Josh Ritter (born October 21, 1976) is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist and author who performs and records with The Royal City Band. Ritter is known for his distinctive Americana style and narrative lyrics.In 2006 he was named one of the "100 Greatest Living Songwriters" by Paste magazine.
Ritter graduated from Moscow High School in 1995 and attended Oberlin College in Ohio to study neuroscience, but later changed his major to the self-created "American History Through Narrative Folk Music".
At the age of 21 Josh recorded his first album Josh Ritter at a recording studio on campus. After graduating, Josh moved to Scotland to attend the School of Scottish Folk Studies for six months.
Josh then moved back to Idaho for a few months, before moving to Providence, Rhode Island, then Somerville, Massachusetts, where he worked temporary jobs and played at open mic nights. During this time, Ritter sold copies of his album and was spotted by Glen Hansard and his band The Frames, who invited him to return with them to Ireland. As an early sign of his success to come, Ritter found on the trip to Ireland that his album sold particularly well at open mics there. With the money from merchandise sales, Ritter was eventually able to quit his day job and devote himself to music full-time. -wiki
JOSH RITTER
The Animal Years...listen and read on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyYJrS8 ... 17E050C772
Artist Biography by Mark Deming-all music guide
An American singer/songwriter with a strong voice, a keen wit, and an evocative way with words, Josh Ritter has built a loyal following as one of the leading lights on the contemporary folk scene. Born in Idaho, Ritter bought his first guitar after hearing the Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash classic "The Girl from the North Country." While attending college in Oberlin, Ohio, Ritter got his first taste of the music of Leonard Cohen and Gillian Welch; he instantly fell in love with their songs and dropped his neuroscience major in favor of the pursuit of music. As home to classic folk venues like Club Passim, Boston was the place Ritter chose to follow his dream. He recorded and released his self-titled debut in 1999, but it was 2002's The Golden Age of Radio that got him noticed by both critics and folk fans. Selling copies of the disc on his own funded Ritter's touring, while successful tours in turn funded more albums, and so on.
Signature Sounds Recordings soon picked up the rights to The Golden Age of Radio; their reissue gave it exposure on a national level, and the four- and five-star reviews started rolling in. The HBO series Six Feet Under grabbed a track from the album for their end credits, while Ritter received an offer to open for the Frames on a tour of Ireland. Soon his single "Me & Jiggs" was in the Irish Top 40, a headlining tour of the country was sold out, and a tribute band named Cork was playing nothing but Ritter material in numerous Irish pubs. Back home, Ritter's following was growing with sold-out shows in New York City and Boston, while an invitation to the Sundance Film Festival helped begin 2003 on a high note.
Hello Starling In February 2003, Ritter spent 14 days in rural France at Black Box Studios (where much of the gear originally equipped Curtis Mayfield's studio in Chicago). The result, Hello Starling, was released in September of the same year. The success of The Golden Age of Radio and Hello Starling attracted the attention of the major labels, and Ritter signed with V2 in time for the release of 2006's The Animal Years. Ritter's tenure with V2 was brief, and after releasing a CD/DVD concert album, In the Dark: Live at Vicar Street, through an Irish label in April 2007, he hooked up with the BMG-distributed Victor Records, which issued the rock-oriented The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter in August 2007.
The hard-touring Ritter dropped two more live discs in 2008, Live at the 9:30 Club and Live at the Record Exchange, and he opted to eliminate his problems with record labels by forming one of his own, Pytheas Recordings. Pytheas issued the album So Runs the World Away in 2010, and when Ritter published his first novel, Bright's Passage, through the Dial Press in 2012, Pytheas issued a special box set of Ritter reading his own novel, accompanied by an EP of songs inspired by the book. Ritter returned to music with 2013's The Beast in Its Tracks, an album inspired by his divorce, and he traveled to New Orleans to work with producer and engineer Trina Shoemaker for his 2015 release Sermon on the Rocks.
The Animal Years
AllMusic Review by James Christopher Monger
Idaho-bred singer/songwriter Josh Ritter's V2 Records debut follows in the footsteps of 2003's Hello Starling only in instrumentation. While he retains his literate tongue and expressive voice, there is far less humor on Animal Years than on his previous two outings. Producer Brian Deck (Iron & Wine, Modest Mouse) keeps Animal Years intimate but transient, like a circus train crawling through a small town on a busy Saturday afternoon. Essentially built around two startlingly affecting diatribes on the war in Iraq, Ritter utilizes the voices of Peter and Paul, as well as Laurel & Hardy, to eke some kind of explanation from both the Administration and the Creator. The first, the deceptively sweet-sounding "Girl in the War," threatens "The angels fly around in there, but we can't see them/I got a girl in the war, Paul I know that they can hear me yell/If they can't find a way to help her they can go to Hell." The second, "Thin Blue Flame," is a nearly ten-minute rant that follows the Velvet Underground "Heroin" arc of tinder to spark to full-on blaze in a way that hasn't worked for anyone in a long time, but most certainly does here. The other cuts never reach the same heights, but standouts such as "Wolves," with its sunrise gallop and "Whole of the Moon"-era Waterboys piano, and the languid "Monster Ballads" soar only inches beneath them. [A Barnes & Noble Exclusive Edition of Animal Years was reissued in 2011 that included a bonus disc featuring Ritter performing the entire album acoustic. It also included four live B-sides, two videos, and new liner notes from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tom Ricks.]
