With an ill fitting suit and acoustic guitar JOSH RITTER looks vulnerable in the great caverns of the Hammersmith Apollo, his face practically glows in the spotlight. Words like 'achingly' and 'beautiful' should spring into the mouth about now - he's nervous and there's still a few hundred shadows moving to their seats in the silence. But Ritter is not so spineless. His songs are spellbinding. Not bittersweet so much as evocative of a pummelling you fondly remember. Yup, them's love songs coming out of his corn fed Idaho mouth. And they're mythic songs, psalms about the railroad, picking up girls who want someone else, saints and martyrs and blasting tunnels, it's all there. And he woos the audience honestly, leaving microphone and spotlight for his last song with thousands hanging onto the tinkling guitar and rising voice before them.
But nobody is surprised. JOAN BAEZ herself picked Ritter's song 'Wings' to cover for her current album 'Dark Chords on a Big Guitar' and in her 40+ year career she has rarely put a foot wrong. Since coming to national attention at the first ever Newport Folk festival in 1959 and forging a path for the emergent folk scene in the early 60’s she’s compromised very little by way of musical and political principles. This is near miraculous considering the number of her contemporaries currently airing their back catalogues for corporate dollar.
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Given the popular reputation folk has, tonight is however, surprisingly free of clichés. Baez’s once long hair is cropped in a sharp cut, Dylan’s ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ and 'Farewell Angelina' are played with a nod and a wink and a few lines delivered with good humour a la Bob. ‘Time of Need’ by Ryan Adams has slipped into the set along with songs by Natalie Merchant and Gillian Welch. The Murder Ballads and Swan Songs are present, though and it’s here that the vein is richest. Unwittingly perhaps Baez opens up in these songs, ‘Diamonds and Rust’ for one. Alone with her guitar her voice soars with the warbling soprano of her youth. The encore is roof raising and Baez and her band return to play a frankly staggering ‘Lily of the West’, followed by the second Dylan of the night ‘Forever Young’. There’s no ‘Silver Dagger’ or local favourite ‘Geordie’ but Joan reminds you that folk was never about playing the oldest songs, just the best.
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