Josh Ritter & The Royal City Band

Last Tuesday night, I headed to Hollywood with my friend Julie, to see my favorite musician/songwriter, Josh Ritter, perform with The Royal City Band. This was my fifth time seeing Josh Ritter perform live and he never disappoints. What I love most, is how he uses concerts to play different variations of his songs. The entire vibe of a song changes dramatically when slowed down, sped up, or played with different instruments. Ritter always surprises during his concerts, including this one, where he played a new, never recorded song. 

This concert tour is in support of his latest album, Sermon on the Rocks, which was recorded last year in New Orleans. He played a majority of the new album, but also pepper the set with many favorites, like Girl in the War and Good Man. His encore included two of my all time favorite songs, The Temptation of Adam and To the Dogs or Whoever.  As with his previous shows, Ritter performed with an enthusiasm and joy that is simply infectious. 

The opening band was a folk band called Elephant Revival from Colorado. They had a woman playing a washboard, and another playing the fiddle. Good times! Admittedly some of their songs were a bit artsy and experimental for my taste, but others that leaned towards rock and singer-songwriter, appealed to me. The lead male singer has a wonderful, rich voice.

Normally, The Fonda Theatre is one of my favorite concert venues. It's small enough to feel intimate, not a bad view in the house. It's stylish ( if not a bit unusual in its art work) and the sound is excellent. This was my first time that I had a negative experience at The Fonda Theatre. We had tickets for seats in the balcony, which are first come/first serve. Arriving early, we secured great seats, not that any spot in the balcony would have provided a bad view.

The problem was the security working the balcony. One of the guards that was stationed to patrol the front of the balcony had his radio turned up high. Many songs in Ritter's set were quiet, and the guard's radio kept going off, interrupting the performance. Although concert goers in the balcony complained and shot him dirty looks, he did nothing about the noise level on his radio. He was also intrusive when it came to people sitting in the reserved section at the front of the balcony. Instead of waiting between songs to check their tickets, he would loudly barrel over and communicate with them mid-song, no matter how quiet the nature of the song. It was incredibly distracting and rude. Never once was his noise a necessity or something that couldn't have waited to take place between songs.

What I admire most about Ritter, is how within the economy of a song, he is able to tell a complete story with vibrant characters and unusual phrasing. His writing is emotional, honest, and surprising. Frustrating security guard aside, I left the concert feeling energized and inspired to get back to writing my novel. 

Trivia- Julie, who is German, told me that Ritter means "Knight" in German!

2014 Wrap-Up

If 2013 was a life-changing year, then 2014 was the aftermath. 2014 was the year of taking stock and moving forward.

I spent much of the first third of the year, dealing with my aunt's estate. This was emotional and stressful. It was my first experience with selling a house. Luckily, Dan found an amazing team of relators (Team Kociela with First Team in Tustin), who took care of everything and made the process as painless as possible. The house sold fast and for well above asking. My aunt and uncle had bought their house before I was born and it was very hard for me to let go of a home that held so many happy memories. Luckily, a nice family with a new baby bought it and at the risk of sounding sappy, I hope that they fill it with love and wonderful memories of their own. I especially hope that they have epic pool parties!

After selling my first home, I turned around and had my first experience buying a home. Dan and I are now proud owners of a house in Big Bear Lake. We have spent many weekends enjoying our mountain retreat and we have already made friendships with several locals. We are starting to feel like part of the community.

I spent about four months working as a professional dog walker. Unfortunately, the company that I worked for, folded. However, during the short amount of time that I worked, I got to know two of the sweetest dogs around, a Golden Retriever Puppy named Busy and an energetic Labradoodle named Milo. My stint as a dog walker nearly turned me from a cat to a dog person. Nearly. 

In 2014, we bought a Jeep Wrangler and took up a new hobby, Jeeping. We attended the Big Bear Jeep Jamboree and Big Bear Forest Fest. It's amazing how many trails are in our new backyard. We learned the real definition of JEEP ( Just. Empty. Every. Pocket.), as we got the bug to modify it, until it looked nothing like it did when we purchased it. We are looking forward to more events and modifications in the new year.

Between heading to Big Bear and our other travels, it felt like we were never home in 2014. We spent fifteen days, over four separate trips in Las Vegas, which included Jeeping in the Valley of Fire for the first time. Beautiful! We did a weekend in Chicago and we spent our first anniversary in Lake Tahoe, a place neither of us had visited previously. Our summer trip to Europe included three weeks in England and a little over a week in Sweden. It was great to finally see the country where my stepchildren live and to see their home/school/city. I ate Reindeer for the first time. Rudolph is delicious!

Life was filled up with other things, so I didn't go to as many plays, concerts or movies as I typically do. I did manage to see Josh Ritter, The Airborne Toxic Event and Britney Spears. The first two were phenomenal and the third was much better than I had anticipated. I finally got to see a touring production of The Book of Mormon. Hilarious!

I read fifty-two books and discovered both Booksparks and Netgalley. 

I've finished five writing classes towards my Fiction Certificate at UCLA Extension. More exciting than the actually classes, is I've made progress on a novel idea that I've been contemplating for years. 2014 has been creatively, very productive. 

2014 started off a mess, but the maelstrom has subsided and I'm entering 2015 calm and focused. I look forward to 2015!

Concert Review- Josh Ritter at the Wilshire Ebell

Last night was Christmas for Karen! 

After months of eager anticipation, it was finally time to see Josh Ritter at the Wilshire Ebell. The tickets were a Christmas present from my husband. The best Christmas present ever!

I'm a huge Josh Ritter fan. If there is a modern song-writer better than Ritter, I've not found them. In particular, Ritter's 2013 album, The Beast in Its Tracks is absolutely brilliant. On the album, Ritter writes songs revolving around his painful divorce and moving on. The lyrics are poignant and beautiful. It's the perfect album to listen to a few months after a bad break-up, when you might still be angry, but the anger has subsided enough to have a sense of perspective. 

We arrived at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre shortly before the doors opened at seven. The theatre holds 1270 patrons and was nearly, maybe even completely, sold-out. It was packed. As soon as we entered the theatre, I made a beeline for the merch table.

I had come prepared to buy a tee-shirt. I love my Josh Ritter tee with lyrics from his song Kathleen, that I purchased at a show a few years ago. I wear it all of the time. The merch table on this tour had solid offerings, including several shirts. Unfortunately, only one guy was manning the table and he was swamped. It was difficult to get a good look at the items or to take time deciding. I ended up picking the only "girl shirt", which was bright yellow with flowers. It's pretty, but I'm not sure that the yellow is a good color for me. Unfortunately, it will likely be relegated to sleepwear. 

We had great seats in the second row to the left of the stage. It was a quiet show, where people stayed seated for the entire performance. I was thrilled to be sitting so close to the stage. 

The opener was Gregory Alan Isakov, who with two of his best friends, performed as a trio from Colorado. Instrumentally, they sounded beautiful, but Isakov's lyrics were muffled with bad sound mixing. It was difficult to hear him and as we were not familiar with his music, it was hard to appreciate. All, but one, of their songs were very down-beat, making for a melancholy opening set. I will have to check out his stuff on Spotify to see if I like it. It wasn't bad, but we were not blown away by the set.

Ritter, along with Zack Hickman and Josh Kaufman, took the stage promptly at nine and kicked off a two-hour set with the Best for the Best. This is my fourth Ritter concert and this was by far, the most unusual set-list. Yes, he played plenty of his hits, but he also played a ton of his quieter songs, songs that tend to get lost in the shuffle. He even explained this by calling those songs his wallflowers, those songs who would stand by the food table at a party. 

The set list was very different from when he visited Los Angeles last March. It was a good change though. I was elated to finally hear one of my favorite Ritter songs, Monster Ballads, done live. I also was thrilled that he did The Temptation of Adam, one of the best pieces of storytelling that I've ever heard set to music. Ritter is a master storyteller. I was hoping that he would do an acapella version of Change of Time, which I was blown away by the first time I saw him in concert. It would have been a good fit for this set-list of quiet tunes.

As always, it's a joy to see Ritter perform. His smile is infectious. He clearly loves what his doing and appears to be humbled by his success. Although he has a strong fan base, he always feels accessible to his audience. During several songs, he encouraged audience participation, having everyone sing along. The best moments were when he abandoned the microphone and sang at the apron of the stage. The theatre was dead silent, everyone locked in to Ritter's voice. He is dynamic. 

I left the show feeling awestruck. I wish that I was even a smidge as talented of a writer as Ritter.