The Paste Happiest Hour: Josh Ritter & Joe Henry

Over the last few years, every Friday as the work day wound down, I would gather at my local brewery with some of my closest friends to celebrate the end of another week. We call it “Happiest Hour,” and of all the things I miss about those days before we were all sheltering in place, catching up with people I cared about over drinks ranks pretty high.

That’s what I want to bring back with The Paste Happiest Hour, a new livestream video series from Paste, every weekday at 5 p.m. ET, where we’ll be taking questions from our viewers to try to truly make it the happiest hour in these tough times. One of our deepest needs as humans is to connect, and for some of us music is a close second. Since we can’t broadcast Paste Studio sessions right now, we’ll be video conferencing to connect with the artists we love. Many of the guests we’ll be inviting on the show over while we’re social distancing will be people I’ve interviewed before or whose careers I’ve been following for a long time, as well as some new favorites. I can’t wait to get started.

First up we have Josh Ritter, who I’ve been a fan of since he appeared on Issue 2 of the Paste Sampler back in 2002. We’ve connected after a hotel hallway concert in Nashville at the Folk Alliance, at a Cubs game when he was in town to have Animal Years mastered, in his hometown of Moscow, Idaho, for a feature profile where I had dinner with his parents and, most recently, at the Paste Studio in New York. Our second guest is another of my favorite songwriters and producers, Joe Henry, who just lost a dear friend in John Prine and is going to play a new song he wrote for the legendary folk singer.

In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be bringing you live music and interviews from folks like Patterson Hood, The Indigo Girls, Jim Lauderdale, Milk Carton Kids, Rhett Miller, Zach Williams of The Lone Bellow, Hanson and Aoife O’Donovan. We’ll have interviews with actors like Allison Pill and Josh Radnor. And we’ll bring on Paste staffers to discuss all the music, movies, TV and games we recommend to help get you through these difficult months.

Please join us at 5 p.m. ET today and every weekday or, if you can’t make it, check out the show on demand at PasteMagazine.com or our YouTube channel. And make sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube channel to get reminders about new episodes.

Josh Jackson co-founded Paste in 2002 and serves as editor-in-chief. He’s on Twitter @joshjackson.