ascanius

John Darnielle (of the Mountain Goats) and Josh Ritter both played in Northampton, Ma last night. Next to Stephin Merritt, they're my two favorite musicians who are still making music, so I knew I was driving to Mass. to see one of them. Since I'd seen Josh Ritter before, John Darnielle won out. He played at the Iron Horse, which is a really fantastic venue. I saw Dick Dale play there when I was in high school. He had a some kind of wireless setup on his guitar so that he didn't have to be plugged in. It's probably pretty standard now, but it seemed pretty novel at the time. So, in the middle of the show, Dick Dale starts wandering off stage and out into the crowd in between the tables. He plays so fast that he shreds his picks, so the man has a pick dispenser stuck right onto the side of his guitar. So while he's wandering through the crowd he walks up to me and my cute little sixteen year old girlfriend, licks a guitar pick, and sticks it right to her forehead. It must be something about the Iron Horse, because John Darnielle at one point decided to leave stage and microphone and wander through the crowd, putting his arms around and serenading a few starry-eyed young couples. My seat was directly to the left of the stage, and if I had a yard stick I could have reached out and pocked the man in the side. Between the first and the second encore, someone shouted out 'I love you John!" Darnielle replies, 'No you don't. Come on.' Someone next to the first guy yells out, 'I like you John.' Without missing a beat, somebody from the middle of the room shouts out, 'I've seen worse.'


So it's maybe 9:00 when I get out of the Mountain Goats show. I had plans to meet a friend who went to the Josh Ritter show for drinks, so I send him a text saying my show is over. He texts me back saying Josh Ritter's opening band just finished, and if I come to the Calvin (a block away from the Iron Horse) I can catch the entire show. So I did. Somebody's already got some videos of the show up.



And then some drinking, and then some sleeping out by a river in Vermont, under the full moon. It was a really good night.

Here's a bonus video for Halloween that came up when I Youtube'd John Darnielle:


And here's something that I think is pretty: