Why is josh ritter in the hospital

I finished the song with excitement and let it sit for a day to see how I felt about it. Coming back the next day I found that something about it felt wrong. The story in my mind was huge and the song, for all of my work over the next week did nothing to bring me the feeling of completion that is the reward of a song well-written. I sat with that song a little more. Then a little more. I sat with it in my kitchen and I sat with it on airplanes.

I sat with it on a train to Boston. That goddamn song was a goddamn novel! This thunderclap was followed immediately by rain. Without a desk there would be no novel.

I was living in a third-floor walk-up in Brooklyn, not in some remote, rocky outcrop, and my marriage was falling absolutely to pieces. According to my idea of what it takes to write a novel this last part should have made me feel eminently qualified to begin, but instead all I felt was sad.

I wrote on airplanes, sandwiched between enormous Texans, in airport bars, early in the morning on tour buses, after shows, before shows. I wrote the first draft in a month and a half writing one thousand words a day. I edited the thing for another year. I used a laptop with food stuck between the keys. I wore headphones and listened to Radiohead and Aphex Twin the whole time. I was still the same person stringing words together that I had always been when writing songs.

Could the book have been better if it had been written at a desk in the woods? The only thing I know looking back at the writing of my first novel is that I staked out the ground and defended it. When I was finished it was the very best that I could do and I was proud, and still am, of the result. Will I now go out and buy a real desk? Probably not. I love my life and I love the travel and I love how well novel-writing has fit itself in alongside songwriting and performing. Posted on June 14, with 56 notes.

Hi All! I am using this occasion to officially re-start Book of Jubilations. I started Book of Jubilations because I saw a real lack of first-hand advice on making a life in music. I always wanted to answer them in greater detail than time allowed. So I got the idea for Book of Jubilations. Book of Jubilations would also help me, I thought, as an ongoing reminder to keep my eyes open and to stay interested and feeling fortunate for all the aspects of this weird life that has become my own.

Things got very busy last year, however, and I had to put Jubilations aside for awhile. Running is a perfect exercise for me. But a few weeks ago, I pushed myself a bit too hard in my workout. Over the course of a few days I got increasingly sore. I had difficulty pulling my clothes on by myself. It was tough to fall asleep and even tougher to stay asleep. That morning in inched painfully out of bed and saw that my muscles had begun to swell up.

Not aware of any specific top-secret government Hulk-serum I might have been given, and notwithstanding that I was looking pretty damn good, I took the sudden change in physique as mildly disturbing.

I told my partner, Haley, and after a quick perusal of my symptoms on the Internet, she dragged me kicking and screaming out to the car. A short time later I was in the emergency room. All kinds of tests followed, and with the results came a flurry of activity around the bed. My teeth had begun to chatter and, most alarmingly to me, my muscles had continued to swell and were now looking truly freakish.

What had begun with a nice day at home was turning into something terrifying. I had a case of acute exertional rhabdomyolysis, a condition caused by a breakdown of muscle fiber content into the bloodstream. The level of muscle breakdown can be measured by the presence of creatine phosphokinase CPK.

A normal, everyday walking around level of CPK in the bloodstream is between units. At time of admittance, my blood levels measured , units. Human kidneys are good at a whole bunch of stuff, and mine have seen me through a good thirty-five years with nary a peep. My liver enzymes as well were skyrocketing. Unfortunately, there was little that could be done but keep the I. It was all wait and see.

So, over the next six days I watched a lot of daytime T. I also spent a lot of time thinking about mortality. There was no moment of clarity, no life flashing before the eyes, no drawn-out struggle or jet malfunction.

The edge was close and I had skated along it, never knowing that it was there. And what role did my songs and my writing play in those thoughts? Very little.

In addition, I was so swollen up that it was just plain uncomfortable to do anything but wonder at Wendy Williams. I got calls and visits from my friends and family. My band was in close touch day and night, and I heard from hundreds of people who wished me well.

It drove home to me just how huge the Life part of making a life in music really is. That, my friends, is what brought me back to Book of Jubilations. While I was in the hospital I got the chance to see just how many good people I am lucky enough to call my friends. Many, if not most, I have met through doing what I love.

Musicians, novelists, promoters, graphic artists, chefs, tax accountants, business managers, booking agents, managers, and above all avid music lovers. I wish that outcome for every new artist and I hope that Jubilations will help them as they move forward. There are going to be awesome shows all over the world, a new album and novel on the way and lots of cool ideas about what I want to do next.

My huge thanks to all of you for your support, goodwill and generosity. I count myself profoundly lucky to know you. Josh Next week: Exercise! Posted on May 9, with 28 notes. Posted on Feb 21, Hey All! The wind was like a sentient thing, seeming to shake the snow like clean sheets hanging on the line. The snow itself was dry as sand.

I thought about young Theodore Roosevelt, who after the death of his first wife and his mother on the same day, lit out for the territories and found a semblance of peace and a measure of distraction in the same blustery emptiness that we were in.

North Dakota is the kind of place where the wind never just whispers in your ear. The first order of the day was laundry. Finding a way to do laundry on the road is one of the perennial battles. So, clothes done, I went to the gym. I like Holiday Inn Expresses because they always have a gym and the machines always work. After seeing them play, I came to the basic conclusion that, like playing the Dane, I may very well never be a professional basketball player. At around 9 p.

Then we steamed west once more, driving through the night to Missoula. Days off are great. On show days we all head off in different directions as soon as the bus stops at the venue.

Days off area chance to catch up with eachother. Right now, Zack and I are in the hotel lobby in Missoula. Zack is working on getting a horn section together for an upcoming show. He has a pair of very large headphones on. There is always a sense of trepidation before I start a tour.

People have been singing along in the coolest spots of the songs. People know the new songs way better than I would have expected. So, on this rare second day off in a row, I find myself clean laundried, mostly groomed, away from sandwiches for a blessed second day, and grateful that there are still so many shows to come.

See you all very soon. Best, Josh. Posted on February 21, with 4 notes. High up. There is snow lying a foot and a half deep on the ground. It weighs down the boughs of the pine trees and sits on the steeply-gabled rooftops. Cloud fronts creep in and creep out, seeping around the bare, jagged peaks, and although the world up there in the rocks looks cold and ragged, I am impressed again and again as I crunch through the snow by the quiet.

It is so quiet here. There is, of course, the creek. You can hear that for a ways as what little water thaws on the slopes makes its way down the river to the valley far below me. And there is also the occasional whoosh as some heavy bank of snow slips off the branch it has piled up on and whumps to the ground below.

It is a sound that seems magnified in the stillness, like the sound of a girl pulling her heavy hair away from her sweatered shoulders and letting it fall back again. It is a beautiful sound, and I am the only one to hear it. It is so easy to take sound for granted.

Indeed, most of the time in the city we have to let sound wash over us. Here it is so cold that sound travels far and freely, and yet there is so little of it. A woodpecker flies along just in front of me, cheeping at me and pecking resonantly at the trunks along my path. Their prints have been seen in the snow. Still, it is so quiet that I doubt even a mountain lion could sneak up on me unawares as I walk.

I slept last night for a long time, the first long time in a long time. Please forgive my long absence. We were in Italy, it was summertime, and we were heading south. About nine in the morning something in the air conditioning broke down.

Buses are fickle, fragile things and stuff is always breaking down. Buses are also large, metallic cylinders, essentially rolling heat-conductors. They are also closed environments, that, not unlike submarines, are closed environments that depend on circulated air for the comfort of the people inside. Shut off the supply of circulated air and things get freaky freakily fast.

Everyone was asleep when the AC gave its final wheeze and not long after that I woke up, blazing hot, sweating and crazed as a rabid horse. Within a very few minutes everyone was up and down the stairs most European tour buses are double deckers, making the heat even more pronounced and trying open a window.

The bus pulled over to the side of the road not long after, and everyone piled groggily out onto the road. Southern Italy in the summertime is hot and the heat rose in shimmers despite the early hour. There were vineyards on both sides of the road, and craggy olive trees with rusty-looking trunks. The driver was out from behind the wheel and while not exactly scratching his head, was certainly looking more than a little put out.

Joan came out of the bus and tilted her head down the road as she caught my eye. The road we were on was a narrow two-lane blacktop with steep ditches to either side to catch the rain, as if when the rains came they came hard and fast.

I noticed that people left beautiful playing cards in the ditches alongside the vineyards. Perhaps it was ritual. The cars flew by us as we walked, as if everyone was practicing for the Italian Grand Prix. The red sign of a gas station came wavering into view. We kept walking and about ten minutes later pushed through the doorway into the frigid calm of the little place.

It was a large silver drum of some light Italian variety and we bought two from the man at the counter and went back outside to sit on the curb and sip and wait for the bus to come and find us. So we sat there sipping and talking in the sunlight and it was about as great a moment as you could imagine it would be. Something about it, perhaps it was Italy, perhaps it was the unexpected stop or the even more unexpected beer, seemed festive; a moment in need of celebrating.

Often they occur as a result of something breaking down, be it plans or machinery. When something goes wrong, the things that are going right become all the more obvious and important. Plans change all the time on the road. Things break. The only thing to do on a regular basis is to adapt and make the unexpected moments count for something. Use them. Joan, in tilting her head down the road and taking me for an early morning beer was teaching me to make the most of the unexpected moments.

What happened next, though, made the moment indelible. Another tour bus, not ours, came wheezing off the road and onto the concrete slab of the gas station. It was clear that something was wrong with his bus as well, and a few seconds later a troupe of stunningly gorgeous women came piling loudly out. These were loud, brash fire-eating Italian women of the first water.

They swept by us as we sat on the curb, and I must have been slack jawed because when I looked over at Joan she laughed, as if this sort of thing happened all the time to her. Inside, the rows of snack food were being ransacked by the voracious women. Potato chip bags crinkled, pop tops popped, fruit was being torn into by rows of white teeth. It was as if the Italian Renaissance had exploded in the tiny confines of this roadside store.

The man behind the counter looked dazed. I pulled my head back out. Joan laughed again. She stood there silently a moment as every head snapped up to take her in. She met their gazes for an instant, then turned and walked back out, smiling at me.

Not much later our bus pulled in and picked us up and we left the women of the Italian Rennaissance to mill gorgeously around the parking lot until their own half shell was fixed.

The best stuff about living a life in music is the stuff that comes to you unexpectedly. That moment, which Joan may or may not remember, only happened because something unexpected occurred and she knew what to do with that time in order to make it special. Realize the unlikely moments and make them special. Posted on December 22, with 2 notes. Posted Nov 16, Darius and I landed in Dublin at about six in the morning and took a bus into the center of town.

People were bundled against the wet cold and the sky was low to the ground. For the rest of the day we trudged around town in the rain, getting to the venue about four hours early. The opening slot on a bill is a difficult one.

There is also very little pay. It can be done, however. You have to be willing to support. Playing well is, of course, the first thing you need to be concerned about. Give the people that came to the show the very best you have.

Have your setlist ready, know your songs well and have your gear in good working order. For the venue, the most important thing that you can do to make the night a success is to get people in the room. In a very basic, very crass way, to the venue you are worth only as much as the number of folks you can bring to a show. The more people in the door, the more money the venue makes, and the better the night is for them.

In the end, the people you bring may be credited to the main act and not you, but who the hell cares? In the lead up to your opening slot, you should curtail some of your other playing in the area. Make sure that the people who want to come see you play will come to this show. The watchword for the opening act is respect.

Regardless, however, you should treat your opportunity to support with the utmost professionalism. Always be on time to the soundcheck, early if possible. Once there, give the main act their space. Always, always thank the main act, both off stage and on, for the opportunity to play.

This is just common courtesy, and in this business, as in any other, a little common courtesy can go along way in making lasting friendships and relationships that you may have for years to come. These people are vital to your performance and you will no doubt run into them again. Show your respect, even if it is not shown readily to you in return.

When you play your show make sure that you only play for the allotted amount of time. Twenty minutes, even thirty minutes, is enough time for people to decide if they like your music or not. Again, that is just common courtesy. If a band plays and then takes off before I ever get to see them, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. For one thing it makes me feel like our musical relationship goes only one way. For another, it makes me question whether the support act really views me as a musical peer or as a stepping-stone.

And his heart-stopping cover of Bruce Springsteen's The River makes for a warm, glorious encore. If Ritter follows Springsteen's starker roads in the future, then his many talents could burn much brighter. Josh Ritter. Monto Water Rats, London. Topics Pop and rock Folk music live music reviews.

But when the pace slows, the grin falters and his poetry of surrealist ragtime romance The Curse and apocalyptic love in a third-world-war bomb shelter The Temptation of Adam unravels, he becomes an artist all his own.

Josh Ritter — review. Village Underground. Topics Folk music Pop and rock live music reviews.