You’ll laugh, you’ll cry: Singer-songwriters take the stage in May.
Singer-songwriters are my thematic recommendations for the month of May. A hometown heroine, a troubadour with a heart for Harrisburg and a rising country star with two first names will strum guitars and hopefully flicker our stoic Pennsylvanian hearts.
REBECCA MARIE MILLER, ABBEY BAR, MAY 11, 9 P.M.
Rebecca Marie Miller, a native of Harrisburg, launches her solo album this month at the ABC’s Abbey Bar on May 11. After a successful Kickstarter campaign in late 2011, she is ready to release her vocal and lyrical potency. Following this solo debut, she teams up with her old bandmates, Brave the Day, to headline this show.
Miller has been honing her craft over the past few years as a back-up vocalist and percussionist with the Mynabirds, a Saddle Creek signee, which have toured the United States extensively the past three years. Though she’s relegated to sidekick role with the Mynabirds, she’s more than able to hold the spotlight, doing so for11 years with Brave the Day and now through this solo album. She’s especially on cue with songs “Dead Flowers” (Track 6) and “The World” (Track 10), exhibiting her angel clear and commanding voice and her succinct and moving narratives about searching, regretting and hoping. What more could you ask for from a singer-songwriter?
JOSH RITTER, THE STRAND CAPITOL, MAY 21, 8 P.M.
Josh Ritter and his Royal City Band play the Strand Capitol Performing Arts Center in York on May 21. He is my favorite singer-songwriter and, while the greatest living one is an after-dinner debate (or debacle), Ritter ranks somewhere in the Top 5 of those under 40. And perhaps, like all intrepid lyricists, he is an evolving human. In his first album, “Golden Age of Radio,” he is flat and dense, but produced enough hits like “Harrisburg” (which is about our beloved train station) and “Me & Jiggs” to create a U.K.-cult following waiting for more. In his third album, “The Animals Years” (2006), he delivered clean vocals and a well-trained band, which temper his extended metaphors and allusions that make you think he’s vying for a tenured position at a liberal arts college. The songs are more powerful due to the band support, and he gained more domestic fans through tracks like “Girl in the War” and “Wolves.”
Now, Ritter has eschewed some of his Dylanesque lyrical ambitions and responds with a forgiving, hopeful album in “The Beast in Its Tracks,” slated for release on May 5. Written in direct response to his divorce, the album is essentially, as NPR puts it, “about processing a breakup as the necessary catalyst for a new reality.” At once forgiving in “Joy to You Baby” and less sympathetic and more mocking toward his ex-lover in “New Lover,” Ritter has again shown his mental and emotional resiliency.
His concert presence is exceptional—telling quirky, humorous, ad-libbed narratives between songs—and his general improvisation is authentic. But you’ll only know that if you take the short hop down I-83S.
CASEY JAMES, FED LIVE, MAY 26, 7 P.M.
Casey James graces the FED LIVE stage on May 26. A 2010 American Idol finalist, he is a guitar guru with a smooth and conventional country twang. His eponymously entitled album landed him on the No. 2 slot for the Billboard Country Chart in 2012. Listen to “Crying on a Suitcase,” a crowd favorite, a mainstream country song if you’re into the Top 40 types. But, if you want the more soulful, original side of James, opt for “Let’s Don’t Call it a Night” or find some picking mastery in “Drive.”
Singer-songwriters are underrated, so I’m underwriting these incredible wordsmiths and musicians with full confidence.
