Two Days, Two Josh Ritter Concerts

I was lucky enough to attend two Josh Ritter performances (my 8th and 9th) on August 18th and 19th. First at Toad's Place in New Haven, CT, and again at Tanglewood in Lenox, MA. What a great experience both nights were! I got to Toad's Place very early, which landed me a dead center front row seat. At Tanglewood, Josh opened for Grace Potter, so there weren't many people seated yet - I just went and sat in the front, and no one seemed to mind!

At Toad's Place I captured some nice video, and 22 seconds into my video of "Joy to You Baby", guitarist Austin Nevins looks right at the camera. A nice moment to catch!



Here's the setlist:

Here are some of my best stills from Toad's Place:

New Milford, 2011

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? -Mary Oliver

It's a lazy Sunday, and a beautiful day. It's funny, beautiful days like this make me feel impulsive. I want to move to a new place, or travel all over the country. You'd think a day like this would make me content, it's usually the cloudy days that calm me down. Josh Ritter, I think, puts it well in his song Open Doors: "I find myself hoping for the rain; you don't see shadows on a cloudy day. I really don't interpret that in a sad way, it's just that bright days can throw into relief the things that aren't quite right. They offer the opportunity to get outside and remind yourself of what's really important - and all too often those things aren't the things we occupy ourselves with on a daily basis.

All that being said, it's easy to appreciate the wonder of the world. Just go outside and look up at the sky! I think that's why I could never live in the city - you can never really get perspective on the fact that society's mores aren't really all that important. 

As always, I keep certain quotes close to my heart, and I'm happy to share:

"It's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much; my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life." -Kevin Spacey's monologue at the end of American Beauty

"With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?" -Oscar Wilde

And lastly, because I really do have an existential bent, I share this. It is not to be interpreted in a sad way! It's TRUE, and I think it's really empowering. We take ourselves too seriously, when really, life is short. 

"Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.”

-Sartre

Josh Ritter has blown my mind again

At his Daniel's Street concert in New Milford, CT, Josh played this new song, and it blew me away. I can't find any lyrics online, so I did my best to transcribe them from the live video of the preformance.

Here we go:

It's like I'm haunted by a ghost; there are times I cannot speak your name for the catching in my throat, and if I dont sing this song it's out of fear of silent notes.

Oh I feel like a miser, oh I feel low and mean for accusing you of stealing what I offered you for free. Oh it beggars the belief sometimes what thieves we lovers be

Oh i dont know who you're with these days, might be with someone new, and if you are I hope he treats you like a lover ought to do. But whoever makes you happy, it dont really matter who, I've got a new lover now, I hope youve got a lover too.

Praise the water under bridges, praise the time we...

Perhaps the fault was mine, perhaps I just ignored who you're always gonna be, instead of who I took you for. I've been treated worse it's true, still I expected more.

But I will not chase your shadow as you go from room to room, droppin' handkerchiefs and daggers, smokin' guns and other clues for what someone did with someone and who did what to who. I've got a new lover now, I hope you've got a lover too.

Got a new lover now, she knows just what I need. When I wake up in the night she can read me back my dreams, and she loves them though she never needs to tell me what they mean.

I got a new lover now, I know that she's not mine and I only wanna hold her, I don't need to read her mind, and she only looks like you when she's in a certain light.

I hope you've got a lover now, hope you've got somebody who can give you what you need like I couldn't seem to do. But if you're sad and you are lonesome and you've got nobody true, I'd be lying if I said that didn't make me happy too.