CityLife

Academy set for troubadour Ritter

FUNNY how fate can step in at the most unexpected moment and turn your life around.

It was on a path to a career in neuroscience that young Josh Ritter had a brainwave himself - laying his hands on two albums by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash led the precocious teenager to talk his college into letting him create his own degree course: American History Through Narrative Folk Music.

A future in music, then, was an inevitable consequence and Josh emerged on the scene as a mop-topped 23-year-old back in 1999, garnering a substantial following in Ireland before cracking the UK and his home market with album four The Animal Years.

These days (with album five The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter under his belt), his influences are still written all over his songs: Dylan and Cash, naturally, but also Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle, Americana and the works of Mark Twain.

His live show should have a little bit for everyone, then. Kate Walsh, supports.

Josh Ritter plays Academy 2 on Sunday, November 18. £14.50. Call 0161 832 1111.