The Ritter End

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR... ”
Standing in the shadow
of a tall wooden cross high
on a grassy mountainside in the Swiss Alps, a boyishly handsome and immaculately suited and booted Josh Ritter is unleashing his inner rock and roll animal, primal screaming from the depths of his being, and scaring the living bejaysus out of several jangling mountain goats, a few of whom actually skid in their frantic efforts to get as far away from the Idaho-born musician as possible.
... GGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!”
hotpress photographer Graham Keogh – who will later require medical attention for a mild case of ‘high altitude cerebral edema’ (better known as ‘mountain sickness’) – examines the digital image of the screaming singer on the screen of his digital camera, and then declares himself unsatisfied.
“Let’s try that one more time,” he instructs. “That one came out fairly shite!”
Ritter bursts out laughing, as he prepares to do it again. “Gosh! I hope this isn’t gonna cause an avalanche somewhere,” he says.
The mountain we’re all comfortably clinging to is called La Chaux (2260 metres up, according to the signs), and the cross is there in memory of the countless climbers and skiers who’ve lost their lives on its treacherous slopes over the years.
Fortunately, it’s off-season and a distinct lack of snow makes an avalanche unlikely. At least on this particular lump of hard Swiss rock. Some of the other mountains surrounding us like something out of Lord Of The Rings are heavily snowcapped, but, impressive as Ritter’s vocal range is, his screams probably won’t cause any faraway occurrences of what the guide books call “the white death.”
25 minutes and many photographs later, the hotpress cover shot is hopefully in the bag and we all adjourn to a nearby bar (actually, more like a wooden hut) to fortify ourselves with strong alcohol before braving the creaking cable cars back down the mountain again. It’s just gone 11am, but those things are damn scary!
Actually, it’s only Keogh, PR supremo Dan Oggly, the Irish Independent’s Eamon Sweeney and yours truly who opt for a drink. Josh decides to have a strong coffee instead. He’s playing an intimate show later tonight with Grammy-winning violinist Hilary Hahn, and somewhat sensibly maintains that starting to drink an hour before midday probably isn’t the best idea in the world.
“I don’t really drink a lot anyway,” he confesses. “When I’m on the road, there’s definitely a few beers after the show. But I don’t really drink before shows – not even this early. I always think those times are sacred – when you’re performing, that’s a really special time. You know, everything from shining your shoes to making sure your suit is completely clean, all that stuff is important to me.”
While he might be pretty high at the moment – in the vertical sense, at least – Ritter claims not to ever use drugs either.
“It mightn’t be very rock & roll of me to say, but that stuff just scares me,” he shrugs. “I’m such an emotional person anyway so to take it in that direction, it would never appeal to me. My parents are neuroscientists, so I don’t think of the brain as being separate – it’s part of my body. And anything that affects my body affects my brain and affects my mind and affects what I write. So I just don’t and I just can’t do drugs.
“In terms of using drugs for creativity, though, however you end up being able to do it is however it works. Coffee is my main stimulant whenever I’m working. Hardly anything ever comes clearly to me, like lines pop into my head in moments, but it’s never been, as far as I know, with the aid of anything. And when I’m performing, booze just tends to make me tired.”
Has he ever gone onstage drunk?
“One time I did, that I can remember, and it was in England so...”
It didn’t matter!
“(Laughs) No! But it was in Sheffield and it was a bit of a disaster. It’s definitely not a comfortable experience to be on the stage if you’ve had too many drinks, because then you’re just not who you are.”

So who the hell is Josh Ritter anyway? Yeah, he’s a pretty big star in Ireland, but how well is he known anywhere else? And how likely is the 30-year-old to become stellar elsewhere?
The previous evening, sitting out on the balcony of my hotel room in Verbier – a small and exclusive ski resort towards the base of La Chaux – we talked on tape and attempted to find out.
Situated a couple of hours train journey from Geneva, Verbier’s a picture postcard kind of place. When there’s no snow, the town doesn’t have much reason to exist, so every July they hold a festival of classical music. Ritter has just flown in from Boston to guest perform with Hilary Hahn, and two nights from now, the duo will fly to Denver to do the same show again. He’s not that wrecked. Jet lag will kick in on the way home.
“I’ve known Hilary for a couple of years now, and she asked me to do this,” he explains. “I’ve never done anything like this before, but I’m really looking forward to it. It’s kind of a two-hour gig. Basically I’m doing some of my own stuff acoustically, then Hilary is playing some of her arrangements, then we’re doing some duets. I’m doing an old Schubert arrangement called ‘The Oak Tree King’.”
His fourth album proper, The Historical Conquests Of Josh Ritter, is coming out in the first week of September and, sonically speaking, couldn’t be any further removed from the planned Verbier show.
Recorded last winter in a 200 year-old barn in Maine during breaks from being on the road, it’s a more rough and ready, kick-ass, and far less polished, affair than The Animal Years, but still shouldn’t disappoint his many fans.
Speaking of which, hotpress has brought along a gift of the manuscript of Irish author Andrew Meehan’s debut novel I’m Your Man (due to be published early next year). Ritter is absolutely delighted to see that he’s mentioned in the opening paragraphs.
“Oh my gosh!” he exclaims, as he scans down the page. “’What do I want? I’ll tell you what I want. I want peace of mind, the remote control more often, passionate kisses, to swim in the European wine-lake, a fully-functioning ozone, decent Guinness, Josh Ritter on the radio all day long... ’ (Laughs) Wow! Wow, that is awesome! I’ve never been mentioned in a book before. Will you pass on my thanks to him?”
As it happens, Meehan isn’t the only author who’s a fan of Ritter’s music. A few months ago, horror writer Stephen King named The Animal Years as his Number One album of 2006, stating that, “this is the most exuberant outburst of imagery since Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.”
A serious compliment, and one the singer much appreciated.
“That was really amazing,” Ritter enthuses. “I heard about it when I was on this weird tour of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland a few months back. It just happened out of the blue. No-one knew, it wasn’t like a publicist thing or anything like that.”
Are you a fan of King’s work?
“Yeah. I’m a big fan of King, and I have been for a long time. Especially books like Misery. There’s one story of his, I can’t remember the name of it now, where there’s this finger that starts growing out of this guy’s shower plug, and then he chops it off – and then the next day there’s a hand. (Laughs) I love that guy.”
Ritter says that he’s a big reader, and maintains that literature is more of an inspiration to him than anything else. “Most of the time, I get a lot more inspiration from books than from other music. A big thing in our family was reading all the time, because we didn’t really have TV. That’s something I share in common with a lot of people who seem to be in classical music. Me and Hilary were talking about the ways we grew up, and that was the big thing – no TV. No TV and no video games.”
Was that something that your parents forced on you?
“I think it was more a function of the place where we lived. We lived really far out of town and there was no cable. There was just one station and it would go off at 12 and come back on at 6 or 7. I personally think that’s the way that I would want to raise kids. You can always watch TV as you get older.”
The only sons of neuroscientists, Josh and his older brother were born and raised in a small and conservative Idaho town named Moscow. He recalls a happy, but somewhat nerdish, childhood. “I wasn’t that good at most stuff. I loved sports and I loved learning and I loved reading and things. I guess I was a pretty big nerd, but that was all for the best!”
His brother’s now a distinguished computer scientist. They’re obviously an academic family, so how did Mr. and Mrs. Ritter feel when, at the age of 20, Josh firstly abandoned his neuroscience studies to take a liberal arts degree in the history of American song, and then embarked on the haphazard and itinerant life of the professional singer-songwriter?
“They were initially as nervous as I was, I think,” he smiles, flashing that trademark toothy grin. “But my parents are really supportive – because they’re scientists, they know that, in a lot of ways, you have to follow through on things that don’t necessarily have a distinct outcome.
“I think that’s where everything kind of comes from – whether it’s like science or art. You have to go with whatever you’re interested in. And, you know, maybe it will turn into something, and if not, you follow it down a certain avenue and it turns into something else.”
Anyway, Josh maintains that the science and rock & roll disciplines aren’t necessarily all that different: “Seriously, you can’t be a scientist without being a rebel. If you’re going to be a real scientist you have to question what everybody is saying, and go for it.”
Norman Mailer used to talk about artists needing to have what he called “the wound” in order to produce anything of worth – be it a play, song, book or painting. Is Ritter wounded in any way?
“Yeah, but I’m lucky because I think artists get a chance to expose that stuff and get it out. It’s like that old saying – it’s not what comes out of you that destroys you, it’s what doesn’t come out of you. If you don’t have that ability to get it out, it just becomes ingrown.”
Which brings us not especially neatly back to his new album. For the reasons he’s about to explain, The Historical Conquests Of... is a lot rougher and looser than Animal Years.
“I wanted this record to be radically different sonically, lyrically, and in approach,” he says. “After Animal Years, I was feeling a gravitas around me in the world that felt as oppressive as a smell. I was noticing that people were talking about what they wanted to say, but without saying it. I wanted something direct, and I wanted to be someone else in my songs.”
The Animal Years was quite a political album, but this one certainly isn’t. Despite the currently messy state of the world, he makes no apologies: “I don’t believe in songs being able to change anything. My job is either to be a propagandist for one side or the other, or to be an artist and write about what I see. And I personally feel like my own lyrical ideas are too subtle, and I feel like I think about things too hard, to be somebody who’s gonna go off and see just one side.”
Fine and dandy, but as an American citizen, you must have an opinion!
“Of course, I can’t find anything good about what George Bush has done to my country or to the world. I just can’t see it. But I also don’t feel like I have to go and write about it. There’s people that can do that. Like Steve Earle can go ahead and go do that, but personally I don’t feel that that’s my calling.”
Even so, he’s far from happy at the current state of US foreign affairs.
“You used to feel like your government represented you, and that whole notion has gone out the window,” he sighs. “It’s like talking about Jupiter. Or Beyonce! You know, it’s like this person or this thing doesn’t have any relation to how I live my life. How is this possible that this is going on in my name when I have absolutely no feedback on it?”
But enough about the conquests of an imperialistic nation, and back to Josh’s own historical versions. He says that some old apartment recordings of Buddy Holly’s were a serious influence on the sound of this new album (and has the glasses to prove it). As was Paul McCartney’s Ram, apparently. A strange influence, no?
“It’s a phenomenal record! I picked it up, and it was just like a lightning bulb, it was like pouring ink into water. To hear somebody that knows all the rules in a way to record and knows the pop song, but is not going to be limited to that, that’s an amazing thing. I feel like everything he ever came up with, Paul McCartney, he hummed in the shower before he ever recorded it.”
I’m not a huge fan of most of his post-Beatles stuff.
“I have problems with a lot of McCartney’s records, but at least I know he’s really going for it. I mean, he doesn’t need the money. He doesn’t need to prove anything. Maybe he feels like he does.”
As its tongue-in-cheek title suggests, this new album finds Ritter in rather playful mood and somewhat stepping out of his skin. Over 14 songs, he shapeshifts characters and changes vocal styles, playing everything from gunslingers to railroad workers, namechecking Joan of Arc, Calamity Jane and Florence Nightingale, and rhapsodising lyrically about whales’ bellies and women’s underwear. All told, it’s a beautiful musical mess.
But why did he call it The Historical Conquests Of...?
“I just thought that it would be kind of funny!” he guffaws. “I was listening to a lot of rap, I was listening to all sorts of things that were about the sound of a voice. One of the things I really got into thinking about is that along with a voice comes a character. It was really fun to do that and I wanted something overblown.
“I just really liked the title because you didn’t know really what it was about, whether it was about women or whatever. It could be about geography or about military or the airwaves or women or anything; it just felt like it was all encompassing, but it was also supposed to have a sense of humour about it, which I hope people get – and don’t think I’m just an egotistical asshole.”
As you’ve gradually become more successful, has ego ever been a problem for you?
“I sure hope not!” he laughs. “As soon as you start to believe what people tell you, you’re in trouble. If reviews call you the next Dylan or the next Springsteen - I mean, if you believe that, then you’ve got real problems. I’ve seen people who believe that stuff and it doesn’t work out good for them. And also, just because you have a job where people applaud you doesn’t mean it’s any reason to turn into a jerk.”
As overblown as its title may be, production-wise this new album is a far less polished affair than The Animal Years. Produced by keyboardist and long-term collaborator Sam Kassirer, at times it sounds like it was recorded in a barn. Not that that’s necessarily a complaint. Besides, it was recorded in a barn...
As her sings on ‘Rumors’: “My orchestra is gigantic/ This thing could sink the Titanic/And the string section’s screaming/Like horses in a barn burning up.”
“Yeah, we recorded this in an old farmhouse up in Maine that was built in 1790,” he explains. “It’s interesting. I’ve done all my recordings in barns. It’s weird. I wanted to record in Berlin, initially. Just because that town has such a crazy vibe to it. But this just turned out to be all the vibe I needed.”
He doesn’t say it, but chances are that the budget for a Berlin recording session wasn’t in the bank either. Despite almost uniformly gushing reviews for The Animal Years (even before Stephen King had plugged it), the album didn’t perform anywhere near as well as expected. Nothing to do with the music. On the night that Ritter performed to an audience of 10 million people on Letterman, his US record label went bust.
“They went bankrupt,” he sighs. “I got a text from my manager when we got offstage at Letterman and boom! That was it. V2 America had fired their whole staff.
“I have a line in one of my songs that goes, “I’d rather be the one who loves than to be loved and never even know.” And my manager sent me a text message that said, “I’d rather be the one who leaves than to be left and never even know.”
“And it happened that I’d seen that the White Stripes had left V2, and I hadn’t been paid in months and months. They owe me lots and lots of money, still, which I will never see, probably. But at the same time I sent over a courier thing saying, “I am terminating my contract with you in breach of trust and breach of agreement,” and that’s all that I’ve heard from them since.”
Not that he’s Ritter towards them or anything...
“The people that I worked with were great, but they weren’t the ones that were in charge of the purse strings. They hadn’t been paid either. I’m not mad at those people, I’m mad at whatever corporation it is that won’t call me back.”
The fact that he’s shot back so quickly, where others might have drowned their sorrows or snorted away their septums, is testament to the inner strength and resilience of the man. But how tough is the Ritter armour? Has he ever, for example, been hurt by a negative review?
“Oh, I’d say early on, yeah, totally,” he nods. “But pretty quickly I started to realise that’s what you have to be willing to endure. My favourite artists – people like Springsteen, Dylan, Cohen – have gone decades without having a good review. Look at the ‘80s – that was rough on everybody. (Laughs)”
But Springsteen only truly became massive in the 80s!
“Well, maybe not Springsteen but everybody else,” he avers. “And they have put out some terrible records – in my opinion, some really bad records. And the tribute to them is that they kept on going. Now they can look back and say, ‘Yeah, that was pretty hilarious!’ But I’m only 10 years into ever picking up a guitar and playing songs.”
Have you met any of these guys?
“Yeah. I met Dylan really briefly in Kilkenny, when I first came over to Ireland. Actually, it was great. I was playing at the Hooves & Grooves Festival in Sligo and it was just killing me, it was awful! And Dylan was playing in Kilkenny and I knew Glen [Hansard] was playing earlier in the show.
“So I went down and Glen had left me a pass with this little note, ‘I knew you’d come!’ So I ditched my other show at the Hooves & Grooves Festival and headed down there and I met Dylan, and it was an amazing experience. I’m not star-struck, really, by almost anything, but it meant so much to me.”
Dylan’s not the only one of his musical heroes that Ritter has met. “Just recently I played a tribute for Bruce Springsteen in Carnegie Hall, and I got to hang out with him a bit, and that was fantastic. He’s proof to me that you can do whatever you want and you don’t have to turn into an asshole.”
How do you mean?
“He’s like a genuine guy, no one ever knew he was around, he came up and shook my hand and that meant a lot to me. I think he probably knew how much that meant to me. He just told me he loved Animal Years. What an amazing feeling. An amazing thing. I got to play ‘Rosalita’ with him and, you know, it was great.”
Of course, Ritter is a bona-fide celeb himself these days, at least in Ireland. But does the man get recognised anywhere else?
“Yeah, it happens in other places,” he smiles, modestly. “It happens in weird places and that’s really awesome when it does. It’s great because you can actually talk to somebody. You know, there are so few places in culture now, where I feel like people get together and meet people that they don’t know.
“Like at a concert, you meet people that you don’t know and you get a chance to hang out and talk about things. When I play a concert I feel much more a facilitator of that – of people coming together and hanging out. I feel really proud of that fact, and I feel as soon as there’s a barrier between me and the audience I’m just not happy anymore.”
So you don’t want to feel like a dancing bear?
“I want to feel like somebody you know who is writing songs that you enjoy. But I don’t want to feel anything more than that. Because that takes away from my power of being just a regular person and a human being who has the same problems as everybody else.”
Did Dylan or Springsteen proffer any advice about that kind of thing?
“No, we didn’t really talk about that kind of stuff,” he says. “But I’ll tell you that Springsteen has always been a huge inspiration to me for that. Not in anything he said, but obviously in his actions, and in the stories that friends of mine have, and in his songs. He shows that you can have it both ways. It works if you work really hard at it.”
And Ritter certainly works hard at it! He tells me that he sends handwritten replies to every single piece of fanmail he receives.
“I get a lot of letters. Usually when I’m on the road I try and do a couple every day. I use postcards that are old, kinda cool-looking postcards. I think it’s important to stay real to people. You know, the worst thing is that you end up going out and performing to dots. Because then you’ve lost your touch.
“I think I heard Jarvis Cocker or somebody like that saying in an interview that you get hipper and hipper and then suddenly you’re all alone in a room eating dinner off a paper plate. I never want to be like that. It just sounds awful.”
Even so, by his own admission, Ritter is recognised a lot when he’s out and about. However, he tells me he finds that a charm offensive usually works a charm.
“When you are treated like a celebrity, my favourite thing about it is deflating it as fast as possible. When it does happen, it’s almost like a practical joke. I can’t imagine how anybody gets off on it. It’s not any fun. People treat you differently. People expect you to be different, and that’s one part where I really have trouble. I just don’t care for it. I mean, I see that it exists and it’s probably part of what I do... ”
Come on, Josh! Some part of you must love it!!
“(Laughs) Yeah, of course, there’s part of me that really likes that, I’d have to be totally honest,” he laughs. “Who doesn’t when their little dream of being a rock star comes true? It’s definitely not much fun, but I definitely love the idea. I just have a problem with it in physical reality. And one of the things that’s cool about being here in Switzerland is that nobody knows anything about what I do, so you can do whatever you want.”
Of course, the question must be asked that, as a non-smoker, light drinker and never-drug-taker, what is it exactly that he wants to do? Is wild sex with groupies on the agenda?
Apparently not. Sorry ladies, but he’s already taken...
“I’m in a long-term thing at the moment,” he says, looking slightly sheepish. “At least, I hope it is. I’m a long-term type of guy. I don’t want anything that is going to be short term, I don’t think. I mean I have. (Laughs)
“This girl I’m with, though, she’s fantastic. She’s in sort of the same career as mine so there’s no competition yet. And we can understand when we are talking to each other about being on the road.”
Well, long distance relationships are never easy...
“They’re not, but we talk on the phone every day. I think that’s really important and hopefully absence makes the heart grow fonder, you know. Hopefully! I realised last year that I had never been in a relationship with a girl that was in the same town as me. Never in my life. That’s probably Freudian or something!”
Although he’s happy enough right now, he says that romance has never been easy for him: “I think the lowest parts of my life have been romantic things, you know. I never question what I do in my work, but everything else is a huge question mark. I remember when Animal Years came out and this girl that I had been seeing for years broke up with me the day that I was on the cover of Hotpress. I remember thinking, ‘God, you know, this puts things into some serious perspective for me.’”
She dumped you that day! Ouch!
“Yeah. (Laughs) You know, it just wasn’t right. I mean I can’t blame her because it wasn’t right. But at the same time, it was a really tough, tough time. That whole period was really hard for me. You had to smile through everything. There was so much going on, but at the same time, it’s like, ‘Oh my God there’s this huge hole.’”
I guess all you can do is turn all that heartache and pain into art...
“Yeah,” he nods. “It turns into something, you know.”
Where are you living at the moment?
“Right now, here! I just moved out of my place. I was living in Portland, for a little while, in Oregon. But right now, until December, I’m not living anywhere. I’m on the road.”
Does that lifestyle suit you? You know, are you a nomad at heart?
“I don’t think I am, but I’ve kind of grown up that way. Since I was 20, I was playing music as much as possible on the road. But I don’t like the looks of it as time goes on. Like, the people that are on the road all the time, that’s not the life I want. I’m not gonna be 50 years old and living on the road my entire life. I want kids and I want a wife and I want all that stuff.
“It’s weird, because maybe rock and roll is about getting away from that, but I don’t feel like a rock and roll guy. I feel like I want the same things that everybody else wants and maybe I’m just taking the wrong way round. There’s times when I feel like, you know, I get to spend the night at someone’s house and I see a family, and I think to myself, ‘Man, that’s what I’m actually working for.’ Maybe I’m not doing a very good job at it, but that’s what I want.
“I think that’s why I’ve started writing more – besides writing songs. I see the time down the road when I’m not gonna want to be on the road nine months out of the year. I have ideas in my head for books and I am working slowly at getting better at that.”
What? Writing fiction?
“Yeah. And nothing that’s even close to being like a publishable thing, but I do know that I have it in me to do that. That’s what I want to do later on down the road.”
Have you read Dylan’s Chronicles?
“Yeah. It was great. I don’t see that it has to be strictly truth or strictly fiction, I think it’s a beautiful piece of writing. I like that a lot. I’ve got tons of stories like that, you know, stories about being on the road and weird things that have happened and I write all that stuff down, but mostly what I have in my head is fiction.”
Well, where does Josh Ritter see himself in 10 years time?
“You know, I used to think that that was a really easy question, but now I’m not so sure. Obviously, I still want to be doing this. I still wanna be writing songs. That’s the primary focus of my life and what makes me happiest. But I kind of want to be settled down somewhere that’s quiet.
“There’s times when you feel like what you’re really working for is a chance to put it all away and sit down and do something else for a little while. For me, that would be writing. I want the freedom to realise that I can do whatever I want. I always liked that story about Daniel Day Lewis going off and making shoes!”
Do you have a motto in life?
“Not really,” he shrugs. “But I always think back to this quote from Pascal that was on my mom’s wall -“See what everyone else is seeing, and think what no one else has thought.” That’s what I’m trying to do with my songs.
“But also, I feel that if you believe in what you’re doing then you can really move mountains and it doesn’t matter what anybody else is doing. You know, there’s no competition. So stay true to yourself, I suppose.”

Once we’ve all creakily cable-carred down from the mountaintop the following morning, we don’t see very much of Josh. We enjoy a quick and expensive lunch, and then he’s off to the church for rehearsals for the show with Hilary with a parting, “See you guys later!”
Left to our own devices, we soon discover that there’s not a whole lot to do in Verbier, except to drink and talk, and then talk and drink. Photographer, PR person and journalists are all unanimously agreed that Josh Ritter is a true gentleman – and a highly talented musician, to boot.
Several hours later, in a beautifully lit local church, both of those points are hammered home by Monsieur Ritter himself. He plays a wonderfully evocative set, and his duets with Hilary are positively mindblowing.
Before he even begins, though, he steps out in front of the kind of audience that John Lennon would’ve probably encouraged to shake jewellery and, just before launching into an eerily haunting version of ‘Idaho’, tells them, “My name is Hilary Hahn... (laughs)... Nah, my name is Josh Ritter and I’m a rock musician. And I’m terrified.”
From which point on, they absolutely love him. Wahay! The Swiss roll over. Another conquest in the bag.

Josh Ritter's new album The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter is out now on Independent Records