man and woman who fall in love guarding a Minuteman missile in a silo.
A compleat artist does this sort of stuff to balance the deeper songs. Josh Ritter is the sunniest of personalities — he’s found his mission in life and every minute he makes music brings him joy — so his big question is why we can’t all grasp heaven all the time. In his words: “It’s hard to see how there could be/ so much dark inside the light.” Damn good question.
He closed the show standing away from the microphone, a glass of whiskey in his hand, as he sang an ancient Irish song of farewell. The last line, I believe, was a blessing. I looked around. From the deep satisfaction I saw, I wasn’t the only one who felt blessed.
To buy “Live at the Record Exchange,” a 6-song CD recorded in Boise, Idaho, from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “Animal Years” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “Four Songs Live” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “Golden Age of Radio” from Amazon.com, click here.
To go to JoshRitter.com, click here.
