Book of Jubilations : Josh Ritter's blog

My Piece For 'The Irish Times'

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 19:57:07 -0400

I had the idea in my mind of what it took to be a real writer. Time, of course, brilliance, of course, voluminous correspondence and wry wit were all necessary to the profession, as were ink-stained foolscap, a gabled study and cups of coffee going cold by the hot fires of genius. Of course the life would be a rural one, and solitary; real writers are always difficult to know and impossible to live with. Sure, there’d probably be a few raggedy-eared barn cats around to keep the mice away and to lend their yowly voices to the private griefs and satisfactions of the day’s work. At times there would be visitors come to stoke the muse. There would be raucous, all night bouts of drinking with similarly difficult, nearly-as-brilliant writers licking their wounds after yet another marriage bust-up. Impressionable ballerinas would visit from the city for doses of wild ravaging, lusty, unstable heiresses, too, if the author was really lucky. Oh, to get up at five each morning, start the fire, boil the coffee and plunk myself down at my huge, beautiful desk, my mind already a-whir with ideas. What a life it must be! How different, how much more exotic it must be than the life of, say, a touring rock musician.

I’d been writing songs since I was seventeen, and in some ways I’d always considered myself a writer. I put time and real care into the lyrics. I wrote with pens in notebooks wherever I was, be it in chemistry class, on the way to a track meet, or in a movie theater. When I began my life as a touring musician this habit didn’t change. Instead the range of places I wrote in broadened vastly. Airports, drive-throughs, hotels, motels, first dates, last dates, customs detention rooms, English health clinics, dressing rooms and festival trailers. I’d prided myself on being able to write a song whenever and wherever the song should occur to me. And so it seems strange that whenever the urge to write a novel struck me I’d let it slip away for such a trivial obstacle as not having a desk. Nothing, I thought, as monumental as a novel could be birthed on the road. For that kind of serious writing a whole other lifestyle was needed, a whole other lifestyle and, most importantly, a big, beautiful desk.

So much more than a slab of wood, a writer’s desk was, all at once, an altar to the craft, a cradle, and an interstellar portal. Never mind that for my entire writing life I’d been writing at my kitchen table, with my guitar on my knee and a pen and notebook handy, if I wanted to be a real writer, I would need a desk. It would have to be large and sturdy enough to support the weight of my material, and it would need a history. The U.S. President’s desk is made from the wood of the Resolute, a ship that had been trapped in the Arctic ice and abandoned in the 1850’s. My desk would have to be something like that except a lot cooler. It would have secret compartments and it would have spent time in a castle turret or an occult lodge. The legs would be carved into the shapes of violins and dragonheads. On that desk, late at night, with only the barn cats for company I would pound, pound, pound against the gates of American Literature.

Unfortunately a desk as magical as the one I had in mind would weigh about the same as a Honda, but unlike the Honda getting it from one place to the next would be impossible. And without the desk, how could I write my novel? Without the desk how could the words flow? Where would they land without the desk to catch them? Without the desk what would become of the skeet-shooting, the paranoia, the mistresses and the uppers? The desk was the foundation of it all; without it I wasn’t a real writer. I kept traveling and kept writing songs, because of course for songs you don’t need a home and you don’t need a desk. I had ideas for a novel, but without the sedentary trappings of the novelist they fell away to the side after a few fruitless days of half-hearted jotting.

And then, one day I wrote a song about a man who begins to receive instructions from a voice he takes for an angel. The commands, handed down with quiet, calm insistence, seem trivial and random in nature and appear to have little to do with any heavenly plan. I finished the song with excitement and let it sit for a day to see how I felt about it. Coming back the next day I found that something about it felt wrong. The story in my mind was huge and the song, for all of my work over the next week did nothing to bring me the feeling of completion that is the reward of a song well-written. I sat with that song a little more. Then a little more. I sat with it in my kitchen and I sat with it on airplanes. I sat with it on a train to Boston. That goddamn song was wrong and I couldn’t figure it out.

The song was wrong, I finally realized, because it wasn’t a song. That goddamn song was a goddamn novel! This thunderclap was followed immediately by rain. Without a desk there would be no novel. I was living in a third-floor walk-up in Brooklyn, not in some remote, rocky outcrop, and my marriage was falling absolutely to pieces. According to my idea of what it takes to write a novel this last part should have made me feel eminently qualified to begin, but instead all I felt was sad.

Still, now that the story was there in front of me, I found that I couldn’t let it go. It couldn’t be a song, and I couldn’t bring the desk with me, so I would have to let go of one of my cherished presuppositions about writing and just do my best to write a novel without a desk. Knowing no other way to be a writer than the writer I already was, I wrote Bright’s Passage in the very same places I had written songs. I wrote on airplanes, sandwiched between enormous Texans, in airport bars, early in the morning on tour buses, after shows, before shows. I wrote the first draft in a month and a half writing one thousand words a day. I edited the thing for another year. I used a laptop with food stuck between the keys. I wore headphones and listened to Radiohead and Aphex Twin the whole time.

Did I feel more like a real writer once I’d completed Bright’s Passage? No. Aside from once editing while sitting in a café in Vienna (how could you not feel like a real writer?) I was still the same person stringing words together that I had always been when writing songs. Could the book have been better if it had been written at a desk in the woods? I’ll never know. The only thing I know looking back at the writing of my first novel is that I staked out the ground and defended it. I made for myself that space of time each day without fail, and I wrote Henry Bright’s story regardless of whether I felt like a real writer or not. When I was finished it was the very best that I could do and I was proud, and still am, of the result. Will I now go out and buy a real desk? Probably not. I love my life and I love the travel and I love how well novel-writing has fit itself in alongside songwriting and performing. The real desk isn’t one with four legs and a filing cabinet, it’s the space of time that you stake out every day, and the will with which you defend it. Still, that doesn’t mean I won’t keep my eyes open for a real find…

Rhabdo!

Wed, 09 May 2012 21:38:58 -0400

Hi All!

I am using this occasion to officially re-start Book of Jubilations. I had been keeping a fairly steady journal going until last year, when things went off the rails and couldn’t quite seem to get back on. I started Book of Jubilations because I saw a real lack of first-hand advice on making a life in music. People would ask me questions after shows, write me letters or send me albums that they’d made, wondering aloud how they could make a career in music for themselves. I always wanted to answer them in greater detail than time allowed. So I got the idea for Book of Jubilations. You see, making a living doing something you love isn’t only about making a living (in fact for many that’s not even a possibility) its about making a life. That means building friendships, respecting your own limitations, taking pleasure in your own creativity and in the creativity of others, and always, always, always reminding yourself to enjoy the moment you’re in. I felt that lots of musicians getting started had all the same questions I’d had when I first began playing, and I wanted to I wanted Book of Jubilations to offer up some pragmatic advice and encouragement that those just beginning might find useful. Book of Jubilations would also help me, I thought, as an ongoing reminder to keep my eyes open and to stay interested and feeling fortunate for all the aspects of this weird life that has become my own. Things got very busy last year, however, and I had to put Jubilations aside for awhile. I was just thinking about when and how I would start it back up again when I woke up one morning a few weeks back in more pain than I’ve ever been.

As many of you know, I’ve been a runner for a long time. Running is a perfect exercise for me. I’ve done three marathons and have made an hour-long run part of my daily schedule for years now. But a few weeks ago, I pushed myself a bit too hard in my workout. Over the course of a few days I got increasingly sore. I had difficulty pulling my clothes on by myself. It was tough to fall asleep and even tougher to stay asleep. That morning in inched painfully out of bed and saw that my muscles had begun to swell up. Not aware of any specific top-secret government Hulk-serum I might have been given, and notwithstanding that I was looking pretty damn good, I took the sudden change in physique as mildly disturbing. I told my partner, Haley, and after a quick perusal of my symptoms on the Internet, she dragged me kicking and screaming out to the car. A short time later I was in the emergency room.

All kinds of tests followed, and with the results came a flurry of activity around the bed. I.V.’s were set up to dump saline into my body, and I was sent down the hall for chest x-rays. My teeth had begun to chatter and, most alarmingly to me, my muscles had continued to swell and were now looking truly freakish. My body was beginning to look like someone else’s. What had begun with a nice day at home was turning into something terrifying.

A doctor came in and told me what we’d suspected. I had a case of acute exertional rhabdomyolysis, a condition caused by a breakdown of muscle fiber content into the bloodstream. The level of muscle breakdown can be measured by the presence of creatine phosphokinase (CPK). A normal, everyday walking around level of CPK in the bloodstream is between 60-100 units. At time of admittance, my blood levels measured 270,000 units. Human kidneys are good at a whole bunch of stuff, and mine have seen me through a good thirty-five years with nary a peep. But kidneys aren’t designed to handle the outrageous amounts of muscle fiber protein that was floating around in my blood. My liver enzymes as well were skyrocketing. Unfortunately, there was little that could be done but keep the I.V.’s going full throttle and hope that damage to my kidneys was minimized. It was all wait and see. One thing was for certain however: if I’d spent the night at home my kidneys would have failed and I would have died.

So, over the next six days I watched a lot of daytime T.V., read a bunch, and got my blood taken by a lot of friendly nurses. I also spent a lot of time thinking about mortality. Here I’d been muddling through a day, a little sore but generally feeling fine, and all the while I was only hours away from death. There was no moment of clarity, no life flashing before the eyes, no drawn-out struggle or jet malfunction. The edge was close and I had skated along it, never knowing that it was there. I’m still thinking about that.

And what role did my songs and my writing play in those thoughts? Very little. I didn’t think about work. I’d been writing up a storm in those past several weeks, working on my new album and deep in the second draft of my second novel, but none of those things had any space in my mind during those hours between blood tests as I waited to find out if my kidneys were still working. As you can imagine, it’s hard to write when preoccupied with kidney failure. In addition, I was so swollen up that it was just plain uncomfortable to do anything but wonder at Wendy Williams. I got calls and visits from my friends and family. My band was in close touch day and night, and I heard from hundreds of people who wished me well. It drove home to me just how huge the Life part of making a life in music really is. It’s easy to forget, in the midst of writing songs, recording records and playing shows that none of these things on their own constitute a Life. That, my friends, is what brought me back to Book of Jubilations. While I was in the hospital I got the chance to see just how many good people I am lucky enough to call my friends. Many, if not most, I have met through doing what I love. Musicians, novelists, promoters, graphic artists, chefs, tax accountants, business managers, booking agents, managers, and above all avid music lovers. Somehow, along the way toward making a career writing and performing songs, I’ve also met an extended family that has made my life incalculably richer. I wish that outcome for every new artist and I hope that Jubilations will help them as they move forward.

Today I’m sitting in my own kitchen very happy to be alive. My CPK levels are almost back to normal, and while I haven’t been allowed to exercise for a little while, I’m feeling a little less sluggish than when I first checked out of the hospital. And I’m looking forward to what this year is bringing! There are going to be awesome shows all over the world, a new album and novel on the way and lots of cool ideas about what I want to do next. Through all of that I’ll be continuing Book of Jubilations in the hope that it is inspiring, interesting, and useful.

My huge thanks to all of you for your support, goodwill and generosity. I count myself profoundly lucky to know you.

Rock!
Josh

Next week: Exercise! It won’t kill you.

A Day Off in Missoula

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Posted on Feb 21, 2011

Hey All!

We’re in Missoula, Montana. It’s half-way through the tour and we’ve had all kinds of weather up to this point, but the last seven hundred miles or so have been particularly interesting. Dickinson, North Dakota was the coldest I’ve been for awhile. The wind was like a sentient thing, seeming to shake the snow like clean sheets hanging on the line. The snow itself was dry as sand. I thought about young Theodore Roosevelt, who after the death of his first wife and his mother on the same day, lit out for the territories and found a semblance of peace and a measure of distraction in the same blustery emptiness that we were in. North Dakota is the kind of place where the wind never just whispers in your ear.

The first order of the day was laundry. Finding a way to do laundry on the road is one of the perennial battles. Rolling down the highway in a tightly-enclosed air canister filled with men who sweat for a living, clean clothes on occasion aren’t just a luxury, they’re a necessity. So, clothes done, I went to the gym. I like Holiday Inn Expresses because they always have a gym and the machines always work. Run done, I got together with Sam, Zack, and Tim and we watched the All-Star game. After seeing them play, I came to the basic conclusion that, like playing the Dane, I may very well never be a professional basketball player.

At around 9 p.m. we all trudged back through the blizzard from the hotel lobby to the bus and Les Wethington, our great bus driver popped his head back to make sure we were all aboard. It doesn’t do to leave compatriots behind in blizzards. Then we steamed west once more, driving through the night to Missoula.

Days off are great. They’re a chance to reflect on the show, on the tour and on the other parts of life that require more attention than can sometimes be given to them on show days. It’s also, oddly, a chance to see the people we’re traveling with. On show days we all head off in different directions as soon as the bus stops at the venue. I’ll get a taxi to a radio station, Zack will begin setting up guitars, Sam sets up his gear, Liam and Austin and Tim and Dan set up the stage and Brian sets up merch. With all the stuff to do there’s usually only time for a sandwich, let alone much stray socializing. Days off area chance to catch up with eachother.

Right now, Zack and I are in the hotel lobby in Missoula. Zack is working on getting a horn section together for an upcoming show. He has a pair of very large headphones on. I’m drinking cup after cup of rot-gut coffee and feeling pretty great about how all the shows have been going. There is always a sense of trepidation before I start a tour. I’m afraid I’ll forget the words, and I’m afraid that in the interim between tours people will have decided that they don’t want to come to my shows anymore. When neither of these things happen, it feels like a miracle, and I’m always grateful for a few of those. People have been singing along in the coolest spots of the songs. During “Rattling Locks,” lots of folks sing the “black hole, black hole” part, which I find super cool. People know the new songs way better than I would have expected. It’s really, deeply gratifying. Also, people are really enjoying Scott Hutchison, of Frightened Rabbit, who’s been opening the shows. Besides being a big, scary Scotsman, he’s also a lovely guy and a great performer.

So, on this rare second day off in a row, I find myself clean laundried, mostly groomed, away from sandwiches for a blessed second day, and grateful that there are still so many shows to come. See you all very soon.

Best,
Josh

Making a Life in Music, Vol. 7: "The Unexpected Italian Renaissance"

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Posted on December 22, 2010

I’m up in the mountains. High up. There is snow lying a foot and a half deep on the ground. It weighs down the boughs of the pine trees and sits on the steeply-gabled rooftops. Cloud fronts creep in and creep out, seeping around the bare, jagged peaks, and although the world up there in the rocks looks cold and ragged, I am impressed again and again as I crunch through the snow by the quiet. It is so quiet here. There is, of course, the creek. You can hear that for a ways as what little water thaws on the slopes makes its way down the river to the valley far below me. And there is also the occasional whoosh as some heavy bank of snow slips off the branch it has piled up on and whumps to the ground below. It is a sound that seems magnified in the stillness, like the sound of a girl pulling her heavy hair away from her sweatered shoulders and letting it fall back again. It is a beautiful sound, and I am the only one to hear it. It is so easy to take sound for granted. Indeed, most of the time in the city we have to let sound wash over us. Here it is so cold that sound travels far and freely, and yet there is so little of it. A woodpecker flies along just in front of me, cheeping at me and pecking resonantly at the trunks along my path. I’ve been told that there are mountain lions here. Their prints have been seen in the snow. If I encounter one, my only chance is to make myself look “big and healthy.” I think of what I’d want to eat if I was a mountain lion, and I wonder at the wisdom of this advice. Still, it is so quiet that I doubt even a mountain lion could sneak up on me unawares as I walk.

I slept last night for a long time, the first long time in a long time.

Please forgive my long absence. I’ve been knocked sideways and things came to a screeching halt for a while there. What flooded into this silence are memories and it occurs to me that some of what I’ve been writing in this series can be useful, but some of it should also be proof that some of the best moments come unexpectedly.

Here’s one:

I was on my first tour on a tour bus, opening for Joan Baez. We were in Italy, it was summertime, and we were heading south. About nine in the morning something in the air conditioning broke down. Buses are fickle, fragile things and stuff is always breaking down. Buses are also large, metallic cylinders, essentially rolling heat-conductors. They are also closed environments, that, not unlike submarines, are closed environments that depend on circulated air for the comfort of the people inside. Shut off the supply of circulated air and things get freaky freakily fast.

Everyone was asleep when the AC gave its final wheeze and not long after that I woke up, blazing hot, sweating and crazed as a rabid horse. I shot my head out of the curtains in my bunk and saw Crook, Joan’s tour manager, sticking his head out of his bunk, no less crazed than I was. Within a very few minutes everyone was up and down the stairs (most European tour buses are double deckers, making the heat even more pronounced) and trying open a window. The bus pulled over to the side of the road not long after, and everyone piled groggily out onto the road. Southern Italy in the summertime is hot and the heat rose in shimmers despite the early hour. There were vineyards on both sides of the road, and craggy olive trees with rusty-looking trunks. The driver was out from behind the wheel and while not exactly scratching his head, was certainly looking more than a little put out. Joan came out of the bus and tilted her head down the road as she caught my eye. “Come on.”

When Joan Baez tells you to come on, you come on. The road we were on was a narrow two-lane blacktop with steep ditches to either side to catch the rain, as if when the rains came they came hard and fast. I noticed that people left beautiful playing cards in the ditches alongside the vineyards. Perhaps it was ritual. The cars flew by us as we walked, as if everyone was practicing for the Italian Grand Prix. The red sign of a gas station came wavering into view. We kept walking and about ten minutes later pushed through the doorway into the frigid calm of the little place. I can’t remember which of us it was that got the idea to drink a beer, but I remember that beer very well. It was a large silver drum of some light Italian variety and we bought two from the man at the counter and went back outside to sit on the curb and sip and wait for the bus to come and find us. When you’re on tour with Joan Baez you can be sure that as long as you stay near her no one is leaving without you. So we sat there sipping and talking in the sunlight and it was about as great a moment as you could imagine it would be. Something about it, perhaps it was Italy, perhaps it was the unexpected stop or the even more unexpected beer, seemed festive; a moment in need of celebrating. Over the years since then I’ve grown to realize that moments like those are the real reason for touring. You can never tell when they’re going to come along. Often they occur as a result of something breaking down, be it plans or machinery. When something goes wrong, the things that are going right become all the more obvious and important. Plans change all the time on the road. Things break. The only thing to do on a regular basis is to adapt and make the unexpected moments count for something. Use them. Joan, in tilting her head down the road and taking me for an early morning beer was teaching me to make the most of the unexpected moments. It’s a lesson I owe to her and one that I’ve never forgotten. What happened next, though, made the moment indelible.

Another tour bus, not ours, came wheezing off the road and onto the concrete slab of the gas station. The driver, heavy and Italian, jumped out, exasperated and gesticulating as you’d hope an Italian bus driver would. It was clear that something was wrong with his bus as well, and a few seconds later a troupe of stunningly gorgeous women came piling loudly out. I’ve never known who these women were, but they were anything but wilting violets. These were loud, brash fire-eating Italian women of the first water. They swept by us as we sat on the curb, and I must have been slack jawed because when I looked over at Joan she laughed, as if this sort of thing happened all the time to her. “I don’t know why you’re still sitting here,” she said. “Get on in there.” I laughed and stood with my beer, then turned and quietly stuck my head back in the door of the mini mart. Inside, the rows of snack food were being ransacked by the voracious women. Potato chip bags crinkled, pop tops popped, fruit was being torn into by rows of white teeth. It was as if the Italian Renaissance had exploded in the tiny confines of this roadside store. The man behind the counter looked dazed. I pulled my head back out. Joan laughed again. “Josh, that is the sorriest entrance I’ve ever seen.” She stood up and, jutting her chin artistocratically at a forty-five degree angle, put an arm straight out in front of her and plowed through the door. She stood there silently a moment as every head snapped up to take her in. She met their gazes for an instant, then turned and walked back out, smiling at me. “That’s how you make an entrance,” she said.

Not much later our bus pulled in and picked us up and we left the women of the Italian Rennaissance to mill gorgeously around the parking lot until their own half shell was fixed. I don’t remember the show that night, but I will always remember that morning.

The best stuff about living a life in music is the stuff that comes to you unexpectedly. Nothing about your life can be planned so well that the best stuff won’t find its way in and change everything. The sound system will break and you’ll be forced to play without amplification. There will be a storm and you’ll have no electricity. You’ll mess up your place in the song and a whole new way to play it will suddenly come to you. Something in your life will change and you’ll realize just how important the other parts are.

That moment, which Joan may or may not remember, only happened because something unexpected occurred and she knew what to do with that time in order to make it special. If there’s any one lesson to continually put into practice as we make a life in music, it is that. Realize the unlikely moments and make them special.

Making a Life in Music, Vol. 6: "The Opening Set"

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Posted Nov 16, 2010

Darius and I landed in Dublin at about six in the morning and took a bus into the center of town. People were bundled against the wet cold and the sky was low to the ground. A month earlier I’d met Glen Hansard at an open mic Cambridge, Massachusetts and he’d invited me to come over and open some shows for him. Taking him at his word, I booked a flight to Ireland for myself and Darius (at $93 a pop) and headed over in early January. For the rest of the day we trudged around town in the rain, getting to the venue about four hours early. It was my first opening gig and I didn’t want to be late.

If the open mic is where you first learn to play your songs in front of people, the opening set is where you’ll start to learn your place in the music business ecosystem. Here is where you’ll really be tested and where you’ll find out your capacity to make the best of demanding situations. The benefits of being on the bill are great, but the demands are also great, and your ability to conduct yourself professionally (and optimistically) is equal to the opportunity you’re being given.

The opening slot on a bill is a difficult one. You’re far down the venue’s list of concerns, probably won’t get much of a soundcheck, very likely will have little space to store your gear and you’ll be playing to a crowd of people who didn’t come to see you and may not be all that interested in making your acquaintance. There is also very little pay. The cards are stacked against you, and unless you have a good amount of fortitude, a healthy respect for the needs of the venue and the main act, and a willingness to spend your own money for the chance to play you may find that you don’t progress on from support slot to main billing. It can be done, however. Here’s how:

First, you have to be comfortable with your job as support act. You have to be willing to support. The evening is not about you, it’s about the main act, but if you’re comfortable and cognizant of the fact that it is about someone else, you’ll be able to do your job all the better.

Supporting means you have to make the night a better one for both the venue and the artist you’re playing before. Playing well is, of course, the first thing you need to be concerned about. Give the people that came to the show the very best you have. Have your setlist ready, know your songs well and have your gear in good working order. The art is important, and your music should really add to the audience’s enjoyment of the night.

Don’t make the assumption, however, that your art is necessarily the most important thing either to the main act or the venue. For the venue, the most important thing that you can do to make the night a success is to get people in the room. In a very basic, very crass way, to the venue you are worth only as much as the number of folks you can bring to a show. The more people in the door, the more money the venue makes, and the better the night is for them. In the end, the people you bring may be credited to the main act and not you, but who the hell cares? If you play well you’ve just gotten the opportunity to expose a much larger group of receptive people to your music and everybody’s happy. In the lead up to your opening slot, you should curtail some of your other playing in the area. Make sure that the people who want to come see you play will come to this show.

The watchword for the opening act is respect. It would be nice if you always got it in return, but you shouldn’t be surprised if you don’t. Regardless, however, you should treat your opportunity to support with the utmost professionalism. Always be on time to the soundcheck, early if possible. Once there, give the main act their space. If you’re sharing a dressing room, monopolize as little of it as possible. Be ready to soundcheck when it’s your turn and get it done as quickly as possible to your satisfaction. Always, always thank the main act, both off stage and on, for the opportunity to play. This is just common courtesy, and in this business, as in any other, a little common courtesy can go along way in making lasting friendships and relationships that you may have for years to come.

While you’re thanking people, make sure to thank whoever is running your sound for the night, as well as whoever booked you as support for the club. These people are vital to your performance and you will no doubt run into them again. Show your respect, even if it is not shown readily to you in return.

When you play your show make sure that you only play for the allotted amount of time. Twenty minutes, even thirty minutes, is enough time for people to decide if they like your music or not. Being the opening act is like being a guest at someone else’s party. If you over stay your welcome you won’t be invited back. Be happy with the time you’re given, and be scrupulous about not playing over. Not only that, but thirty minutes is a long time to fill, and when you’re the main act you’ll have two hours. I don’t know anyone that sprung fully formed from the womb with the natural talent to fill two entertaining hours of non-stop music. You have to learn to walk before you can run, as the old saw goes, and learning how to play a good show a half-hour at a time is (and getting paid for it) is an opportunity you shouldn’t look askance upon.

Finally, here’s a pet peeve of mine, so I’ll put it in with these general rules of thumb about opening sets. No matter how awesome you are, if you’re opening for someone you should always stay for the main act’s set. Again, that is just common courtesy. If a band plays and then takes off before I ever get to see them, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. For one thing it makes me feel like our musical relationship goes only one way. For another, it makes me question whether the support act really views me as a musical peer or as a stepping-stone. Nobody likes to feel like a stepping-stone. Do yourself a favor and stay for the main act. You might make some friends, might sell some albums, might get some names on your mailing list and you might even learn a little something from the main set that you can use in your own.

Whelan’s that night was a zoo. It would be hard for me to overstate what a different world it was from the open mics I had been honing my songs in. The venue was two levels, dark wood, smoke filled and almost misty with beer and laughter. Being the gentleman that he is, Glen had invited two other folks to share the bill with him that night, meaning that I’d flown a long ways for a twenty-minute set. I didn’t have a sound check, and when my turn came to stand up in front of the microphone I looked out at four hundred people staring back at me expectantly. Dreading that I would go over my time, I played four songs. It went alright. I chose three lighter songs and one more serious one and told the crowd how nervous I was and thanked Glen. When it was over I sold all ten of the albums I’d brought with me to Ireland, and I felt like the richest man on earth. I played again with him the next night and then came back the next month for a full month of shows with his band, the Frames.

That was the beginning of what was to become several years of opening for people all over the place. While I still occasionally went to open mics, I was mostly on the road, either by myself or with Zack and Darius, playing thirty minutes a night before whoever would have me on the bill. For the most part these people were wonderful and I learned a great deal from them, not only about music but about life and how to live it on the road. I’ve seen Italy with Joan Baez, Manchester with the Counting Crows, Canada with Sarah Harmer, Fresno and Charlottesville with John Prine and Indianapolis with John Wesley Harding. It’s a great way to see the world, the opening set, and if you treat it as a learning experience, a great way to meet the people that can teach you everything you’ll ever need to know about making a life in music.

Making a Life in Music, Vol. 5: "Jealousy and Ambition"

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Posted Nov 10, 2010

Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy, Iago warns Othello, It is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.

Jealousy, the envy of someone else or someone else’s possessions, cannot kill a life in music, but it can rob that life of all the sweetness that’s to be had in it. This chapter is on learning to reconcile yourself with feelings of jealousy and of ambition. How you learn to cope with each will be crucial in how much you’re able to enjoy the career you’re working hard to make.

Before I go on, I’d like to state, for the record, that I know a little something about jealousy, first and second-hand. I have struggled with my own impulses and allowed people into my life who have poisoned my hard-won victories with their own jealousy. I’m not saying that I am any more an expert in it than you are, but I do believe that dealing with jealousy is important if you want your art, and thus your life, to be good and rewarding.

Watch two dogs fighting over a bowl of food. What do you see? One dog has control of the food, while the other dog wants control of it. Neither dog is necessarily interested in eating the food, but they are fearful of not having it. The dog defending the bowl isn’t eating from it, and the dog who wants the food can’t get at it. Meanwhile the food sits there, and neither one enjoys it. Anyone who has watched two dogs fight over a bowl of food knows that jealousy is hardwired into our brains at such a deep level we’ll never get at it. As such, it’s impossible to correct. We feel jealousy, and that’s that. Now the question is, how do we learn to live with it and use it to make our life in music a happier one?

I believe strongly that jealousy has a place in art. To deny that we want something that belongs to someone else – be it respect, vision, courage, impetuosity, doggedness, money, sandwiches – is to deny in ourselves a basic animal impulse. If we are artists, what else are we but the expressive barometers of animal experience? How are we supposed to function as artists if we pretend to hold ourselves aloof from jealousy? So, the first step in dealing with jealousy is owning up to your feelings. Jealousy is apparently not just a part of being a human, it’s a part of being an animal. Acceptance of jealous feelings must come first before we try to deal with them.

After accepting jealousy as a necessary evil, the next step is to look at the times we feel jealousy in our professional lives. Usually it seems to be over some vague idea of career advancement. Perhaps a friend of yours has gotten offered their own show. Maybe someone’s record got a great review in the newspaper, while yours was overlooked. Maybe you work really hard on your songs, but someone else gets the accolades for their (seemingly) inferior writing.

What strikes me about all of these examples, and the example of the dogs and the food bowl, is that jealousy seems to be about trying to get a hold on something over which we, none of us, has control. A peer of yours gets a great tour with a popular band. That could just have easily happened to you, but it didn’t. You had no control over it. Neither did they. People at an open mic like some girl’s song better than yours. You’d like to have control over people’s tastes, but alas and alack, that will never happen. You have no control over what people gravitate towards. Neither does the girl. She’s only playing her music, just like you.

Like the food in the dog’s bowl, most of what happens in our lives, professional and personal, is impermanent. One day he has the food, the next day I do. If I spend my time trying to hold on to the impermanence of the moment, I miss out on what the moment is there for. And the moment is for making art, because making art makes us happy, and if we are happy we are making a life for ourselves.

Artists are empathetic people. They have a great capacity to feel the emotions of others. As such, they are easily able to imagine, rightly or wrongly, what it must be like to be someone else; someone more popular, more good-looking, funnier, wealthier. It is this ability to imagine that gives us the power to do create, but empathy is (again alas) threaded through with strong streaks of jealousy. A little imagination can go a long way towards envisioning what our life would be like if only such-and-such happened to us instead of to the other guy. We imagine ourselves in his place, and those grapes he is eating no doubt taste far better than these sour ones we ended up with. Well, imagining yourself in his place isn’t bad as long as you do something constructive with it.

This is where ambition, the other side of the jealous coin, comes in. Ambition is the part that needs to take over when we see something we want. While jealousy sits and stews in it’s own juices, ambition gets up and uses its imagination to make opportunities.

Jealousy is easy. It requires no effort to begrudge someone else their success. Ambition is harder. It sees all the same things that jealousy does, and yet it mixes with this vision a desire to work. You have your goals, don’t you? You’re working towards them, right? This is ambition. Someone may get there before you. Lord knows, I’ve had my fair share of moments in my career when I just stood there scratching my head at the person standing in the place that I thought was mine. But I have my goals. They’re mine and they’ll bring me my own victories.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in over ten years of playing music is this: When you’re up, you’re up. When you’re down, you’re down. You can never hold on to or extend the moments when you’re up. The last moment of a show, the moment when the band and I are taking a bow, that moment cannot be made longer no matter how much I may want it to. It will pass, and my memory of it will be all there is. If you can learn to appreciate the good moments while they’re happening, to you (even to the point of writing them down in your goals notebook while the aura of victory is still fresh) you can more easily let others appreciate their own victories without being as jealous.

Again, we come back to the pernicious notion that art is effortless. When we begrudge someone their victories we are giving into the notion that they didn’t work hard to be where they are. We are also short-changing our own hard work, as if, if only we had worked harder we might have gotten the reward we are so jealous of.

You can’t make a real life in music without a healthy dose of artistic ambition, and you can’t have ambition without some measure of jealousy. Just make sure that as you’re forgiving yourself for your irrational envies, that you’re doing the work you’ve set for yourself in order to live up to your own goals.

Next Week, “The Opening Set.”

Making a Life in Music, Vol. 4: "What the Hell a Manager Does"

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Posted Oct 28, 2010

Management, and what a manager does, are perhaps the greatest sources of consternation and confusion that I encounter from people getting started in the music business.

I’ve been incredibly lucky and blessed to have had, from early on, some very important relationships that have shaped my life and music career. Certainly one of the most profound of these is Darius Zelkha, my best friend and manager for the last thirteen years. There is nothing in my musical life, from my records to my ideas about goals to the very tour I’m on right now (Ottawa!), that Darius hasn’t been instrumental in the envisioning and formation of. And yet, none of these things happened by magic. There is no great well of secrets that good managers claim to draw from, just like there is no magic well from which songwriters net their songs. When someone comes up to ask me about getting a manager, I have two choices to make: I can watch their eyes glaze over as I tell them the truth - that they probably already know a manager in their lives and that hard work is the key to a career, or I can wish them luck. Most often I just wish them luck because the real truth is less romantic and sometimes, just to keep going, folks need the romance.

But “Making a Life in Music” is about getting past the bodice-ripping romance, so I wanted to interview the person who’s been my manager since before either of us knew what a manager was. Without further ado, Darius Zelkha.

Can you give a little background? How’d you and I meet?

We met freshman year of college. My first memory was of you playing your guitar and singing very (very) quietly to yourself in the hallway outside your dorm room (down the hall from mine). It wasn’t until I saw this a few nights a week that I realized you were serious about it and not (only) trying to meet girls. In many ways I think this was the basis of our friendship, and our friendship was the basis of our manager-artist relationship.

I came from a jam band / indie rock background (think Phish and Pavement) and I had never owned a Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan album when we met. I almost didn’t care much for (or about) the music you were writing at the time, I was more interested in your work ethic, weird/unique personality, and open-mindedness to new music. In other words, interested in you, not so much your music - at first.

Then you started playing me your songs and I started making mix tapes for you. We jammed together (I am a drummer), spent a little time in the studio and played a few shows. I created a graphic for your website and things kind of all flowed together. This probably is very typical in the music biz, but still I think most people think there is something “beyond” this that a manager is supposed to do. I’m not so sure that there is.

You alluded to your management philosophy as something that might be simpler than many suppose it to be. People come up to me and talk to me about managers as if they are the missing key to making a life in music; if they can only find one they’ll have all they need. Is that a view you encounter as well?

The biggest myth I encounter is that THE MANAGER is going to open doors for the artist. There may be some truth to this, but from my own experience the most successful artist-manager relationships are those in which both parties are on the same learning curve; not one where some all powerful, cigar-smoking backroom deal maker with gold chains holds the door for the artist to walk through. The mistakes you make, you make together, and the victories you have, you have together. It’s so much more fun to sell out a show in your hometown if neither of you have done that before. I think being on the same curve also serves as a motivator to focus on the details and not let “small” things slip.

So just what does a manager do everyday?

I wonder sometimes if the term “music manager” stems from the term as it’s used in baseball. I think there are a lot of similarities. As a manager, you’re responsible for the big picture. Is the team having a winning season? Is the artist’s latest release hitting the goals the two of you set together? As well as the big picture, there is a constant flow of smaller stuff. Should I have Uribe pinch-hit for Sandoval? When is the radio station picking up the artist from the venue tomorrow, and why is the appearance not listed on the radio website? Being a good manager means being able to juggle the many little things while keeping an eye fixed to the marks you’ve set for yourself. Both can be overwhelming on some occasions. Likewise, they can be boring, but the challenge always is to keep both in the air.

Going to the subject of juggling the small stuff and the large stuff, can you give you give us a glimpse into what you might do in a day?

It changes every day, but here’s a list of sample tasks for an average day of mine. This particular sample is heavy on touring since we’re in the midst of that right now:

Morning:

      • Call UK agent to discuss Spring 2011 tour routing. What venues are you holding for the artist to play? What do the offers look like? Is the venue standing or seated? How many tickets did we sell in town the last time? Discuss the Mumford & Sons show I went to last night with him. It was great, by the way.
      • Call our merchandise designer to discuss a poster design and advertising materials for upcoming early 2011 dates. When these come in, send to Josh for review / comments.
      • Call US agent to discuss on-sale dates for early 2011 show dates that are already on the books but not announced yet. Reach out to each promoter to confirm these details and make sure they have most recent advertising materials and posters.
      • Create a budget for these dates. We’ll be travelling by bus. What’s the best transport company to use for this. We’ll be needing some hotel rooms on the days off so that the guys can take a shower (mercy, mercy!) Does the venue have an agreement with any hotels so we can get a better rate? The tour manager handles some of this, but I need to be in the loop because he’s got a lot on his plate as well.
      • Make sure our publicist (she handles the press outreach) has the rough routing and is drafting a press release for the shows so we can secure some stories in the local press.

After lunch:

      • Spend 15-20 minutes browsing these websites: Mashable, Pitchfork, NYTimes, Daily Beast for anything tech or music-related.
      • Review mixes of a live show (on headphones) for a possible live release. Consider if it’s far enough along to send to Josh. Review the ad materials we used for the show and see if there’s a possible album art theme in there somewhere.
      • Put in a call to Canadian booking agent requesting ticket counts for current tour.
      • Confirm that Canadian and US merchandise arrived at specified hotel for upcoming tour dates. Make sure that Brian, our great merchandise manager, knows where to pick the stuff up.
      • Update the Google Calendar with confirmed in-person press (radio visits, etc) and share the calendar with Josh so he knows what’s coming on the upcoming tour.
      • The Canadian booking agent calls back. Our Canadian shows are doing great! Discuss possible summer festivals and encourage him to get offers in soon-ish.

After dinner:

      • Listen to some of the demos from the new album Josh is working on (usually on a walk with the dog around the neighborhood.) Jot down thoughts, ideas, and considerations here for our weekly phone chat.
      • Update the Josh website or ask Doug Rice, our all around wunderkind, to help with that.
      • Browse booking agency websites or Pollstar to see which tours have been announced. Is there an opportunity to support a bigger artist or develop a co-play package here?
      • Add to a running list of ideas of big picture ideas and goals.

Still, there are those all-important “contacts” that a big manager might have that a friend, no matter how enthusiastic they might be, doesn’t have. Surely contacts more important than enthusiasm and perseverance?

Perseverance is a more important life-value to have than any contacts when approaching the making a life in music. Still, I’d offer this caveat: There has to be friendship and trust underlying the manager-artist relationship that allows for perseverance to take place. If that patience is in place, perseverance is far more important than contacts. If there’s less trust, less friendship, then contacts are more important to both the manager and artist because the manager/artist relationship won’t last unless there’s quick forward motion for the artist, and that’s all that contacts are good for. They’re like quick sugar highs like opening slots and early festival appearances.

Let’s say that other artist’s experience is different from yours and mine and that they didn’t meet someone they could consider a manager early on. What would a manager look for in an artist?

I look for someone who’s confident enough in their songs/art that they don’t need to always be pitching themselves; and someone who has enough humility to be excited and grateful to have someone working on their behalf.

I personally don’t like it when I see an artist’s photograph on the cover of their album – it feels like a “pitch” to me. I’m always intrigued to see some weird found photograph or some unique illustration / design – this sends a signal to me that the artist is confident that the music speaks for itself and isn’t asking you to go into it with preconceptions. This is not always true, of course, just a gut reaction on my part.

Finally, the live show is hugely important. I should get tingles. Even after over a decade in the music business, I still get tingles when I see a great show, no matter where that show is taking place. It makes me want to text folks that night about it, even if it was just about a single lyric / song.

Conversely, what do you think an artist should look for in a manager?

They should look for someone who thinks about their art as much as they do. Someone who sends them TOO MANY emails / texts / ideas about their music. They should look for the person in their life who’s pushing them. Someone who’s a good listener but who isn’t a tool or a yes-man. There’s someone in their life who’s curious. Someone who’s a little bit competitive. Someone they can talk music with and someone who is ready to work hard.

I don’t think a manager needs any music business experience, but I do think they need to be comfortable with technology and needs to be a good writer and confident, coherent communicator. They need to be actively curious about what’s going on in the world, and a lot of the nexus of that today is the Internet / social media / Apple / etc. A willingness to work closely with new technology also shows a willingness to adapt to new ideas and landscapes, and believe, there is plenty of shifting landscape to go around these days!

Does an artist who’s just beginning need a manager?

Yes, but this person doesn’t have to be called a “manager.” I really believe that what a beginning artist needs is a champion. They need a person who’s going to want to engage them on topics big and small. Does this chord change work? Does this photo make me look fat? The artist needs someone who’s going to lend them money (or work for nothing) to make that next recording / show / album happen. This is way more important than anyone calling in music-industry favors for them.

What are some good ways to go about looking for a manager?

If the artist is doing their job and not sitting around waiting for something to happen, they’ll eventually run across a champion. They might meet them at an open mic, or via the folks that book these open mics at local clubs. They’ll probably meet other artists that are perhaps one rung higher on the career ladder and have a relationship with a manager. The first place to look for a manager, however, is that person in your life who is constantly telling you about music and sending you new music. Whoever that person is, they’re probably in a good spot to start working with you.

What is it that people seem to want when they approach you for management?

They want help getting to “the next level.” I think to most artists this means finding a label; finding an agent; getting on a tour; getting their songs placed in films or tv shows. Almost no one approaches me with the notion that this is a long-term partnership. It’s almost always based on “stepping things up.”

For example, most of the emails and phone calls I get from a great many aspiring artists start this way:

“Hi, my name is ________ and I’m an artist from _______ (some location).
I got your email from the Josh Ritter (or the Submarines) website. I’m doing well right now but am looking for ways to take it to the next level. I’m interested in talking to you about management. I have opened for _______ (artist 1, 2, 3) and _______ (local publication) said this nice quote about me. Etc Etc.”

These emails may be honest, but there is a formula to them that doesn’t excite me and I won’t usually listen to their music unless I love the cover art or a friend or fellow music person recommends them to me. To me, this form letter approach just says “Help me now, I’m stuck. Isn’t this supposed to be easier?” Guess what - it’s not. This stuff is hard. It never gets any easier. You either love the hard work or you don’t. But don’t worry too much! Even if your music may not be for me, if you love it, and you love hard work you’ll find someone like-minded to help you as soon as you really need it.

We’ve been hearing for years about the death of the music industry. Aside from the fact that it’s hard to make millions in music anymore, do you think this death is really all doom and gloom?

As someone who’s 33 years old, I was never around when the music business WASN’T dying. It’s been dying my whole career. I’m actually really thankful for that. I feel like at this point I expect things to be hard; I expect to have to persevere; I expect tickets are going to be hard to sell; I expect that the money is going to be hard to come by. To me, this gives younger folks a real competitive advantage over the fat-cats that are used to having things handed to them and have a laundry list of excuses for themselves and for their artist if a record doesn’t sell.

Any big, final lessons for those just getting started?

The biggest lesson I’ve taken from my 10 years as a manager (even when I didn’t call myself that) is this: Be thankful for what you have and use that as the basis for growing things. That famed opening slot isn’t going to push things forward as much as you think. That record deal isn’t going to, either. But that relationship with the local club booker, or your friend the iPhone app developer, or that blogger/coffeeshop barista…those relationships are very important. If all those folks want to come to your shows, and are telling folks about your music, you are going to do just fine.

* * *

Stay Tuned! Next week, the venal, the helpful and the all out lusciously sinful “Jealousy and Ambition.”

Making a Life in Music, Vol. 3: "Open Mics and The Glamorous Bottom"

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Posted Oct 19, 2010

As I said earlier, the conflation of real and unreal in music can be the first stumbling block on the way towards making your life in music. There are so many conflicting notions of why we make music that it can be difficult to know what to do, and difficult to know where to begin. Hopefully, the last section on “goals” was helpful in trying to figure out your next step.

This episode is about beginning at the beginning: playing the open mic. When you start out at the bottom all you have is your love and your music. You may harbor secret ambitions for other things past just making a living, but really, just to make music for people (and make a living doing it) would be enough. This is the feeling you have starting at the beginning. Hold on to it. And don’t just hold on to it, wear it on your sleeve, because starting at the beginning is something you have to embrace with an open heart if you want to achieve anything.

I was sitting in the sub-ground closeness of Club Passim in Harvard Square. It was spring break of my senior year in college. I had travelled (I don’t remember how) from Ohio to Boston in order to play at Passim’s open mic. Passim is a famous club in American music history. Lots of people have gotten their start here and its open mic is the kind of generous testing ground for new musicians that exists with little fanfare and through the great generosity and determination of its volunteers. Sitting among the other anxious musicians I knew that I could write songs, but that was all. I had made this pilgrimage to see if what I had was really anything special or if I should just keep on dreaming.

Every open mic you got to will be run slightly differently depending on the club and who is running it. In some cases you have to come early and sign up, in others your name gets drawn from a hat. In the end it all boils down to a lot of musicians in a room waiting for their turn to play in front a microphone. That’s where I was sitting – in the midst of a bunch of other musicians, thinking that I was about to find out if what I did had any real value at all.

The next three hours were a revelation.

Because of the popularity of Passim’s open mic, the club runs a kind of “heat” system in which three people take the stage at a time, playing one after the other. When these leave the stage another three come up. Passim is organized and the whole drill runs like clockwork.

The music I saw that night, however, was anything but predictable. Rather the hours went by, a patchwork of emotions and talent, ranging from the very, very good to the simply banal to the most-likely pathological. The waiting musicians clapped for their friends and encouraged each other while calmly waiting their turns. Then, when their names were called, they came to the stage and hurled themselves wholeheartedly against the world. There was one guy who sang an incredible song about all the different species of woodpeckers. There was a guy who sang a long, completely serious song about how much he wanted to be one of the Indigo Girls. There was a lot of heavy right hand strumming that angrily denounced this and that, and a couple people who were so charmingly shy that they nearly brought the house down just by getting a few verses out. Their opposites, self-anointed musical aristocrats who acted as if they were doing all of us a favor by even being there, were also in attendance. In sum, it was a motley crew. I had been so nervous about whether I would measure up that I hadn’t imagined what everyone else’s music would be like. My name was called and I went to the stage.

There are a multitude of reasons to play open mics, but as I’ve progressed in my career I can look back and easily name three huge ones: audience, set-list and friends.

I can trace back my audience to the generous souls who would come up after my song or songs at open mics. I always had a mailing list with me, and any time that someone told me that they liked a song, I would ask them if they wanted to be on my mailing list. A year later when I became the featured performer at the Passim Open Mic, I made sure that everyone on my small but growing mailing list knew about the show and would be there for my three songs. The little place was rammed and after the open mic I was offered a half-hour slot supporting an out of town artist.

Secondly, playing open mics teaches you the valuable art of adapting your set to odd situations. You may have a new song, a perfect number that you are very proud of, but if it’s a slow one and three people in front of you have played dirges, the audience may appreciate a skippier ditty more than your masterpiece. On the reverse side, you may feel that there is a spot for something more serious if you’re following something completely different from you. You’ll learn to get a sense, almost instantly, of the weight an audience is willing to bear in their enjoyment of your music.

Finally, you’ll make lots of acquaintances and a few great friends as you play open mics. These are your peers; people like you who aren’t afraid to begin at the beginning. They’re the go-getters, the ones who aren’t afraid to go down to the water and drink. You may not always like their music. You don’t have to. What you should be able to appreciate, however, is their like-mindedness. And you won’t just meet fellow musicians at open mics; there will also be pure music lovers, future managers, future publicists, promoters and engineers. In short, people that you may be lucky enough to know the rest of your life. I met my friend Stephen Kellogg at an open mic. He now tours all over the world. Likewise, Flora Reed of the Winterpills worked with Jim Olsen, who gave me my first record contract. I met Glen Hansard, of the Frames and Swell Season fame, at an open mic, and his invitation to play in Dublin changed the entire course of my career.

Open mics are fun, but treat them professionally and you will learn about how to be a professional. Make them your second job. Attend them diligently, meet people, keep your instrument in tune, and in the words of a famous open mic superstar, learn your song well before you start singing. Pay attention to what the crowd needs, always have a mailing list with you, and if you have recordings, bring them along. It may take a few years and more than a few late nights before you’re ready to progress on from open mics, but you’re starting at the bottom and these will be some of the most memorable, beautiful, challenging times that you’ll have in your entire career, and I guarantee you’ll never forget them.

And you have your journal on your desk at home, so you won’t have to. Write down the stuff you don’t want to forget.

The song I chose to sing was a new one I had called “Potter’s Wheel.” When I finished there was a smattering of applause, no more and no less than anyone else got, but when I left that stage feeling like I had just slain a dragon. I knew I was coming back, and I knew that it wasn’t just a matter of whether my songs could stand up with the ones that I’d seen performed that night, I could see now that it was also a matter of determination to begin at the beginning and progress on from there. I also knew my next step.

Back at school were my two friends Darius Zelkha and Zack Hickman. Zack was a freshman renaissance man who could play the hell out of the bass. The other was my best friend and roommate Darius, who was a great drummer and had some ideas about recording a record. Over the next several years Darius was to become my manager as well as my drummer, and next week I’ll be featuring a conversation with him about one of the topics I’ve been asked about the most in regards to the music business. I’m calling it “What the Hell a Manager Does.”

Making a Life in Music, Vol. 2: "Goals"

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Posted Oct 13, 2010

First two things you’ll need are a sturdy notebook and a pen. Take yourself seriously and get a good notebook and be sure to use pen and not pencil so that you can’t erase what you’re gonna write down.

What I’m writing about today isn’t sexy. Art is supposed to be effortless. That’s part of the myth, part of the beauty, right? When we appreciate art, isn’t it partly for the experience of seeing something difficult done with grace? Isn’t it a perfect metaphor for how we wish life would be?

Well, to quote one of my favorite authors, Pete Dexter, you don’t need grace to push. And if you want a life doing what you love you’re going to have to decide between grace and grit. Swinging wide the door so that opportunity can waltz in is graceful, but wrestling a blood-hungry, world-champion fighting rooster to the ground is awkward as all hell, and certainly a much closer parallel for the career you should expect.

I can find two main reasons why talented, hard-working people can’t make a life in music. The first is that they confuse what happens on-stage with the work done backstage. The second is that they conflate aspirations with goals.

The concert or the recording is performance. It’s the show. It’s the canvas, the painting, the final product. It is what people take time out of their day to see. For the musician it’s almost surely the most fun part of the day. The two hours I’m on stage are better than (most) parts of the other twenty-two. It’s fun, and although I’m sweating and falling down a lot, it’s not something I think of as work. The work is what happens the rest of the time. The work is scheduling shows, driving, standing in line at the airport, making sure my show clothes are ready, doing setlists, eating sandwiches, waking up early, going to bed late. All that happens so that the show itself is smooth and done well.

But the life is not easy. As you know with any job, to do something well requires a lot of hard work, and music, for all its tight-pants and prancing around, is hard work. So forget about your time on stage for the next fifteen minutes. In order to make a life in music, you have to do a little hard work right now. You’re gonna have to concentrate on your goals.

Goals are very different birdies. Even the words sound different. Aspiration, that airy puff of breath, is such a suave word, soaring high above its stolid, plunkier cousin, goal. You can even tell, by the sound of the two words, which one gets the work done. A lot of people want, for some reason, a tour bus. They dream about it and never sit down to figure out, actually, how they are going to get that tour bus. Aspirations are good, nice things to have, don’t get me wrong, but they’re the pie in the sky, and if you want pie, you’re gonna need goals.

Now comes the notebook part. Get it out, write your email address in the corner of the cover and offer a reward if it gets lost. Say $25. You’re going to be using this book a lot for a lot of different things, but, as a kind of christening, I want you to spend the next thirty minutes writing down your goals, starting from ten years in the future (whoa, Ted!), five years in the future (I know, Bill!), one year, six months, next week, and tomorrow. Five goals each for each period of time.

This is not a drill! You’re constructing, in the next thirty minutes, the plan for the next decade of your life. It will only work if you’re honest with yourself. You know what you want to accomplish in ten years. Your ten year goals are your aspirations, the things you dream about. Getting on the cover of Rolling Stone, getting a song in Bill and Ted’s Part III, playing to an audience of a thousand, whatever. Don’t put down the aspirations you think you should have. Put down the ones you have.

This is the first place people shoot themselves in the foot. This statement of goals is for you to see and no one else. If you choose to write down things you don’t really care about, you’re not going to work towards them all that diligently and chances are you won’t achieve them, or if you do, you won’t be as happy as if you were completing one of the ten year goals you really have - singing on horseback as you ride down the streets of your hometown as part of a parade in your honor.

Thirty minutes may not seem like a lot of time to come up with thirty goals, but you shouldn’t think about this stuff too hard. As your life changes so will your goals. In the next ten years there will be a spare minute or two to give thought to your goals and with more experience you may wish to refine them slightly. This half hour is to get you started down that path. So, in the immortal words of 38 Special, “Hold on loosely, but don’t let go.”

Your goals are insane. Be honest about that and write them down anyway. I wanted everyone in the world to know one of my songs in ten years. Has it happened? Well, ever hear of a little song called “This Land is Your Land?” Just kidding. No. It hasn’t happened, but a lot of other cool stuff has, as a result of working toward this crazy goal. Be honest about the insanity of your ten-year goals. Just go for it and write them down.

Now, move on to your five-year goals. These are the goals you feel that you’re going to need to complete in order to move toward your ten-year goals. This shouldn’t take too long to think about either, as your five-year goals should simply spring from what you think you may need to work towards completing your ten-year goals. So, if you want to play your own show at Radio City Music Hall in ten years, then one of your five year goals might be playing a venue half that size in five years.

Why work backwards if you’re going to be working forwards? I just feel the next immediate steps are easier to ascertain if you can see your larger goals in the distance in front of you. Picture yourself trying to find a coyote by its tracks in a field of snow. You know he’s somewhere off over the edge of the horizon, but you don’t know how to find him. Just follow his tracks. You don’t have to know a great deal about the music business to do this exercise. Over the next ten years you will learn, trust me.

So, at the end of thirty minutes a sample goal sheet might look like this:

10 Years
• Play my own show at Madison Square Garden
• Have a number one hit on the radio
• Write the state song of Wyoming
• Release a greatest hits album
• Win Grammy Award, interrupt Kanye with remarkably clever comeback

5 Years
• Play my own show at Radio City Music Hall
• Break into the the Billboard top fifty
• Practice!
• Release third album
• Play internationally to 100 a night

2 years
• Begin to tour regionally
• Get a manager
• Get a booking agent
• Complete second record
• Quit day job

1 year
• Finish first record
• Play two sell-out shows in hometown
• Play shows in three towns near by
• Play support at someone else’s show
• Get a song played on the radio (any radio)

6 months
• Have played fifty open mics
• Have played 10 co-bills with artists met at open mics
• Have dedicated website linked to all pertinent social network sites
• Have email mailing list of at least 100 names
• Play one sold out show in hometown

Tomorrow
• Research open mics, call for info
• Choose two to play over the next week
• Find someone who can help set up a website
• Practice!
• Practice!

These are sample goals that I wrote in a few minutes. They’re not mine and they’re probably not yours. They’re just to show that by working backwards from something big, the steps that lead up to it grow progressively smaller and easier to handle from one day to the next.

Now. You have your journal and you have your goals. Your job now is to take the first steps and complete the goals you set yourself for tomorrow. Keep everything written down in your journal. If you’re getting open mic info, write down the number of the place the open mic is happening, call the place and write down any info pertinent to the open mic. The magic of keeping a journal like this is that you’re recording your steps. In six months, when things are feeling hard and you’re not sure you made the right decision, a notebook full of your work is sitting on your desk, positive reinforcement of how far you’ve come already. Plus, the notebook keeps your goals in front of you at all times.

Finally, the journal is central to my fishing line theory. As you work to complete your goals day-to-day, you’re going to find that you end up having more than just the five you’ve written down. Some goals will end up taking several days or even weeks as you wait for people to call you back or you decide your website needs better pictures before it can go up. I call these fishing lines, and the beauty of them is that if you keep good track of them, they keep you moving forward each day. When you get up in the morning you’ll see with a glance at your journal what fishing lines you have in the water, what needs work today.

Remember, the big goals are out there, and they’re easy to forget about when you’re in the weeds. The journal, if you continue working toward your six-month and one-year goals, will keep the big picture in front of you.

You’re probably feeling overwhelmed right about now. Well, that’s just fine. You’ve taken an enormous step in your life and that is usually overwhelming. Don’t expect anyone else to sympathize either. Our culture is inured to stuff like this. I once sat down at a friend’s wedding next to a beautiful girl whose father knew I was trying to be a musician. The father asked me to move. I knew it was because he thought I was a whimsical hack on the long road to nowhere. He was a doctor and he’d learned that life progressed in a certain way, validated by certain easily recognized, board-certified guideposts. I could have shown him the wacky goals I’d written for myself, but I still don’t think that would have gotten me any farther with his daughter. That guy watched me like a hawk all through dinner.

Goals are never going to seem glamorous. Goals are hard work. Only you can formulate them and only you can complete them. You can do it, though. Just take them one at a time and be proud of yourself. You’ve just started making a life in music.

Next week, “Open Mics and the Glamorous Bottom.”

Making a Life in Music, Vol. 1: "We're All Gonna Die"

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Posted Oct 6, 2010

Let’s begin this maiden voyage with two important questions. What is Death, and what is Art? It’s important to think about these at the outset because deciding upon a particular notion of what exactly Art is can help us as we strive to make our own.

Now to the Death part. We have no idea what Death is. A boundary line? The final curtain? The Great Unplugging? A gauzy film between this life and the next? Whatever Death is exactly, our reaction to it is the single largest motivator in most of our lives. We run from it, we run towards it, but most of all we struggle to make sense of the fact that each of us is going to die one day. In the meantime, however, we make Art to help us explain Death.

Here’s how.

During World War II, the British set up a special intelligence branch in a place felicitously called Bletchley Park. The job of people at Bletchley was to break German code. The code was created by rotor machines known as “Enigma” machines. The breaking of the code, and the subsequent information deciphered (which was known by the British as “Ultra”) gave rise to the invention of the modern computer.

To strain a metaphor to breaking, Death is the enigma and Art is the engine we build to decipher it. Each of us makes Art as a way to understand human problems (Love, War, God, Death, Sandwiches) of great complexity. While we go about our day-to-day lives we are constantly feeding information into the engines we create for ourselves, gaining insight and slowly solving the enigma. Art is one such engine.

Go to a museum and look at the different renderings of the afterlife. Each envisioning is an engine built by an artist to understand what will happen after we die. I’d like to throw in here that I believe Religion and Science are the same engine as Art, just going under different names, but that’s probably for another time.

Now, to get to songs. A song is an ephemeral little ribbon whipping around in the wind. It has no physical weight and is present only in memory or the air that carries it. But to me, growing up, a song was everything. I remember the long drives we would take to visit my relatives in Oregon. My brother and I would sit in the backseat, and after it got dark and the car swept along the edges of the Columbia River gorge, I would sing to myself. Usually it was the Oak Ridge Boys or Brian Bowers. It was “Sergeant Pepper’s” on occasion, and at other times it was “Graceland,” start to finish. I knew all the words. We all did. Later, as I was touring by myself, driving long hours into uncertain circumstances, I would sing other songs to myself. For instance, I made a ritual of singing Leonard Cohen’s “The Future” each time I would drive my little red Chevy Cavalier, Mitchell, into Manhattan. Something about the drama of that song, verging on humor, made New York seem less frightening to me. On my first tour with Joan Baez, when I was learning how to fall asleep on a moving tour bus, I would sing (very quietly) Gillian Welch’s “I Dream a Highway” to myself until I fell asleep.

These songs were engines that helped me solve problems. Songs are ideas whose phrases are made memorable by rhyme and melody. They are the most portable little problem solvers I know of, and as humans we’ve fed every single experience we’ve ever had into them in order to try and make sense of our lives.

That’s what you’re doing when you write a song, when you sing a song, when you listen obsessively to a song over and over again. You’re solving problems. Don’t get me wrong here, though. I’m not suggesting that any of us are on Missions from God every time we sit down at a piano or pick up a pen. It doesn’t have to feel heavy. After all, songs are entertainment. Still, they are engines for understanding life, and that’s something we can always use a little more of, right?

So why all this talk of Death and engines? Isn’t this a blog on making a life in music? Yes. But at the outset, I think it is extremely important to have a view of what you do that is foundational. After all, the music business is not one known for its solid ground. Hell, Life is not known for being all that good at solid ground. As you begin to try to make a living in music, you need to fix your eyes on what is beyond all the little stuff you’re going to have to go through. In choosing to make a life in music, you are choosing to be a part of something grand. You are making, helping to make, or presenting engines of human understanding for yourself and others that attempt to make sense of the big questions. Whether the song is serious or not, an hour long or a few seconds, it may one day help you or someone else to understand a tiny piece of the enigma around us. Most of the real truths in life I’ve gotten from other people’s songs. I carry them around in my head. They make me happy because they give me a way to understand my own experiences.

A lot of what I’m going to go into in further installments has to do with topics that won’t be anywhere near so heady. There’s always a lot to do, and it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees sometimes. But just remember, as we head into the woods, that songs are extremely important. By singing them, by writing them, by appreciating them, we are solving for ourselves problems of the greatest significance to our own lives and happiness, and occasionally the lives and happiness of others. The advice that follows stems directly from this belief.

The next installment will be on how you devise your goals. It’s fun and there are cool tricks. I’m calling it “First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlinnnnnnnnn!”

Making a Life in Music: "An Introduction" to a New Series

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400

I’ve been wondering for a while now what direction to take these blogs in. It’s a lot of fun to write about where the band and I are, where we’ve been and what’s been happening, but I start to get a little restless with anything after a bit. Surely there is so much else to write about. But what?

Someone comes up to me every couple of shows and asks me a question about music and the music business. Each time it jogs my memory and I tell myself, “Someday I want to write a little about this,” then I go back to whatever else it is I’m doing and promptly forget all about it until the next time someone comes up to me and asks a similar question.

So, sitting here at 8:30 in the morning in a coffee shop in Bristol, England, I’d like to inaugurate a new set of blogs for Book of Jubilations. These will be a series of writings on making music, making a living in music, and whatever else comes to my mind that I think is important about making a life in music.

When I was getting started I read a lot of books about making a living in the music business. I suppose the purpose of reading them was to build the confidence to go out and do it on my own. To that end they succeeded, however their usefulness - the actual informational content they proposed to offer - has been negligible in my career to the point of comedy. Why?

One major problem I have with many music business books is that they leave out some of the most important stages of getting started at a career in music. Rather than begin at the beginning, with open mics, cold calls, mailing lists on notebook paper, they opt for the romance of several years down the road. “So You Wanna Make a Living in Music” books usually start at the stage when this very special person, a diamond in the rough, has already performed the music business equivalent of digging themselves out of the rough, traipsing into town to the jewelry store and selecting the finest ring setting to set themselves within. Rather than help with the early stuff, the books attempt to offer advice to this very special diamond, currently twinkling nightly at small arenas around the country.

The other major problem for me is that the books are dry and inelastic. Listen, I’m not going to spend any time on this blog telling you about how to brand yourself on Facebook or Spotify or any of the million other music and social networking sites that beckon to you from the darkened doorways of the internet. You can find all that yourself, and you will. In fact, you probably already have. And anyway, can you imagine reading a book about that stuff? Now try to imagine reading a fifty-page chapter on collecting royalties. This is certainly important stuff, but I would like to suggest that before you get too deeply into arcana, you have a bit of perspective on the art you’re making, your reasons for making it, and the people who can help you survive to make more.

It’s hard to get good advice about making a life in music. Like many a great song, making a living in music is like fumbling around in a dark room until you somehow trip over the chorus. There is no right way, no wrong way and plenty of shortcuts that lead nowhere. This is why the books don’t necessarily help and why it is imperative to understand that advice from anyone, be it friends, enemies, grandparents or me, is only advice and we should always salt our advice well before eating.

Hunter S. Thompson famously described the music business as “a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” This quote, while hilarious when it comes from Hunter S. Thompson, is less so when memorized and dashed off ad nauseum by schmucks at parties.

Here’s a riposte.

I prefer not to imagine what my life would be like without music. I prefer not to imagine my closest friends in the occupations they might have if they didn’t love music to the point of tears and folly. Making music, and the business of making music is a long strange trip, the kind I’d call a calling. It is as hard as any other job, and as dangerous. It’s also complex, driven by all the deep, weird compulsions that cause people to do precisely the ridiculous things that everyone tells them they shouldn’t do. And it’s populated by strange characters who, thankfully for their own sakes were born with a love of music so intense that it helped them survive their early life and continue on to bring music into the world in whatever capacity they can.

In this series, I’d like to describe some aspects of making music. If I’m even a little successful, I hope that questions can be answered and other people will be encouraged to take the plunge they’ve wanted to take with some idea of the nature of the plunge they are taking.

One final note. I’m just getting started on this idea. I have no real idea of where it will go. I’m open to whatever comments or questions you might have. Please write in with anything. And thank you for everything. This will be fun!

The first installment, coming soon, is upliftingly entitled, “We’re All Gonna Die.”

What a Tour...

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0400

What a tour! Dawn and I, Tim Craven and Brian Stowell started the European tour on September 7th, in Madrid. From there, by plane train and caffeine, we made our way to France, Germany, meeting our respective bands in the Netherlands, and continuing on to Brussels and a bunch of shows in the UK. The shows felt blinding, the hangs were great. Dawn and I got to run in some fantastic locales. Retiro Park in Madrid is gorgeous and Glaswegians have a green crown jewel in the Glasgow Botanical gardens.

Show highlights feel too numerous to mention, but suffice to say the Oxford Town Hall, done up in as close to airy rococo as I believe Victorian architects ever got, was a thrill to play in. The Paradiso in Amsterdam, with its great staff, great promoters and stunning atmosphere will go down as an unforgettable night. The Barbican, once we figured out how to get in, was the largest, and I feel the best, show we’ve ever played in London.

There is so much to be thankful for, and so many people to thank. For now I just want to say thank you to everyone who came to the shows, dragged their friends and family out the door to bring them, were so generous with their participation and were so much fun to play music among. I said it before but I’ll say it again, I don’t take it for granted, and I’m looking forward to coming back!

All The Very Best,
Josh

Happy Returns

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0400

There is an “Irish” bar across from the Aer Lingus gate. The interior looks something like a cross between Walt Disney’s idea of an Irish bar and an aetheist’s idea of a church. Across the way at the gate, Irish people glance over at it on occasion, with a kind of bemused interest. No one seems to be watching the rugby game on the TV screen.

I’m sitting here on the cool concourse floor, my back resting against the burren-style stone work of the bar’s exterior. This has been a crazy few months, and for the last several hours my mind has been blank. I don’t remember checking in. I have no recollection of the security line, of taking off my shoes or undoing my belt. Somewhere between the Minneapolis airport and JFK I simply shut off. My head needed the rest and it took it without asking me otherwise.

Yesterday I played with the Minnesota Orchestra in Minneapolis. It was a thrill to be back in the midst of a big group of expensive instruments and we had an amazing time. There were three times as many people playing on stage than we’ve ever played with in an orchestra show and three times as many people attending as we’ve ever had in Minnesota. It was tremendously exciting. I was happy as well for another reason. Earlier in the day I’d turned in the final draft of my novel.

All of this is a long way of saying that, between releasing So Runs the World Away and playing music all over the place, I’ve been putting final touches on my book. There are only so many hours in a day, so a few things had to be jettisoned for a little bit. Writing this blog was one of them. Also exercise. Now that I’m basically done with the book, I’m getting my correspondent’s hat back on and lacing up my running shoes.

It’s an exciting time and I’m an excitable man.

Stay tuned and thank you for the chance to do all of this!

All the Best,
Josh

Baltimore!

Mon, 10 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Hey All!

Howdy! The different geographical locales of my boyhood were strung together by Idaho State Highway 95, which ran from the Canadian border southwards, through Bonner’s Ferry, Sandpoint, Coeur d’ Alene, Tensed, Plummer and Viola before taking a dog leg in Moscow and continuing on towards Lewiston.

We aren’t on that 95 today, but instead bouncing along the concrete and asphalt river connecting Washington D.C. to Baltimore. We’ll play in Baltimore tonight and then turn the ship around and try to sleep as we bumptiously make our way in a southerly direction towards Durham.

The last month has been a pretty hectic blur, as I expected it would be. Moments come back – on stage at the Grand Canal Theater in Dublin, making an off kilter music video, running along the reflecting pool near the Lincoln Monument, eating something dangerous in Philadelphia, and watching a plume of ash head inexorably towards Heathrow Airport on a weather map in a Seattle hotel I was hoping to leave. Has anyone else noticed that “Heathrow” and “death row” are only separated by a single letter?

All this is a rambling way of saying that the adventure of putting out So Runs the World Away is well underway and all of us are doing great. Sam is sitting here next to me checking basketball scores, Dan Cardinal (our great stage manager) is wearing a rabid monkey t-shirt, and Tim Craven our tour manager actually looks like he got a little sleep last night.

The shows are late night ones and we’ve been playing around two hours a night, which has been feeling like a great length of time to play a lot of these new songs. I have a bunch of phone interviews coming up this afternoon, but before they start calling Dawn and I are going to go on a tour of a decommissioned nuclear missile submarine floating in Baltimore’s harbor.

Thank you all. Touring the United States in the summertime is just as good as it gets. See you soon!

Best,
Josh

On The Brink...

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0400

I’m sitting here in the apartment. I have an old movie on that a friend gave me. It’s a John Ford movie from 1933 called “Pilgrimage,” and it’s got Henrieta Crosman, who is one salty matron.

Today was the first very busy day. The next while is going to be very busy. It’s still a month until So Runs the World Away comes out in Ireland, and five weeks until it comes out in the States, but the time is going to be jammed with everything from radio interviews to shows to in-store concerts to countless cups of coffee in a bunch of airport terminals. All I can hope for is that I’ve prepared enough. I have an amazing, thoughtful and inspiring group of people who I get to work with and I get to play music that I believe in to folks who believe in it as well. As a friend told me the other day, I’m living a charmed life.

Before things get too nuts, I just want to say thank you to everyone for listening and coming to shows. I know how hard I’ve worked for your belief, and I also know how lucky I am to still have it.

May all the best things come to you,
Josh

Into Finn Air

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

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.

Europa, Europa!

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

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

Prague, Brno, Zurich...

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

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.

*

"Josh Ritter and the 'Royal City Band'"!

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

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

"10" (It's Good to be Back)

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

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