Noise Pop 2009

My good friend Daren and I have been long time fans of Josh Ritter. We have jammed on our guitars through half an hour versions of Me & Jiggs and Harrisburgh. We saw Josh first at the Independent in San Francisco in the early 2000’s. We found out about him through a complaition CD from Ireland called ‘Other Voices: Songs From A Room Volume 1’. On Other Voices, Josh Ritter has a live acoustic track called ‘Snow Is Gone’. The studio version is on his album called Hello Starling. It is a beautiful, catchy, and about love and the changing of the seasons.

Josh Ritter is one of the most talented singer-song writers today. His recent albums are thematic and they have many layers to them and they take time to digest after the first few listens. His lyrics are filled with many complex ideas that tend to reference historic concepts. Sample verse from ‘Thin Blue Flame’:

“I flew over Royal City last night,

Bullfighting the horns of a new moon’s light,

Caesar’s ghost I saw the war time tides,

The prince of Denmark’s father still quiet,

The whole world was looking to get drowned,

Trees were a fist shaking themselves at the clouds,

I looked over curtains and it was then I knew,

Only a full house would make it through.”

Last spring my wife Jill and I were a part of the lucky audience at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco to see him perform, for the first time, with a string quartet. The combination of the talented string quartet and Josh's powerful acoustic guitar strumming and picking made it an inspirational performance. The music ran through my fingers and up my arms and sent shivers down my spine. It sounded natural and earthy and organic like they should have been playing atop a mountain or on a river bank somewhere in the wild away from the loud city crowd; that is where they took the audience during the performance.

The video footage below is from you tube. Two songs called Girl In The War (with strings) and a song called Wolves, (not performed with the quartet). Highlights from the show were Girl In The War with the Strings, Kathleen with strings, and Thin Blue Flame. Josh played “I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Anymore” by Woody Guthrie without any plug-ins or mic’s while standing at the very edge of the stage singing at the top of his lungs to fill the room with Guthrie's powerful song about people and families who farmed, mined, and had to wander around the united states trying to find a job and place to call home,..all I can say to his rendition of this old folk tune is....wow.

It was a memorable show and if Josh comes to your town, go see him play.