Josh Ritter and the Swell Season!

(EDIT: Morocco post here! Pictures on mobileme.)

Shortly after my return to France, I went with Angela to see Josh Ritter and the Swell Season (from the film Once) in concert in Paris. Random Thursday night trip! In fact, I had told Angela I would go a long time ago and forgotten about it until she reminded me on Wednesday night. Whoo! Surprise Paris adventure! Thankfully TGV tickets were not TOO expensive, so we skipped our French class and headed over to Paris. We left kind of early to save a bit on our train, so we grabbed some dinner in a café near the venue. We're sitting there chatting, eating our pizza, when in walks Glen Hansard from the Swell Season with some of his crew. Umm...what?!? That was my brush with fame for the day. After dinner, we headed over to the Bataclan for the concert. The venue was actually really nice and we managed to get pretty good seats. Josh Ritter opened, although I have to admit I wish he had been the headliner. He is such an amazing performer! Highlights included him playing Girl in the War completely unplugged (lights out even!) and To The Dogs or Whoever a whole minute faster than normal...fantastic.

Josh got cut a couple minutes short because some rando girl came up on stage to play a really bad song...bummer. But after her, The Swell Season came on, and although I'm not super familiar with their music, it is right up my alley and I really enjoyed the show. Glen Hansard is intense and Markéta Irglová is adorable. Plus, they played the only song that I know (When Your Mind's Made Up), which was exciting. We left right before the encore, so that was a little sad, but it was fine. We were actually lucky because the women who was at the merchandise stand told us normally Josh joins them for the encore but that night he happened to be out with his wife instead, so we didn't miss it! I would have cried if I had missed a single moment of Josh Ritter because he is seriously that good.