My weekend before Thanksgiving was full of music, as every good weekend should be. Friday night Josh Ritter returned to Atlanta’s Variety Playhouse on his “mostly solo, mostly acoustic” tour, and it was a totally excellent show! Zack Hickman, the bassist in the band with which Josh regularly tours, played upright and provided harmony on about half of the tunes; Sarah Harmer, from Kingston, Ontario, was a solid opener and also joined Josh for a song during the encore.
Jon and I walked past the venue on our way to dinner right around the time the doors were opening and there was a long line, which we both thought sort of unusual. When we arrived for the concert after dinner, we found out why — it was a seated show. DOH. Somehow we missed that. Fortunately, a friendly security guard spotted me looking for spots toward the front, asked if we were looking for two seats and led us to a pair on the very front row, off to the side. It could not have been more perfect, especially for a short person like myself. I’d had good parking karma too, so it all set the stage for an awesome evening.
Here’s the sweet set list with links to some duder‘s YouTube videos of the new tunes, the titles of which I’m totally guessing on. They’re all pretty awesome.
- Come and Find Me
- Rumors
- Me & Jiggs
- Wolves
- Long Shadows
- Southern Pacifica
- The Temptation of Adam
- Rattling Locks
- Harrisburg
- Girl in the War
- [New Lover Now]
- You Don’t Make it Easy Babe
- [Sarah -- a song inspired by Sarah Palin]
- Galahad
- Lantern
- Good Man
- Best for the Best
- [Untitled new song]
- Monster Ballads
- Kathleen
- To the Dogs or Whoever
- Change of Time (end of main set)
- Bone of Song
- Hard Times Come No More (with Sarah Harmer)
- Snow is Gone
I mean, just look at that set list! It was so, so wonderful. I love Josh Ritter more and more every time I see him. He seemed to indicate he’d be back on the road in the spring, so I’ve got my fingers crossed for another Atlanta stop.
THEN, on Saturday night, my friend’s rockstar sister, Kaki King, had a show. (Appropriately, the first song we heard over the sound system upon entering the venue was a Josh Ritter tune.) If you don’t know of her, she’s an utterly badass guitar player. Among many other projects, she worked on scoring for the movie Into the Wild, a.k.a. was nominated for a Golden Globe along with Eddie Vedder. Yeah. She has also recorded and toured with the Foo Fighters, was a hand-double in the movie August Rush, has a bunch of awesome records out and is pretty much the coolest person I know.
She brought along seven different guitars and played them all, explaining what distinguished each of them as she went along. It was a super mellow show, but a ton of fun. CNN was there filming for an upcoming music segment (anchored by another ridiculously successful person from my high school — gah); I’ll try to remember to post a link when it airs. In the meantime, look Kaki up!
