The O-town Scene

Music PeoPle Josh Ritter | Josh Ritter talks about being a singer-songwriter and a published fiction author with Emily Greenberg of the Scene. His book, ‘Bright’s Passage,’ is available at Green Toad Bookstore in Oneonta. O-Town Scene: You originally studied neuroscience at Oberlin College and then changed to the self-constructed major “Ameri- can history through narrative folk music.” These two areas of study are at almost op- posite ends of the spectrum. Why did you ini- tially intend to study science and then change to a music-oriented field of study? Josh Ritter: Well, both my parents are neuroscientists. Growing up around the house that was one of the few careers I re- ally knew about. I imagine if they had been undertakers that would have been it. But I was so interested in science, my folks always made science seem like a very romantic, cool profession and so much like art because art and science are both things that try to answer questions about human problems. As I have come to understand I think that songs and science aren’t all that different. But I am certainly much happier myself as a musi- cian, and I think the world is a safer place because of it. OS: I read that Leonard Cohen and Gillian Welch inspired you to play music. What was it that you heard in their music that did this? JR: First of all it seemed like a real person. My first ever real gig was opening for Gillian Welch, and she made a very strong impres- sion on me that continues. Same with Leonard Cohen, there is a feeling in there that there’s somebody who is not trying to give everything away. He just comes across as a real person, who has been somewhere and is coming back to tell you about it. There is something very modest and generous and wise about his music. I just really love his stuff. I find that Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Dylan, Lucinda Williams, these people they have things that I can think about when I am going through a certain experience in my life. They have lyrics that come back to me and help me think about my own life. OS: Your first few albums were self- published and released, and you sold them during self-funded tours. Now that you have people to do those jobs for you how are you able to focus more on the creative elements of music production and performance? 10 O-Town Scene June 30, 2011 JR: Well that’s always the hope. That you get to a point in your career where the whole other side of music, which is to try to make a living out of it, that there are people who could help you do that. You do it enough and you meet these people who are artists at this sort of thing. My manager Darius, who has been my best friend since college, we have learned this business together. Of course it’s a dream to be able to focus more on writing, but still I am really involved with the details with how else can I help the booking or how all these things happen because it is so enter- taining and so fun. joys ripping the sheet of the statue, that’s my favorite part. That’s why I love performing. People come to a show, or buy a record, or buy a book; they are giving you an opportu- nity by paying that amount of money or invit- ing you into their lives for a couple minutes on the way to work as they listen to a song or something. They’re giving you the opportunity to do more. That’s the job, it’s to take those record, before things get crazy with touring. So I jumped in on it. I decided that was the right time to try to write it into the novel that would do it justice. Once I had some steam I took it with me on the road and wrote everywhere I went. OS: Your main character, Henry Bright, is a widowed WWI veteran. How did your academic background aid in detailing your character’s experiences? JR: Just the interest in that time period really helped. My approach to education has always been to follow my interests as closely as possible. I think it is just an amaz- ing thing, what happens in our brain. We get interested, start to obsess over and have preoccupa- tions over things that we have no idea the reason for. For some reason I got interested in the First World War. I mean thoroughly engrossed in it; the popular history and the folk his- tory of it all. Far from being any expert in that I was just sort of an amateur reading about all this stuff and realizing how exciting it was to just be learning and working on something a little different than what I usually do. OS: How has the book been received so far? JR: Everything has just been Contributed John Ritter is set to play at 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 6, at the Oneonta Theatre. For ticket into, visit oneontatheatre.com. OS: You’re on your summer tour and are simultaneously promoting your book with readings and question/answer sessions. What is it like to promote yourself as both a writer and a musician? JR: I think it’s the same with writing songs as it is with writing a novel. You wait around for the right idea, and you work on that idea until it’s just as clear and polished as glass in your own mind. And that work goes into the work of art. When you go out and play a song, or when you go out and read from a novel, or talk about a song, or talk about a novel, that you can be telling something that is the truth. That feels right. That feels like it has conviction behind it. In the end, I feel like I am an artist that en- opportunities and do more with them and take them places that are unexpected. OS: The main character in your book came from a song that was bursting out of tradition- al songwriting form. Where did the decision to turn the story into a novel come from? JR: I did it actually just as I was finishing up the songs for “So Runs The World Away,” my last record. I did it because it seemed like just the perfect moment to try something like that. I had been thinking about it for a while and suddenly I had this song sitting in front of me, which I knew wasn’t going to be on the record because I was almost done with the record, and here it was this full finished sort of story that I could take and unfold in that kind of quiet time right after finishing a OS: Most writers, even if only subconscious- ly, put themselves into their writing. Is Henry Bright [the main character] in a way a version of yourself? Or have you taken some of your own experiences and had him live similar ones in the book? JR: I think, in some ways, yeah. I’m not interested in a thinly veiled autobiography. That’s why I would never write about the mu- sic business, or my career as an astonishing male model [laughing]. The fun part about writing is the chance to write about something completely different and a person completely different. great. The reception has been petty tremendous. It’s coming out next week, so the reviews are just start- ing. I’ve just had such an incredible time writing it, and the experience of publishing is really interesting and a bit different from songs. People really have been excepting it in the spirit it is offered.

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