Concerts

Feast on the rock, pop, and punk stylings of Ted Leo in Portsmouth

The spirited songwriter and longtime Rhode Island resident will get The Press Room a-rockin' on August 26.

2 minutes to read

I first heard of Ted Leo when my younger, hipper roommate told me that he had covered “Ghosts” by The Jam, the hugely popular British band led by Paul Weller in the late ’70s and early ’80s of whom I was (and still am) a huge fan.

Not long after I listened to the EP that included it, Ted Leo & The Pharmacists released “Shake the Sheets” in 2004.

No one could have convinced me at the time that “Me and Mia” wasn’t the best rock song of the year.

Moreover, with the war in Iraq raging and George W. Bush’s reelection likely, the lyric “I’ll put it to you plain and bluntly/I’m worried for my tired country” from “The Ones Who Got Us Out” sounded as profound as it did unpretentious and straightforward.

I then eagerly sought out “The Tyranny of Distance” and “Hearts of Oak,” the LPs that made Leo & The Pharmacists fan and critical favorites in the early aughts.

As a fairly recent transplant from the Midwest, the opening lyrics from the latter’s “Bridges, Squares” stood out to me: “As I walked to Kendall Square/And crossed the river basin there/The Charles was black, the sky was blue/The view was old, the bridge was new.”

This led to my learning that Leo – a South Bend, Indiana native who grew up in Bloomfield, N.J. – had once lived in Boston, where he played in The Sin Eaters with his younger brother, Danny. That explained the title of “The Ballad of the Sin Eater.”

My musical interests had shifted when Leo – between 2007 and 2014 – put out “Living with the Living,” “The Brutalist Bricks,” and an album that he and Aimee Mann recorded as The Both.

However, I climbed back on board when he returned in 2017 with “The Hanged Man.”

13 years after I first heard his version of “Ghosts,” things came full (or at least partial) circle when I heard “Can’t Go Back,” which from its very first notes sounded like it could have been on one of Paul Weller’s post-Jam solo efforts. Plus, there was also another Massachusetts reference on the album in the song “William Weld in the 21^st Century.”

Leo has lived in Rhode Island for more than 15 years, and currently resides in South Kingston with artist and fellow musician Jodi Buonanno, to whom he has been married since 2004.

His setlist at The Press Room on August 26 will comprise old and new favorites, selections from the two EPs that he released this year, and – most likely – covers from likely and unlikely sources.