Brian here. I'm writing this blog post at the Josh Ritter show. It's Wednesday night and I'm writing it in my notebook. I'll type this up tomorrow. For now, I just want to tell you about The Most Awkward Concert Experience of My Life. First, the show is at Town Hall, a very fancy theatre in Times Square. That means there are seats. I've never been to a concert with assigned seats before. I feel sorry for the musicians, as this setup just doesn't facilitate crowd response and feedback. So, that's the first level of awkward. The awkwardness then gets compounded by the fact that I'm sandwiched between the wall and Mr. and Mrs. Make Out Machines. They started making out about five minutes before the show started. It's now the band's fourth song. They've taken short breaks -- that align with the band's breaks between songs, appropriately enough -- but have been going at it pretty consistently for about 20 minutes now. I don't know what all's going on -- I can see from my periphery that the girl's doing lots of stuff with her hand near/around the guy's upper thigh -- and I'm trying not to look too much. There is no one else in this row. These two, me, and the wall. Awesome. I'm definitely going to move before Josh Ritter comes on, because this is just ridiculously distracting. Oh, and the final level of awkwardness is that I have to write this all in the dark theatre, so who knows how legible it'll be when I look at it tomorrow. My god. This is the most ridiculous concert I've ever been to before.

[Then, later...]

Intermission. Time to scout for a new seat in just a moment. In the meantime, Mr. Make Out has gone away. He's wearing a blue trucker hat. People still wear those? Anyway, instead of relaxing a bit, all I can think of is how weird it feels not having people [insonely?] making out next to me at the moment. Strange how that works. Anyway, lesson learned: Don't go to shows with assigned seats.

So yes, those were my field notes from the show last night. Thankfully, the seat I moved to was much less distracting. I had the entire row to myself. And Josh Ritter put on an amazing performance, so it totally made up for the immense level of awkwardness I had to sit through during the opening band. He played most of the tracks off the new album, as well as great renditions of old songs like "Girl in the War," "Monster Ballads," "Harrisburg," "Right Moves," "Wait for Love," "To the Dogs or Whoever," and several others I can't remember off the top of my head. Oh, and one of the encore songs was a great cover of "Moon River." Good stuff.