Josh Ritter – Dances with wolves
If Baez (who remains a friend and a fan) doesn’t understand “Wings”, Ritter believes she will one day. “I’m in it for a really long time and I think that people, if they don’t get a song, they’ll get it later, because I don’t let any songs out on a record that I don’t feel so committed to that I’m willing to play them for another 40 years. They’ll change, and the people that hear them will change, and people will get it eventually if they don’t get it immediately.”
About that “Frames thing”: It may still surprise some of his fans to learn that Ritter is a famous pop star in Ireland, thanks in part to his ties with the Frames, a renowned Irish rock band. He’s headlined two tours there, selling out venues holding a couple thousand fans. For the year 2003, readers of the Irish music magazine Hotpress voted Ritter as the best international male performer (ahead of Justin Timberlake and Ryan Adams), best international songwriter (over Ryan Adams and Jack White), and fourth-best international live act (ahead of R.E.M.). They also voted Hello Starling their second-favorite international album, behind the White Stripes’ Elephant and ahead of Radiohead’s Hail To The Thief. A tribute band even formed to perform Josh Ritter covers.
Ritter quickly and justifiably credits this Celtic clamor to the serendipity of luck and hard work. In 2001 he was squeezing out a living working temp jobs in Rhode Island while playing open mikes all over Boston and environs. Having self-released his 1999 debut, Ritter, backed by the college bandmates who’d followed him from Oberlin after graduation, recorded a follow-up, Golden Age Of Radio, on nickels and dimes in late-night hours at several northeast recording studios. (The record was later picked up by Signature Sounds and released nationally with bonus tracks in 2001).
One night like any other, while playing at an open mike, Ritter met members of the Frames, who happened to stop in for a drink. Frames leader Glen Hansard (then most familiar to American audiences for his minor role in The Commitments), invited Ritter to open for the band on tour in Ireland behind their 2001 album For The Birds.
On his first dates with them, Ritter was playing for audiences of 400 to 500 people. A year later, Hotpress readers voted the Frames their favorite Irish group in the magazine’s 2002 poll (ahead of U2), and best live act (over Sinead O’Connor and the Cranberries). The Frames’ rising tide had given Ritter’s boat a big lift.
The Frames also introduced Ritter to his next producer, their former guitarist David Odlum, with whom Ritter recorded his third release, Hello Starling. The setting was a dairy farm in France, with an assortment of equipment that once belonged to Curtis Mayfield. Having given up the day jobs but not yet quite striking it rich, Ritter required another miracle to complete the project.
His salvation rose from the dead. The HBO TV series “Six Feet Under” called to inquire whether they could use the Golden Age Of Radio track “Come And Find Me” under the closing credits of an episode of the show’s third season.
“I’d spent all the money from Signature Sounds and some of my money to get my band to France,” Ritter says. “Gigs were slow and I was pretty deep in the hole. We were rehearsing in Dublin at my friend’s house and the call came in when I was in the hotel that night. It turned out that with the money I got, I was able to finish the record.
“On another level, the people that heard that song and actually went to the internet and looked it up, it was amazing. I never grew up with TV really around. [But] then I started watching it, and I started getting way into it. I’ve got family on my dad’s side that were undertakers.”
For a time he even plotted a related sideline. “I really wanted to be a dead person on a TV show sometime. I think that’s the perfect way for a musician to be in a movie, because usually when musicians are in movies they’re not very good….But they said I had to be in Screen Actors Guild to get in.”
With the 2003 release of Hello Starling, critical acclaim for his literate songs and consistently gratifying performances reached a new peak, paving the way to almost constant touring and what Ritter refers to as his Animal Years.
“It’s a weird thing when there are no rules,” he says. “You can’t get fired. Nobody knows how to make a living playing music. People say they do but…it works differently for everybody. And there are no hours. It’s a really irregular lifestyle for somebody young who’s never really had a normal day job. I temp worked, but my parents are both professors — it’s a very classic four years, four years, four years until you get tenure. It was idyllic.