We got into Helsinki at 4pm yesterday, as the sun was going down and the temperatures were dropping from frigid to the sub-zeroes. The wind was doing its whipping and the hotel bar was populated with people who didn’t look out of place wearing large, chunky sweaters. Plus, the hotel had one of the things I was most excited about seeing in Finland: a real sauna. I decided to stay in.

I changed and headed to the basement, but when I got there it was the usual type of hotel sauna, a little larger perhaps, and currently populated by two Catalonians. The sauna was lackluster, its heat regulated by thermostat to insure nobody died and no fun was had. I picked up enough of the conversation between the Catalonians to learn that Andalusian women are the most beautiful in the world.

After supper with the Swell Season folks I did a little research and found the experience I was looking for: Sauna Kotiharju Oy. It was across town, and apparently the only traditional wood-burning sauna in city limits. It’s been going for 80 years and there were a few descriptions in English that made it look promising. I decided to go the next afternoon before soundcheck.

I suffer from bus-lag, meaning that in the middle of a bus tour the sudden switch from a rolling, rocking cradle bunk to a stationary hotel bed always keeps me awake. I fell asleep for a few hours and then spent the next four in my room asking myself large life questions in the darkness. This morning, however, I dragged myself out of bed, down to breakfast and then, wondering whether it was a good idea to go to a sauna when I was so tired and bed looked so good. I wavered.

But I’m in Helsinki! How could I not go out there? I jumped in a cab and the cab driver whisked me across town through icy streets to the techno beat of a song with the worst lyrics I have ever heard.

So come back
I totally miss you
You can call me
In dreams I see your face
No one else can take your place…

My favorite line was “I totally miss you.”

The taxi driver dropped me at the entrance to Sauna Kotiharju Oy, just as it opened. I told the man behind the desk that it was my first time in a Finnish sauna, and he told me not to worry and just head in…

I’ve come prepared for all eventualities. I have my swim trunks, a tee-shirt, a towel from the hotel and two beers (which I’m told is what one drinks in the locker room between sauna sessions). It turns out the only thing I really needed to bring is the beer and even that is sold behind the counter.

The lockers are wooden and have definitely been here since the sauna opened 80 years ago. Perhaps it’s the Finnish language, which is totally incomprehensible to me, or perhaps it’s the sense that this place is as steeped in tradition as it is in steam, but I have become suddenly bashful and aware that whatever it is I may be doing is probably the wrong thing to do. The only thing to do in such circumstances is to charge ahead and wait for someone to tell you you’re doing it wrong. So I charge ahead, or rather, take off my clothes and step into the darkness of the sauna.

The first thought to jump into my head is, “So this is where they keep the wizards.” The men who are already there are old, some of them very, very old. The oldest ones, quite skinny and with long beards, are seated on the top level of a 90 square foot room. To the left as I enter, the wood-fired furnace blazes away. I am aware instantly of two things; first, that the sauna isn’t that hot. Not the kind of hot I was expecting, anyway. The second thing I realize is that there is a definite and established hierarchy to the assembly. Not knowing a word of Finnish, naked and about thirty years younger than any other man in the room, I elect to sit on the third step down. “Apprentice level” I think to myself. I close my eyes and listen to the fire burning, to the old men talking (probably not about Andalusian women) and feel proud of myself for finding this place. After a few minutes some more guys come in, and I use this commotion to quietly move up one more level. It’s definitely warmer here, but still not the kind of withering heat I expected. I’m enjoying myself, though. A man comes and starts talking to me. He’s about seventy. I tell him I’m sorry, but I don’t understand him, and he turns around and begins to sit where I’m sitting. This is complicated and made quite a bit more awkward by the fact that we’re both naked. I scoot to the right just in time, and I realize I’ve probably been sitting in the seat this guy has been sitting in every Saturday for twenty years.

It’s getting hot now, but what the Hell? I’ve been standing my ground, and I’ve been watching how everything works. The oldest guy, the one sitting high up in the hottest section, occasionally says something and one of the other guys gets down, and lifts a lever on the furnace. Water can be heard gushing down onto the hot rocks that sit on a grill above the fire. The whole furnace looks like a scaled down model of a sooty Parisian row-house. Then the guy climbs back up until it’s time for someone to climb back down and add more steam. When someone leaves the sauna they give a good blast of steam to heat up the air that might come in the open door to the showers. I’m watching all of this, and I’m starting to sweat, so I decide to climb up another level, to the top row.

I stand up and duck quickly back down. The heat up there is almost viscous. It’s not like air anymore, so much as a burning liquid. My hair feels like a burning badger pelt. I can feel the eyes of these old guys on me. They know I’m a tourist and they’re watching me carefully to see what else I’m going to do wrong. They’re probably also not expecting me to be able to cut it sitting up there with them. Feeling I have something to prove, I duck down like someone approaching a helicopter, and slide carefully up onto the top ledge, sweating freely and now unconcerned with anything but the all-consuming temperature and humidity.

I make it about ten minutes up there, and then, when the old guy calls out, I use it as an excuse to get down. I pull the lever as I’ve seen the others do, until the old man calls out. Then I leave and head to the showers. After the par-boiling I’ve just gotten, I’m in no mind to do things by half now. The shower is frigid and I jump under. It is so cold that I feel my joints squeaking.

I head to the locker room for a beer. It’s 1:30 in the afternoon, but this is the way it’s done. I pop it open and sit in my towel looking at magazine pictures of Finnish people doing outlandish things like jumping in the ocean with icebergs. The beer tastes delicious, crisp and cold. My body has no idea what’s going on, so at least this part is familiar. I drink it and then, like an old hand at all this, I fill up a bucket with cold water and head back into the sauna. This time I don’t mess around. I take my seat up near the top and I cook for another ten minutes. Then the beer kicks in. Wow. I’ve been told that sauna is healthy for you, so whether the spinning in the room is normal or not, I know that whatever the effects of the sauna are, it’s definitely doing something for me. I stick it out another five minutes and then hit the showers again.

*

I’m in the dressing room now and the Swell Season are sound checking. I am in the grips of the kind of relaxed lethargy that one gets from ecstatic or traumatic experiences, and feel as if I’ve been violently wrung out and set to dry on a radiator. The set tonight may be slightly more lugubrious thanks to my trip into Sauna Kotiharju Oy, but it was totally, totally worth it.

I’m backstage at the Tradgar in Goteborg, Sweden. The river is ice, but the people are warm. And the coffee, for a reason I’ll never quite understand, is seen to with special care here. Maybe it’s the frosted, aspirin color of the light that leaves everyone wanting a beverage that tastes as spartan as the landscape. We’ve been having great shows, the Swell Season and I. After a little time to get back in the groove of a thirty minute solo opening set, I found my feet finally, and am now rolling into each night with a real sense of excitement.

These halls are gorgeous. In Vienna we played in the Museumsquartier, and I went to museums and walked around in the cold until I found hot wine. I had one and then I had another as I watched people ice skate to techno. After that I walked around city hall. Vienna has the only monumental marble buildings I have ever seen that still somehow manage to be graceful. It’s no surprise that the waltz comes from here; the three quarter time rhythm is tremendously solid, but like these huge granite buildings it somehow avoids being stocky, and lifts itself with real beauty. I loved it and took full advantage of my day off there. I even managed to do laundry.

The next night we played in Dresden, where, just the day before the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden, we played the Alter Schlacthof, the “old slaughterhouse.” The people here were fired up! I love watching the Swell Season each night and playing with them towards the end of their show. It’s great to see people find genuine success based upon talent, determination and vision.

In Berlin we drank absinthe in a tiny place beneath the Admiralspalast, a jewel-bow of a room with a many-faceted brooch of a chandelier hanging high up in the middle of the hall. Even in my suit I felt slightly underdressed.

In Hamburg I went for a long run along a canal and listened as old women yelled at their dogs to get finished with their business so that the old women could get out of the freezing weather. I also ate some of the worst Indian food of my young life. I like spicy things. I generally enjoy a culinary challenge. The sign for this place, which featured an elephant on fire, was promising, but sadly I’ve found more spice in school lunches.

Last night we were in Copenhagen and the show was brilliant. The venue was brand new, shaped like a Dell Computer box and visible for miles. I put on my running shoes and took to the frozen bike paths, past architecture that was so futuristic that i may never live long enough to see it anywhere else. It was like an intelligent race of benevolent aliens landed and built homes for the populace. In the falling snow they looked like half-submerged survival pods. I saw a woman in a black dress walking far ahead of me. Against the field of white she looked like a keyhole.

In Goteburg the people are beautiful. And intelligent. I walked into town and instantly felt out of place. I went to a barber shop and by grunt and making pincer motions with my hands got a haircut. Still, somehow, I feel that I am still not the most beautiful person in town. Ah well…

I’m working hard on my novel right now, deep in the editing process, which is a brand new experience to me. Every morning I get up and get out of the bus, find the dressing room and work on the book for a few hours. It’s called Bright’s Passage and it will be published by The Dial Press in (hopefully) the summer of next year. I am thrilled about it! I’ll keep you up to date on what’s happening there.

Lots of tour dates to be announce, lots of new album news, lots of things to come. Thank you all for an exciting year so far!

Rock,
Josh

Chadelier Admiralspalast





Dressing room stuff





Frozen river, Berlin





Frozen river, Goteburg





Glen and Simon, late night at the Cafe Lange, Vienna





I don’t know either





Kunst Historiche Museum, Vienna




>
Men and women in Copenhagen





Rehearsal





Somewhere in Germany





The “Gym” in Dresden





The venue in Copenhagen

Hello All!

I’m sitting backstage in Zurich, in what looks to be the retired throne of some Habsburg Prince. It is gilt-laden and has the kind of crushed velvet that might look tacky anywhere but here, in this jewel box of a city. Today is the first day I’m really over my jet lag. Experience has taught me that for the first three or four days of a tour in Europe I just have to let myself go where the winds of lag take me. If I’m tired (and not on stage) I sleep, and if I’m hungry, I eat. Gradually the good old pineal gland in the reptilian part of my brain aligns itself to the light cycle and I start to fall into the rhythms of morning, coffee, run, lunch, wander, work, soundcheck and show.

This is my fourth night on the road with the Swell Season, and it will be the third show. The first two were in Prague and Brno in the Czech Republic and I was just getting my feet under me after as long time of not playing solo. Today, though, it’s 4 p.m. and I already have my suit on.



To describe the cities we’ve been in I would have to use all the same old adjectives that you’ve read before, so I’ll try to avoid a straight forward accounting. Suffice to say that Prague wows even those who have been there before and aren’t looking to get wowed. Art seems to spring up from everywhere, and the omnipresence of decoration new and old makes the new art seem on a par with the old art and vice versa. Stoop shouldered statues, mysterious saints, concert posters, enormous metronomes, cathedral spires, communist-era TV towers; it’s all there for your eyes to see if you’re looking.

Brno is set in an area that reminds me a lot of the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. It was covered with deep snow, but I found a trail and ran on it into the woods. It was about 3 in the afternoon, and the sun was starting to dip behind the mountains. Before it did though, I came upon a small church with a golden dove set into its spire. The sun hit the dove at that exact moment and the whole church seemed to catch fire. It was as if whoever built the church had built it for that exact moment in the day.

Last night we stopped in Munich and went to the Deutchesmuseum and then to a beer hall and then came over night to Zurich. Tomorrow we cross over the Alps and down into Italy! Much more to come!

My Very Best,
Josh

Prague.



Prague in Winter.



The Lucerna, Prague.



Zurich.



Two headed cathedral dog, Zurich.



*

Hello again all!

Currently it is COLD here in New York. Really cold. Idaho cold. I trudged against the wind today, finding my way to and from the dentist without freezing anything too major off. Now I’m packing for my trip to join the Swell Season in Europe for the next month. I am thrilled to be joining my old friends on this exciting trip. For one thing, it is such a pleasure to be able to spend time with them. Since things started getting busier several years ago, we’ve seen less and less of each other. Now we get the chance to hang again, and I am really looking forward to it.

Secondly, we are going all over Europe, beginning with the Czech Republic and from there to points exotic from Zurich to Helsinki. I’ll be in touch with photos, notes and maybe a few recordings as well. It’s going to be great, so stay tuned. Also, anyone that wants to say hello, I’ll be out front after the shows each night!



I have an amazing band. They rock, they roll with the punches, they keep me on my feet and are patient with me when I keep them on theirs. As we enter into what will be a busy touring year, we decided that it’s time that they had a name. Guitarist extraordinaire Austin Nevins spearheaded this project, soliciting names from the rest of the band and from some of our nearest and dearest. We had some amazing, good, and hilarious entries, and the band and I voted on our favorites, narrowing the selections down to a single name. Who says Americans have lost their touch with the democratic process?

The winning name was “The Royal City Band,” and we’re very happy with it and excited to start using it.

The winning name was suggested by Rich Kassirer, brother of Sam Kassirer and editor of modernacoustic.com, and we thank him and Austin for it!

So, while I’ll be touring solo with the Swell Season for the next month, upon my return “Josh Ritter and the Royal City Band” will be starting rehearsals for the big spring tour.


Thank You To Everyone, and see you all soon!

My Very Best,
Josh

Hello All!

I’ve been away from this blog for quite awhile, but I’m back now and ready to get started on a pretty big 2010. I can’t help feeling a certain need to account for what I’ve been doing over my time between posts. So, with the New Year, comes Book of Jubilations, a new posting site for your faithful, fitful roving correspondent-at-large. Many thanks to Doug Rice for setting it up!

I’ve been busy. My new album is done, and as I write we’re just tying up the loose ends and, dotting the t’s and crossing the eyes.

It’s a big, big sounding record and it is a major monkey that we’re releasing from its cage over the next several months. My band and I have never worked harder on a record and I think that it’s going to show.

Over the next little while we’ll be rolling out details and dates, but I am jolted from my mid-winter reverie each time I think about how stupendously awesome it is going to be to be playing shows with this gaggle of new songs.

Some of you know that I’ve been writing other things besides song for a while now. Over the last several years I’ve worked on ideas for several books, only to slink away after a short while to begin again at the beginning. Well, I’m proud to say that these last couple months have been good, productive ones as far as my first novel is concerned. More details on that to follow as well.

I’ve never been much of a New Years kind of guy, but these last couple of months have been incredibly productive, and 2010 is looking like the biggest year yet. I’ll be in close touch this year, so be on the lookout and check back to Book of Jubilations often!

My Very Best,
Josh

…new blog entries from Josh Ritter, chiming in from backstage, or the tour bus, or home, or most likely an airport terminal.

Until then, check out Josh’s latest blogs on his Myspace page, and for the latest touring information visit his official site.

More to come!