Few white-boy singer-songwriters can pull off a cappella. But that’s just what Josh Ritter does on “Idaho”—a song as spare as the open landscape he grew up on there. That standout track on 2006’s Animal Years demonstrates how artfully Ritter uses silence and restraint in his careful, casually soulful music. Scratch that first line—if you stay real quiet, you can catch the choked whisper of a guitar.
Ritter’s fifth full-length, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, tips the scale closer to the barroom than the coffee shop, employing complex, earthy palettes on quirky, catchy tunes about love, lust and all the cooler emotions in between. Songs such as “Right Moves,” with its simple string of questions—“Am I making all the right moves? / Am I singing you the right blues? / Is there a chance that I could call you just to see how you are doing?”—benefit from perfectly placed horns, feigned nonchalance and plenty of piano.
But it’s still the slow ones where Ritter earns his keep. “The Tempation of Adam” opens with humming strings and a cooing chorus of horns—quietly cinematic—before leaving us alone with the troubadour and his guitar. Over the course of a four-minute pop song, Ritter weaves a tale of unrequited love, crossword puzzles, insecurity, desperation and an atomic bomb. It’s a story too big to be synopsized here—plus I wouldn’t want to ruin the ending.
The Scene recently spoke with Ritter by phone from the road—he and his band had just rolled into Salt Lake City.
Scene: Your new record, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, is obviously more rocking, but I think that shift has been sort of overblown. A couple months ago a promoter here said to me, “Have you heard the new Josh Ritter record yet? It’s so different. It’s so rocking.” And I think yes, it’s a step forward, it sounds different, but you had some loud ones on Animal Years too.
Josh Ritter: Yes, thank you.
Scene: Do you think that’s something that’s been overly emphasized?
Ritter: I don’t know. I don’t exactly know what image people have of my music. I don’t have a particular one myself. I basically think that what I play is rock ’n’ roll with a lot of words—even if it’s a quiet song. I never felt my music was folk or Americana. I like lyrics and I love writing songs. I think there’s less of a motive to how the songs come out than sometimes gets ascribed. The only thing I didn’t want to do was make Animal Years over again by mistake.
Scene: More so than most artists, you get compared to other people a lot.
Ritter: Yeah (laughs).
Scene: And I don’t know if its just part of being a singer-songwriter or what, but it just seems kind of silly. You write literate songs and you’re kind of folky so you sound like Bob Dylan? Does that ever frustrate you?
Ritter: Well, I feel like thems the breaks. It’s not something that I spend a lot of time thinking about, because I feel pretty self-assured in my writing. People don’t say, “Oh Phillip Roth, he’s just Saul Bellow over again,” or that Mark Twain was the author of the new Candide. Because Bob Dylan is amazing, but he didn’t write any of my songs. And Leonard Cohen, I can love him, but I didn’t write any of his songs.
Scene: Your music is wonderfully atmospheric. You can almost hear the open spaces. I was going to ask you—did you grow up in a small town in Idaho?
Ritter: Yeah, I did.
Scene: Do you think that impacted the way you think about space and music?
Ritter: I think it does in a big way. Just on the geographical level, there’s a lot of space. And living out of town, there wasn’t a lot to do. And I sometimes think that at shows, if you have enough quiet, if everyone is quiet at the same time, its like a sing-along. Silence—the big pauses between things—becomes so important, especially when there is lots of other stuff going on.
Scene: So now that you’re playing bigger venues, do you think that experience is diminished?
Ritter: Well, I’ve had a slow growth. I started playing to 10 or 20 people or at open mics and things, then it got slightly bigger and slightly bigger and slightly bigger. So, luckily I haven’t been thrown out there like a fish onto dry land, on a huge stage, in front of tons of people. I definitely find that each different size audience has a different feel to it, but the ends you’re hoping to achieve are the same, and that is a collective feeling. There are so few things in life now that are communal in the same way that music is, still, at a show.
Scene: Your production always feels really thoughtful. Are you a perfectionist in the studio, constantly tinkering with things? Or do you usually go in with some idea of what you want to do?
Ritter: Well, with this record, I wanted to get something spontaneous. I wanted to let the tap flow without turning it off or pushing it in another direction. When the tap is flowing, anything that’s coming out, you have to get down; you have to get it down. Because if not, you’re limiting yourself instantly. After that process is done, that’s when you go back. And luckily I had a lot of help getting the arrangements right. You want it to sound really good, but at the same you want it to sound as free as possible.
Scene: I think a great example of using space—and orchestrating an arrangement that really serves the song—is that little opening string part on “Temptation of Adam,” and then the horns. I’m going to go ahead and admit that I’m obsessed with that song.
Ritter: (Laughs) Thank you.
Scene: I don’t know if I’ve ever heard such a big story told in such a short amount of time. And in my head I imagine this whole movie, or a short story. I just think that song is really wonderful. And I think it’s a good example of setting out to tell a story and being successful. And even though the arrangement is spare in parts, it still feels deliberate.
Ritter: That song came in a whole different way than most of my songs. It started as an idea for a plot that came immediately. And then I took a lot of time writing—not huge, but I wrote a bunch of different drafts just to make sure that I got the one that I wanted. The power of a song sometimes diminishes with the length. The longer it gets, the more you fit in, the less the message comes through. It’s so easy to keep throwing stuff on, but it doesn’t really make it better.
Scene: You’ve been on the road for the past couple years. Do you write on the road or do you usually save that for when you have time off?
Ritter: I used to feel really guilty because I didn’t write on the road. I used to feel like, man, I have this time, why isn’t it coming. But when Animal Years was happening, I was on the road for so long that I kind of had to readjust what I thought writing was. I think a lot of times writing is not just sitting down and…well, Leonard Cohen calls it “blackening the pages.” I don’t believe that it’s just that. You also have to fill up with enough experiences so that you have something to say. A lot of times that’s the most important part of writing. The little game of getting it down the right way is fun and enjoyable but unless you know what you’re trying to say it doesn’t matter. So, when I’m on the road, I’m like a cup filling up with water. And those experience—the books, meeting people, situations you’re in—they get you thinking. The little bit that spills over the edge becomes songs, and those come later.
Scene: Well, that’s all the questions I have. I was going to make a Larry Craig joke, but I couldn’t figure out how to fit it in.
Ritter: (Laughs) Aw man. I played in Minneapolis last night and it was hilarious. I feel like Idaho now has some sort of weird sister state thing going on.
