Music |
Josh Ritter: ‘Snow is Gone’
By
Published: Jan 01, 2009
Category:
Rock
Josh Ritter
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Brooklyn, New York
April 28, 2008
At the invitation of some of the nicest people in journalism, I went to Washington last week for the White House Correspondents Dinner, an annual event that stars 2,500 journalists, a sprinkling of Hollywood folk in their native garb (Psst! guys! Check out Pamela Anderson), and — almost forgot — the President of the United States.
At best, this evening is a strange affair: journalists pretending for a night to be cool kids who hang with cooler kids and the Leader of the Free World, and Himself pretending he’s their pal. You think: What’s wrong with this picture? Instantly, you know: Everything. Distance between politicians and journalists is critical to journalism — this shouldn’t be happening. And that’s merely the first thought.
A deep gloom followed me home to New York. But my calendar indicated that, two nights later, friends were coming to dinner and going on to Brooklyn with us to see Josh Ritter, so I had modest hopes for a revival. But I was going through the motions. This Washington thing really was the Everest of bummers.
Dinner was a blast. The car drove itself to Brooklyn. And we found ourselves in a terrific venue — a club not much bigger than Shakespeare’s Globe — filled with New Brooklyn and People Like Us. And all for Josh.
For those who love him, Josh Ritter is a cult and a cause. He writes poetry that’s both heartfelt and muscular. He writes music that’s so fun to hear you don’t get stuck on the big ideas and deep thoughts. And he tells ridiculous stories and laughs at his own jokes. An evening with him is like watching a brilliant nerd with a spectacular gift.
It’s so refreshing to see a major talent who seems stunned and thrilled to find himself on a stage fronting a hot band. Which makes Josh Ritter a blessed relief both from the young sensitives and the testosterone-charged guys. Bottom line: Josh is a performer woman want to…cuddle.
Not last night.
I had read about his recent Asbury Park performance and was willing to imagine Josh re-inventing himself as a hard-driving rocker. His songs are so good they’re elastic; they can take noise and speed. But everything else Josh is doing this season is decidedly not designed for the stadium crowd. He’s on a Small Towns tour. He’s blogging on HuffingtonPost.com. And on June 27, he and the band are performing in Boston’s Symphony Hall on a bill with former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky and the Boston Pops Orchestra.
For those who haven’t noticed, the music business died a while back, and the audience has abandoned the CD for the individual songs it likes on iTunes. You want to survive, you tour. Josh did it once — that’s the meaning of “Animal Years” — and now he’s doing it again. Add HuffPo and the Boston Pops, and maybe those are the moves an ambitious musician must make now.
But are Josh Ritter’s the moves of the next Springsteen?
“I read that you’re about to be a rock star,” I said, when we talked before the show.
“After tonight,” he said, and we laughed, because it doesn’t happen that way now, even if it is your astonishing luck to be rock and roll future with writers in the house.
I’ll spare you the specifics; the hard-core will get them on Josh’s site or his HuffPo blog, and the rest of you won’t relate. This is what you need to know: Josh Ritter assaulted his songbook and got away with it. Speed, power, volume, no cute monologues; before you could catch your breath, he was on the sixth song. He howled during Wolves, and he danced with the kind of bearlike ecstasy you expect from Stevie Wonder, but he and the band were on a mission — maximum output, maximum pleasure.
Josh Ritter, the cuddly singer-songwriter? Cuddly no more. Or less cuddly, for sure.
In the end, performance is about connection to an audience. On the performer’s side, it’s about wanting to be there and honoring the unwritten terms of the contract. And on our side, wanting not just pleasure, but community.
Community is not found easily these days. We don’t agree on much, it appears, and we seem to cling desperately to what we do believe; it feels as if many of our countrymen are circling the wagons. So when you find even a little community it, you cherish it. It’s gossamer, gone at midnight, but it reminds you of your dreams and the way you wanted things to be, and how you really might do a bit more to make life richer, as a kind of pay-it-forward for the enrichment you’ve just experienced.
Last night, the Josh Ritter community found its marching music in a song for the new season. Snow Is Gone is an old chestnut, a surefire crowd-pleaser. I’m so sorry you all couldn’t have been there, with guitars and drums and organ redlining and Josh jumping up and down and pretty much everybody shouting:
Hello blackbird, hello starling
Winter’s over, be my darling
It’s been a long time coming
But now the snow is gone
In moments like that, I think, a great many sorrows melt and a healing comes, and you just plain feel better. I do, anyway. Better enough that I wanted to take a day to tell you that you might want to see Josh Ritter on his travels, but even more, you might want to get out of the house to stand with your fellow citizens and hear that endangered species, live music.
To buy “The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “Animal Years” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “Golden Age of Radio” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “4 Songs Live” from Amazon.com, click here.
For Josh Ritter’s web site, click here.
