2010-05-12 10:41:18

PETER BLACKSTOCK: Josh Ritter, Carolina Theater, Durham, North Carolina, May 11, 2010

Filed under: Featured, Josh Ritter, Music, Peter Blackstock, The Purple Interview
Posted by: John

by PETER BLACKSTOCK

“Babe we both had / Dry spells, hard times and bad lands / I’m a good man for ya / I’m a good man.”

That’s the chorus of “Good Man,” a track from Josh Ritter’s 2006 album The Animal Years, and it has become a sort of signature tune for this New-York-by-way-of-Idaho singer-songwriter. Ritter makes that declaration without bravado or hubris; he’s simply telling the truth. If you’ve ever met him — and if you’ve been to one of Ritter’s shows, you probably have, as I’ve repeatedly witnessed him sticking around after a show to visit with literally hundreds of audience members for more than an hour — you know what I mean.

If you haven’t met him, you can pretty much tell anyway from his stage presence and demeanor. There really isn’t any doubt that Ritter is an unfailingly and incurably good man. Which sometimes makes it a bit of a challenge to trust one’s own assessment of his art. I’ve wondered, at times, how much my opinion of his music is affected by the fact that he’s such a ridiculously good guy. Would I care as much about his songs if he were sullen, or surly, or indifferent?

We’ll never know…but on the other hand, I do believe there is some valid separation here between the art and the artist, in that Ritter hits upon fair depths of emotion and perspective that are very different from the kind and generous spirit he puts on display to everyone he meets. Much of his music is in fact preoccupied with a darker side, and his explorations of that territory are irrefutably skillful, both lyrical and musically — from the harrowing nuclear-silo tale “The Temptation Of Adam,” to the hypnotic piano waltz “The Curse,” to the infectious pop gem “Right Moves.” Which is to say, yeah, I think he’d come across as a pretty brilliant songwriter even if he were a jerk.

The most salient testament to that on his new album, So Runs The World Away, is the 7-plus-minute opus “Another New World,” which is loosely based on the Edgar Allan Poe poem “Annabel Lee.” On this night, Ritter offered up a rather ingenious presentation of the tune: Before he played it, drummer Ray Rizzo from the Hounds (the backing band for show-opener Dawn Landes, who just happens to be Ritter’s wife) walked onstage and recited Poe’s poem to the deft and well-suited musical accompaniment of Ritter’s bandmates. Where Poe’s story ended, Ritter’s commenced, and the bridge constructed between them made Ritter’s daunting composition all the more fascinating.

Not all the show’s progressions were so heavy, of course. Some of the most enjoyable moments were the simplest ones, such as when Ritter returned for an encore and rattled off a quick but heartfelt rendition of “Moon River,” or when, during a mid-set solo-acoustic respite, he invited Landes onstage to sing with him at the edge of the stage on a completely unamplified version of his delicate ballad “In The Dark.” And much hilarity ensued when, in the bridge to his now decade-old favorite “Harrisburg,” Ritter turned over lead vocals to his much-beloved, dastardly-mustachioed bassist Zack Hickman, who detoured the proceedings into a few bars of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game.”

The show closed on a similarly light and unassuming note, with Ritter’s bandmates, plus his wife and her band, gathered in a crescent around a microphone to provide en-masse vocal support on Ritter’s solo-acoustic delivery of “Wait For Love” (from his 2007 album The Historical Conquests Of Josh Ritter). At the end, he asked the crowd for a little help in carrying out the final few notes. They gladly obliged, of course. Because, well, you know, he’s a good man.

Peter Blackstock was co-founder and co-editor of No Depression magazine from 1995-2008, worked many years as a copy editor for daily newspapers in Seattle and Austin, and served as archivist for the SXSW music festival from 1989-1997. He blogs occasionally at That Magnificent Ghost.

Comments (0)

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website