“I love a good listening room… There’s a certain level of attention and connection that can happen in a listening room… There’s something special about being able to sit down, take a load off, and settle in,” says Nashville-based Americana singer/songwriter Jobi Riccio, who kicks off her first-ever headlining tour (following a recent hometown show) at The Lounge at World Café Live this Thursday, March 13th (She’s familiar with the venue, opening the room for Boston artist Mark Erelli two years ago and attending last year’s NON-COMM.) The jaunt also features a Boston date in a room that holds a special place in Riccio’s history, she explains during our recent phone chat: “I actually used to work at Club Passim in Boston, as a server, and I’m playing there on this tour and it’s sold out, which is crazy!”
September of 2023 saw the release of Jobi Riccio’s debut full-length, Whiplash, courtesy of Yep Roc (which she’s a huge fan of: “They’re so cool! They’re just two music lovers at heart.”) The year-and-a-half that followed featured a profound whirlwind of touring that Jobi tells me she still finds hard to believe: performing at the Ryman, opening a tour for The Wood Brothers, a San Francisco date for Lucinda Williams, a Nebraska date for Jason Isbell (which came about when Isbell heard her “For Me It’s You” while driving, prompting him to pull over and look her up), playing The Grand Ole Opry, Newport Folk Festival, AmericanaFest, and the Americana Awards. “Whenever I sit back and think about all of it, I’m like, ‘That shit is crazy!’” Jobi says of the experiences.
Riccio says that the opportunity to hear the songs of Whiplash live has really helped fans and listeners better understand her and her music: “I really like the reaction that the album has gotten when it is played live. A lot of people have commented on the guitar parts or lyrics, like, ‘This lyric really connected with me in a different way live.’” She even tells me that a number of artists she’s opened for have recommended her music to family and friends, which has been super special for her: “Sometimes their younger family members would come to a show be like, ‘So-and-so told me about you,’ or, ‘I saw you on CBS,’ which is so cool.” She says she feels like these kinds of recommendations are a lot more powerful than we give them credit for these days: “I think word of mouth still has so much power, especially in this day and age… when it’s a personal, heartfelt recommendation from someone you actually know. That has been incredibly meaningful to me.”
However, Riccio tells me that this headlining run — which will have her performing solo — is not exactly going to be focused on the 2023 album, whose songs were written over several years throughout the artist’s late teens and early twenties: “It’ll be a lot of new songs, a lot of electric songs, I’ll be debuting a lot of new material. It’s less of a tour like, ‘This is for Whiplash.’ I’m mostly just kind of doing my own thing.” Following this headlining tour, Riccio will spend the majority of April opening for Iron And Wine, followed by three headlining shows in May, but she says she’s hoping to spend the summer completing her sophomore album, which will feature this new, up-tempo, electric side of her sound, a side she’s grateful Yep Roc is so happy to embrace: “The artists on that label, we’re all things that are more loosely Americana, but not confined, and they’re so supportive of that… With the new direction I’m taking my music in, they’re not like, ‘What the hell? You have to be a country artist [laughs].”
*Get your tickets here.
**Listen for Jobi Riccio on the next edition of Philthy Radio, 3/21 (9-11pm ET) on Y-Not Radio.
