The Ritter truth

Josh Ritter looks and sounds confident, more secure in himself and his place in the world than I have ever seen him.

I’ve interviewed the Idaho songwriter at least half a dozen times since he first came to Ireland, as a special guest of The Frames. I’ve never heard him as assured as he sounds now. Throughout our two-hour interview, his conversation, easy and relaxed, ranges from Voltaire to Edward Hopper, from American foreign policy to buying his first home.
We’re sitting in a jam-packed coffee shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on a Saturday afternoon, while the natives (students mostly) shelter from the cold with hot chocolate, coffee or, in my case, hot cider with cinnamon.
We’ve just completed the unofficial Josh Ritter Boston Car Tour, driving around Boston and Cambridge with Josh and his manager, Darius Zelkha, while they pointed out some of his old haunts – Boston was where the young Ritter cut his teeth as a songwriter at open mic nights when he left college.
All that was years ago now, and Josh is ready to release his fourth album, The Animal Years, his strongest collection yet and one that confirms his status as one of the finest young songwriters in America.
Apocalyptic imagery, powerful narratives, political and social ideologies abound over the course of these 11 songs, where wolves and angels tread alongside saints and miscreants.
It has been suggested that the album’s title refers to the years since Hello Starling, which were pretty much spent on the road. Were those days so gruelling that they became The Animal Years?
“Well, they were gruelling but what I’m really referring to is the idea of something in transition. Between Starling and now, I did a lot of travelling and a lot of writing,” he sighs.
“But it was a confusing time. You’re growing up, trying to decide how to live your life. Stupid things get in the way, just regular little things, but they really make a difference to recording and writing, to singing, to believing what you’re doing in your job.”
It seems that Ritter’s animal years were a period of self-discovery and self-awareness, and he has emerged stronger, fitter, braver and far more confident than ever before. He admits to some serious soul-searching in between, though.
“Like, do I believe what I was taught in church?” he muses. “Eventually you run up against those questions and if you don’t start to solve them in your mind, to find out what you think about some things, or at least to be at peace with your own confusion, then you eventually just stop being able to write.
“The idea of The Animal Years is about transition, changing into something, finding your way. I feel far more at peace with what I’m doing now, far less like I’m trying to convince myself that I’m a songwriter or a writer. Now that I feel like I know that, it’s helped me to start thinking about other things in my life.”
The album’s title has further significance for Josh, whose songwriting sees him taking on the role of observer of the current state of America. “The Animal Years is also about this thing that we are as a country,” he says. “Are we choosing to go the way of other animals? Or were we just animals all along?”
Animals, and specifically wolves, permeate the album, with one song even being named after the four-legged beasts, who can also be found skulking around the borders of many of the tracks. They’re counterbalanced by angels, whose presence is equally prevalent throughout these 11 songs.
“Humans have a potential to be one or the other,” Josh opines. “The great thing is that we’re in between those two extremes: angels and animals. The idea of an angel is something that is ultimately either completely good or completely bad, like a force of nature. There is no question in their mind how to work: the only time there ever was, we ended up with fallen angels. Wolves are led by their own laws and again there’s never any question. With humans, we have the power to ask all these questions, the power of confusion. The most important thing in our lives is confusion and it’s the most important thing to really own up to: that’s what makes us people."
If there is a theme stretching through The Animal Years, it’s one of conflict, from the war in Iraq to a more inner turmoil. But none of the album’s songs adopt a preachy tone, preferring a kind of reportage. Tracks such as ‘Girl In The War’, ‘In The Dark’ and ‘Thin Blue Flame’ deal specifically with America and the war.
The latter, in particular, is an epic in the true sense of the word, like Homer’s Odyssey or Dante’s Divine Comedy turned into song, mixing Biblical imagery and stream-of-consciousness narrative to startling, even unsettling effect.
“I felt like I had a monster chasing me and that’s ‘Thin Blue Flame’,” Ritter admits. “I was looking at the psychology of a nation going to war. The only way I could describe going to war, or in Dante’s case going to hell, which is the same thing, is to disembody myself. Like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five – he doesn’t leave his body, he becomes unstuck in time, or like Martin Sheen’s character in Apocalypse Now. It’s basically an out-of-body experience: they have to leave their body and become something else to end up back in the clear blue sky and be able to talk about it.
“War books are never written by people who die, obviously. But what’s odd is that most people in wars do die. So it’s almost like the idea of writing about war as a survivor or as somebody like me on the outside, looking at the psychology of what is happening to our country, and it’s the weirdest place.
“I was writing all these songs that were just making me more and more pissed off,” he continues. “They weren’t getting at what I really wanted to write about and I was angry and confused. But I don’t want to go to war. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to die. I’m scared and I don’t feel the conviction: and I don’t feel bad about that either. So I just started writing about being confused. All those books, from Catch 22 to The Iliad or The Odyssey, they’re about people just trying to make sense, to get home, ‘cos that’s the only sense they know. With Dante, sometime in the middle of his life he entered a dark wood and at the end, he is back in those woods. So that’s how I wanted to write about it."
He was also determined to push his lyrics to new heights: “I wanted each image to stand alone and I really wanted to go for aphorisms. I wanted single lines that could stand by themselves: I think that’s the purpose of songwriting in the end. That’s why Shakespeare is so amazing, ‘cos he could encapsulate the world in a line that we can all use, all get value from and make some sense of our lives. So I was trying to make describe something, rather than cast a moral judgement on it.”
Like the lines, “It’s a Bible or a bullet they put over your heart/It’s getting harder to tell them apart”? These are very strong images, conjuring up these good old boys who go off to Iraq, Afghanistan or wherever the US government sends them, feeling like they have God on their side as they go to war.
“The reason they made those pocket Bibles, like the Gideon Bibles, was so when soldiers went off to war, they’d wear them over their heart to block a bullet,” he muses. “The stories are everywhere that the only reason these guys are alive is because the Bible stopped the bullet. There are other guys who walk around with a bullet in their pocket saying, ‘When my time comes, I’ll die the way my friends died’.
“Religion, whether it’s a belief in God or your homeland or a belief that Christian Evangelicalism in the United States has all the right answers, is just a deadly bullet, a timebomb that’s waiting to go off,” he continues. “The Bible and the sword are indistinguishable most of the time. If we don’t admit that, then we take away from the actual power of religion in our own lives. That line, ‘a Bible or a bullet’ is about religion being used as a rallying cry. It’s ridiculous. When you mix it in with flags, it’s frightening. I don’t mean to take away from the people who do [believe], like soldiers. We have a volunteer army and I don’t want to take away from their beliefs. Our country fought to be independent: you deserve the independence you fight for and you can protect that independence. I have nothing against those soldiers: I just don’t believe in turning God into a shotgun.”
Another of the albums standouts, and there are many, is ‘In The Dark’, which Josh explains is about “my love for the potential of this country. Not for the leaders but for the potential of what we could accomplish. ‘In The Dark’ is addressed to the leaders right now. Don’t assume we’re fools, even if we were foolish enough to elect you. We’re not idiots. Don’t treat us this way. Don’t treat the democratic ideals, the better angels that we have, like they can be bought and sold. Don’t keep us in the dark. We were fooled by you. We were looking for the best in you and you betrayed us, but don’t think we don’t know that.”
He’s warming to the topic now: “Somebody elected these people. I’m disappointed that they were elected but I also feel that just because they did that, doesn’t mean the system is broken. It just means that they’ve betrayed the trust of whoever elected them. They didn’t betray my trust, that’s for sure, but they did betray a lot of people’s trust and I think it’s worth mentioning that to them, without getting all preachy about it.”
‘In The Dark’’s lyrics could also be taken as a plea to God not to turn his back on humanity.
“Definitely,” he says. “It’s ironic that people always say ‘follow your heart’. Our hearts are all exactly the same, physiologically. In every other way, they’re the most confusing place you could ever be: they’re the thing that gets you lost most of the time. The reason I think there are so many love songs and so few songs about hate is ‘cos hate is just hate: love is everything else.
“Hate’s really easy. It’s like a little tiny ball-bearing. Love’s confusing but it’s also what makes art and everything else possible. The reason to believe in a country or to believe in a god is for the potential for them to be so great. My own personal beliefs about Christianity and religion are so conflicting and so angry sometimes but I believe that religion itself can do so much good, just like believing in your country. I think ‘In The Dark’ is just as much about God as the people who believe they’re God.”
Just in case you thought the album was all doom-mongering and ideology, however, it’s not. There are plenty of lighter moments, where Ritter’s songwriting touch is as gentle as a butterfly.
“Songs like 'Lillian Egypt’, ‘Idaho’ and a few others all have the fabric of America in them,” he explains. “With songs like ‘Girl In The War’, ‘Thin Blue Flame’ and ‘In The Dark’, there’s some stuff in there that I think is really scary. And I didn’t want it to be a record that was completely dark. I wanted to bring out the darkness. I wanted it to be like an Edward Hopper painting: sometimes those paintings are really lonely, people sitting in a café, but there’s also something about them that looks warm and comforting.”
The Animal Years was recorded at Bear Creek Studios, outside Seattle, which Ritter admits was a “big barn where the sound reverberates”.
Production duties were handled (with aplomb, it must be said) by Brian Deck, whose previous credits include Modest Mouse, Tortoise and Wheat: “A lot of producers I talked to said, ‘if we make this record, we can make these songs into hits and you can sell millions’. [Brian] Deck never said anything like that. He just seemed to treat the songs as an opportunity to get even weirder than I thought the songs were already.”
The Animal Years sounds like more of a group record than either his eponymous debut, Golden Age Of Radio or Hello Starling. Josh readily admits he wanted “to get out of the idea of the singer-songwriter”. Former Frames’ sticksmith and Wicklow native, Dave Hingerty is a full-time band member, alongside piano player Sam Kassirer (in whose car we did our whirlwind tour of Boston), bassist Zack Hickman, and former Fat Lady Sings guitarist, Tim Bradshaw.
“I’m so lucky to work with a band like these guys because they’re emotionally committed,” Ritter enthuses. “They’re all amazing musicians who have a great knowledge of theory, so when I’m describing things to them, they have to have the patience and the belief to work with me to figure out what I mean and how to translate that musically. Some of the stuff sounds ridiculous when I try to describe it.”
Like the way you told Brian Deck that you wanted ‘Monster Ballads’ to sound “more Mark Twain” and he immediately knew what you meant?
“When you say something like that and people have the courage and patience to go out on a limb for ya, to try out something ridiculous, then you get at some really interesting stuff,” he admits. “I feel that songwriter records often depend too much on the songwriter and the band is reduced to being just a session band. But on this record, Dave Hingerty came up with guitar lines, he even wrote horn lines, which I know I’m going to use. Zack played nine or 10 instruments. We used something like 17 instruments on ‘Girl In The War’. But on the whole, if it’s not fun then the songs aren’t there or aren’t ready.”
The album was almost called Horse In The Road, after an incident (which is described in the song ‘Good Man’) when Josh was driving really late at night in the North Cascades and he came around a corner on icy roads to find a horse standing in the middle of the road, which he swerved to (narrowly) avoid.
“The horse was just standing there like an omen,” he recalls. “I thought I was going to hit it. So that song, ‘Good Man’, is about realizing who a few people in my life are that I thought were really, really important: they flashed through my head before I thought I was gonna bite it. It was a song that I really wanted to write.”
The Animal Years is being released worldwide on V2, but here in Ireland, Josh is remaining at his spiritual home of Independent Records: “That’s my own personal relationship with Ireland and I’m loathe to give that up. V2 wanted Ireland as well but I think they had the sense not to push that as an issue.”
He admits that it was a relief to finally sign a worldwide record deal, though. “I had considered signing with more record deals than I’d ever gone on dates, certainly than I’d ever had relationships. Back when I was recording Starling, Seymour Stein from Sire Records, who had signed Madonna, came out and hung out, wanting to sign me.”
While describing Stein as “a great guy”, Ritter eventually opted for V2 because “they didn’t tell me one thing that I had to change... When we got to a certain point in talking to all these labels, they wanted to do some image-shifting. All of them said that except V2. I started really freaking a little bit. If enough people tell you they’re going to shift your image a little bit... What were they gonna do? Turn me into Avril Lavigne or something?”
In between signing a record deal and recording his remarkable fourth album, Josh also managed to run a marathon in Phoenix, Arizona. He admits that during the 18-month tour for Hello Starling he was “crazy into running – I actually had to stop for a while cos I was down to 150 pounds”.
“I needed something I could do when I was on the road, something that was my own private time. And it’s hard being on the road, with all the food and beer, so I wanted something I could do to feel healthy,” he explains. “I got it in my head to run a marathon and couldn’t get it out of there, so I did it. I ran a marathon for Medicin San Frontiers. I’m really psyched about it. It felt like something besides music that I could work on, so it was really exciting.” Those of you interested in Josh’s athletic pursuits can read about them in a forthcoming issue of Runner’s World, which profiles the Idaho singer’s marathon run.
Somewhere along the way, he also found the time to buy a “1930s farmhouse-style house” in his hometown of Moscow, Idaho.
“I came home from touring Starling and I didn’t have any place to live. I’d been on the road for a year and a half and I was just going crazy, so I saw a bunch of places and when I found this house, I really loved it. It was perfect. But then I had to go back out on the road. I was in Knoxville, playing with My Morning Jacket and they Fed-Exed me the housing papers and I signed them that day, just before I went on stage.”
The new home-owner is justifiably proud of his refuge from the world: “In the space of a week, I was talking to Mundy and Rufus Wainwright and they were both saying how amazing it is to walk into your house and feel like your songs built this. That’s awesome, when you do things on your own terms and you can come up with a house, which is all you need. I feel very different going home now than I ever did when I rented an apartment.”
Finally, what about the year ahead, when he’s leaving his homestead and getting back on the tour-bus, showcasing The Animal Years?
“I really hope people like it, but what I’m really excited about is that I finally found my confidence, I found my voice,” he concludes. “It’s a brave album and I feel really proud of it.”