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Josh Ritter: Coming Out of the Dark Clouds

    About two years ago, singer-songwriter Josh Ritter’s heart was broken. He and his wife of a few years decided to separate and while writing and publishing a novel, keeping up a healthy touring schedule, and releasing an EP – Josh wrote new songs to help himself understand and heal.

The songs add up to his forthcoming album The Beast in its Tracks which is available for pre-order and will be released on March 5th. In a statement on his website announcing the record, Josh wrote: "All heartbreak is awful – my broken heart wasn’t unique. But writing these songs was helping me get through the night and I didn’t have the strength to care or question."

 Ritter is known -and loved in many circles- for sweeping story songs with poetic lyrics involving adventure, whiskey, sometimes magic, horses, trains, ships, women - and historical figures galore. The songs on The Beast in its Tracks are smaller – they are personal – but are no less singable and beautiful than his previous work.

Josh Ritter and The Royal City Band are playing at The Egg in Albany on Wednesday, February 13th – part of a warm-up tour for their record release tour. 

(In this interview, when Josh mentions “Great North” he’s referring to Great North Sound Society in Maine – a studio run by his producer and key-boardist, Sam Kassirer.)

Sarah has been a public radio producer for over fifteen years. She grew up in Saranac Lake, New York where she worked part-time at Pendragon Theatre all through high school and college. She graduated from UAlbany in 2006 with a BA in English and started at WAMC a few weeks later as a part-time board-op in the control room. Through a series of offered and seized opportunities she is now the Senior Contributing Producer of The Roundtable and Producer of The Book Show. During the main thrust of the Covid-19 pandemic shut-down, Sarah hosted a live Instagram interview program "A Face for Radio Video Series." On it, Sarah spoke with actors, musicians, comedians, and artists about the creative activities they were accomplishing and/or missing.
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