Josh Ritter Concert

It's the weekend of Josh concerts. Josh Ritter performed at Terminal 5, which is this huge room, standing room only, with a couple of balconies. Very different from yesterday's tiny coffee shop/bar sitdown concert yesterday. Plus there were several thousand people there rather than the 30 or so at the 92Y in Tribeca.

The opener was Scott Hutchison from the band Frightened Rabbit. More on him in a minute. Guess who came out and introduced Josh Ritter. Rainn Wilson from The Office. How random is that? You can watch part of his speech in the video below. He used a computer to predict the lyrics of the next Josh Ritter song.

I'd seen Josh Ritter once at City Hall, which is a sit-down theatre and I was in the last row in the balcony. This was a very different experience. They played a lot of the same songs, but were just as cool. The band is still awesome, but the one dude in the mustache didn't get a solo verse, which is unfortunate because he blew everyone away last time. The show was high energy and it was all very well-rehearsed. They even turned on the discoball for one song.

Twice, Josh read some things that people had sent to him to read out as a Valentines Day statement. They were mostly things like "Thanks for being the best person in the whole world" and "I love you even though you don't close your dresser drawers" and "I want to ride with you in a boat and feed dolphins." But one of them was an actual proposal--Yikes! I didn't know where they were, but I hope she said yes for awkwardness sake.

They did most of my favorites: The Curse, Girl in the War, Harrisburg, but they did not play Another New World. I heard some that I haven't heard before (I do not have all his albums) but the ones I didn't hear before were all so good, now I want to get those. That's what happened last time I saw him in concert: I went home and bought the songs I liked.

Okay, I have to tell you about the funny part now. So at the very end, there was supposed to be this big deal song where Josh calls out Scott, the opener, and they sing together, but for some reason, Scott isn't coming out. Josh is calling for him, and it's getting awkward, so he sings a different song. When he finishes, Scott comes out on stage and they sing their song. What we all notice part way through the first verse is that Scott is hammered. I don't mean just a little tipsy. Totally plastered, and it was the funniest thing. You can see Josh trying not to lose his composure. I'm 95% sure this wasn't faked. If you want to see a clip, it's at the end of the video below. And then when Josh and the band are doing the big encore song, Scott runs out on stage part way through, grabs a drumstick and starts hitting a symbol. The drummer and the other band members had to hold up their hands to stop him from hitting it when he wasn't supposed to. It was pretty hilarious.

Here is some footage I shot. Please watch. It starts with Rainn and ends with Scott.