Josh Ritter acoustic tour dates

Ritter is one of my favorite performers and his albums often make my year-end top 10 lists. I hope to catch this tour. Read on for more info...

Critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Josh Ritter will embark on an acoustic tour in January with special guest opener Gregory Alan Isakov. These intimate shows will feature Ritter performing stripped-down alongside bandmates Zack Hickman and Josh Kaufman. See below for complete dates.

The tour is in celebration of Ritter’s new album, The Beast In Its Tracks (Pytheas Recordings), which debuted at #22 on the Billboard 200 and #8 on the Top Rock Albums chart earlier this year. 

Of The Beast In Its Tracks, Ritter says, “In the year after my marriage ended, I realized that I had more new songs than I’d ever had at one time. Far from the grand, sweeping feel of the songs on So Runs the World Away, these new songs felt like rocks in the shoe, hard little nuggets of whatever they were, be it spite, remorse, or happiness.”

 

Recorded during 2011-2012 at the Great North Sound Society in Parsonsfield, Maine, the album continues Ritter’s longtime collaboration with producer and keyboard player Sam Kassirer.

 

As Josh describes, “I hadn’t composed this stuff, I’d scrawled it down, just trying to keep ahead of the heartbreak. They needed to be recorded like that. We needed to work fast, make decisions quickly, keep the songs as spare as they could be kept, and above all never allow ourselves to blunt the sharp edges. Some of the songs were mean or evil. So be it.”

The new album follows Ritter’s excellent 2010 release, So Runs The World Away.

In 2011, Ritter made is debut as a published author with his New York Times best-selling novel, Bright’s Passage (Dial Press/Random House). Of the work, Stephen King writes in The New York Times Book Review, “Shines with a compressed lyricism that recalls Ray Bradbury in his prime…This is the work of a gifted novelist.”

JOSH RITTER 2014 WINTER ACOUSTIC TOUR

January 16 Lafayette, LA Acadiana Center For The Arts*
January 17 Dallas, TX The Kessler Theater*
January 18 Austin, TX Moody Theater at ACL Live*
January 20 Phoenix, AZ Musical Instrument Museum*
January 21 Los Angeles, CA Wilshire Ebell*
January 23 San Francisco, CA The Fillmore*
January 25 Portland, OR Aladdin Theater*
January 26 Seattle, WA Neptune*
January 28 Nelson, BC Capitol Theatre*
January 29 Calgary, BC Knox United Church*
January 30 Banff, AB Banff Centre*
January 31 St. Albert, AB Arden Theatre*
February 1 St. Albert, AB Arden Theatre*
February 3 Saint Paul, MN Fitzgerald Theater*
February 4 Iowa City, IA The Englert Theatre*
February 5 Stoughton, WI Stoughton Opera House*
February 21 Chicago, IL Fourth Presbyterian Church*
February 22 Bloomington, IN Buskirk-Chumley Theater*
February 23 Saint Louis, MO Sheldon Concert Hall*
February 24 Louisville, KY Headliners Music Hall*
February 25 Cincinnati, OH Taft Theatre*
February 27 Glenside, PA Keswick Theatre*
February 28 Washington, DC Lincoln Theatre*
March 4 Lebanon, NH Lebanon Opera House*
March 5 Somerville, MA Somerville Theater*
March 7 New York, NY Town Hall*

*with special guest opener Gregory Alan Isakov