The politics of songwriting
Back in February, former Somerville resident Josh Ritter was in town to give some old friends a peek at his then forthcoming V2 debut The Animal Years at Studio One Guitars. He captured the chatting crowd’s attention by opening with a song so quiet, you could hear the clink of wine bottles — just his fragile voice buoyed by a couple of plucked guitar strings. It worked: the crowd was his, as he upped the intensity and introduced songs that transcended folky introspection to tackle thorny political issues about war and religion.
Over lunch at the B-Side Lounge, a low-key Ritter, who recently bought a house not far from where he grew up in rural Idaho, was again in soft voice as he described his “need to get away . . . The distractions of traveling become inhibiting. I need a place where I can be just working on my stuff . . . ”
It’s been a while since he had a place to call home. He won’t even get to spend time in his new one until June. Until then, promoting the new album is the priority — he’ll headline Avalon this Saturday as part of a national tour.
If there’s a normal route to success, then Ritter missed it. He was temping, commuting from Providence to Boston to play small rooms like the Kirkland, Passim, and the now defunct Kendall when the Irish rock band the Frames caught him at an open-mic night. “I had made a record called Golden Age of Radio around 2000, and two years later I was playing at the Kendall when they showed up. They saw me do two songs and invited me over to our Ireland. I was like, ‘Who are these jokers?’ But I didn’t have anything to lose. So I flew to Ireland. Suddenly I was playing to three or four hundred people and selling my CDs. That’s when I realized this was something I could really do.
“I went back to Ireland more and more. Any money I made I’d use to keep from temping for as long as possible. I started touring the States and then, in late 2003, the UK. But it all grew out of Ireland.”
Initially pegged as a singer-songwriter in the alt-country vein, Ritter now feels conflicted about the label. It was hearing Johnny Cash and then Dylan’s Nashville Skyline that inspired him to start writing songs. But he feels, as he puts it, “a responsibility to push himself and to push his audience.” After hearing Modest Mouse’s 2000 album The Moon & Antarctica (Sony), he retained the disc’s producer, Brian Deck. “They made a rock record that didn’t sound like a rock record. I wanted something like that, not a boring confessional record about relationships.”
The Animal Years isn’t a huge departure, but it’s his most complete artistic statement yet — an often dark yet passionate collection of songs that seems to take cues from the storyteller Springsteen of Devils & Dust. “I got away from the guitar and played more keyboards. And I pushed myself to write what really mattered to me — songs that made me feel better about the way this country is. I don’t want to tell people what to think. There’s too much of that bullshit. The reason to believe in anything — a country or music or a religion — is that it has the potential to be great. But when you abdicate the responsibility to try to be great, the depths to which you can go are unfathomable.”
No comments:
Post a Comment