Fitter Ritter

Josh Ritter could well be the nicest guy in rock ‘n’ roll today. Polite, charming, honest and humble, Ritter makes a point of thanking you for your interest in him and his music, almost apologising for being so damn talented. It’s refreshing in a world where so many acts of dubious talent feel that they are due four-page specials and cover story status on the back of a home-produced EP.

Brought up in a small town in northern Idaho, Josh moved to Boston when he left school, where he started playing his songs in coffee bars and other acoustic venues, eventually leading to a co-headliner with our own Glen Hansard. The two started talking and since then, Josh has been a regular visitor to these shores, culminating in his supporting The Frames on their For The Birds tour, as well as playing some headline shows of his own.

"It has been an amazing time," he gushes. "Starting small, playing open mics and meeting great people and then going on the road and having a great time."

Ritter, by his own admission, has only been writing songs since the age of 18 (he’s 24 now): "I heard Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash singing ‘Girl From The North Country’ and I loved that song so much that I started playing on this five-string lute that my dad had made me," he recalls, "but it wasn’t quite coming out right so I went down to K-Mart, bought a guitar and I’ve been writing since. I had played violin for 13 years and it always felt like a chore. When I discovered guitar, I couldn’t put it down."

It would seem, then, that the songwriting process comes quite easily to Ritter.

"The only thing I never do is shake the tree to get ideas out," he sighs. "I never try and force it. If a song comes in 20 minutes, then it’s probably a better song than if it takes six months. But I always have some songs on the back burner. I carry around a book with any ideas that I have, and I always go through them and sometimes a phrase will work with another song I’m working on."

Already being compared to a young Johnny Cash or Will Oldham ("I’m really flattered by those comparisons"), some of Ritter’s songs do inhabit a vaguely alt.country territory, albeit without the angst or lonesome torture that often goes with the job.

"When I write, I’m writing in my room for myself but the songs that I really love are the songs that connect with people," he says. "When I sing them in a concert, I can see people having a good time or at least thinking about it. Although I have songs that I think deal with some pretty serious stuff, I always try to keep it at an emotional level where there’s some ups and downs. For some reason, it seems that for music to be popular it either has to skim the surface, just candy-coat it, or it has to be deep and dark I-lick-the-blood-from-my-hands kind of stuff."

Whatever it is about Josh’s more intimate, laid-back style of songwriting, it has certainly scored highly with Irish music fans, who have lapped up his lop-sided grin and his heartfelt songs and keep coming back for more. Why does he think his songs have made such a big impression on the Irish?

"I guess I’m flattering myself here," he grins self-consciously, "but I think that the Irish musical tradition puts much more stock in singers and in singing. Whether they are the oldest songs or something that you just wrote, there is a huge value placed on being able to tell a story. Someone like Christy Moore is a huge example of that, and people like Beckett and Joyce are so connected with that tratition too.

"So I think that when you tell a story on stage with your guitar, people are willing to give it a chance and willing to try to understand what is going on. That is a chance you don’t always get and it’s a really special connection."

Josh has recorded two albums thus far, 1999’s eponymous debut and 2001’s Golden Age Of Radio, both of which are available for sale at his gigs, at Road Records in Dublin and Zhivago in Galway, and from his website (www.joshritter.com). The singer is hopeful, however, that Golden Age Of Radio will get a more orthodox release later in the year: "It has sold so well already that I can’t wait to have a real deal and for it to be in record stores.”

Not one to rest on his laurels, Josh is already demoing songs for his third album ("being over here has been amazing for my writing") and he is planning to start recording early in 2002. Until then, he is taking a brief vacation, before playing gigs all over the States, and returning here in October (when, hopefully the album will be on general release) for a series of dates around the country.

"Up until now, I’ve been managing and booking and doing everything myself, but now a bunch of other people have stepped in, so I can get my life in order," he grins. "I haven’t been back home since January so I’m looking to spend some time on the sofa with some good music, trying to get in perspective ‘cos there’s a lot of hard work on the way."

Golden Age Of Radio is available on www.joshritter.com