Josh Ritter @ Showbox Sodo (2/22/11)
On occasion I have produced a graph for my reviews, and if I wasn’t chronically behind on my writing I would have made one for this show. It would be a standard bell curve, and it would demonstrate that the amount to which a band plans out their performance is directly related to how enjoyable the show is to watch. When a band is completely unprepared it’s a nightmare, but it’s possible to go the other way; if a band is too prepared the show can appear stiff and staged. Boring. The perfect show comes with a good amount of preparation but a willingness to remain flexible and engage with the audience.
Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit opened Josh Ritter’s show from a few weeks back (I told you– chronically behind!) and he was in fine form, hopping and strumming and carousing his way around the stage. In a perfectly long 40 minute set Hutchison managed to play roughly 10 songs, including a cover and an old FR track, take requests, duet with his brother Grant, tell stories, and make the audience laugh at every turn. Scott was loose, funny, relaxed, and self deprecating– it was everything missing from the last Frightened Rabbit show that I attended.
Much like that video, the set was clearly not overly rehearsed and Hutchison messed up more than once. On the graph that I didn’t make he would have fallen a bit to the left of the curve, but if Charlie Sheen has taught us anything it’s that we love a little unpredictability in our public performances.
If Hutchison fell a little to the left of that curve, Ritter fell just as far to the right. Check out “To The Dogs Or Whoever” live on Letterman.
Josh Ritter is a born performer. Whether finger picking and gently whispering “Thin Blue Flame” or cupping hands around his mouth to bellow “Rattling Locks”, he has his performance style down pat. Plenty of comparisons are made between Ritter and Bob Dylan, and it’s more than just the style of music they share. It’s the carefully cultivated live experience: the backing band of older men, the overly formal outfits, the pencil thin mustache, the bass guitar set so loud so that the lead/rhythm guitars are only audible during solos. I can’t believe that any of those touches in Ritter’s show are accidental, and especially for the first few songs it felt a little too planned to be really organic or fun.
Fortunately, Ritter was eventually able to relax. Banter with the audience. Improvise. Deviate from the script enough that it became a shared experience– he gave a shout out to the protesters in Egypt; he brought the brothers Hutchison on stage; he made fun of Eastern Washington’s penchant for tacky decorations and bad coffee. He had fun, and that is the overwhelming impression that I took from this show: Ritter’s unabashed joy. For as staged as everything else was, that smile could not have been faked. It was infectious, and by the end of the show Ritter had the crowd enveloped in his sweet folksy haze. It was a nice counterpoint to Hutchison’s boozy, self-deprecating aura, and the two worked perfectly together as tour mates. Does anyone else smell a potentially awesome collaboration in the air?
