When Josh Ritter was a teenager he thought he would be a neuroscientist, like his parents. The singer-songwriter grew up in the college town of Moscow, Idaho, listening to music by country/gospel act The Oak Ridge Boys. His life changed when he first heard Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash's recording of "Girl from the North Country."
"When I discovered Cash and Dylan, it was like I saw a secret door in the wall, a low door," Ritter, performing Wednesday at the Vaudeville Mews, said in a phone interview. "I discovered I could walk through something I never really saw was there. It was a powerful moment, and remains a real turning point in my life."
In college Ritter began recording his music, and picked up bands in an unlikely place: Ireland. The Irish group The Frames invited Ritter to tour, which turned into a multi-year stay. He jokingly claims he "didn't sleep for two years" as he toured the country, playing community theaters and bars. At the time, musicians like Damien Rice and David Gray were picking up fans in the country, creating demand for similar music.
But that music often comes across as serious and self-important, which helped inspire Ritter's 2007 album, "The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter." The songs on the album, featuring larger-than-life characters, led to the title.
"The songs have Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn type characters, the types who are full of everything, but also the first ones to run like hell," he said. "Characters like that needed a title that was that big. I was getting very serious, and I felt a lot of seriousness in other writers around me. Like it was very important that we have a flame burning through the Bush administration. I wanted to take it away from that with an impossibly arrogant title."
When not writing about larger-than-life characters, Ritter likes to read about them. Earlier this year he started The Ritter Reader Set on his Web site, selling a book tote bag with three used books selected by Ritter. The idea came from wanting to start a book club, but road life made regular meetings impossible.
"After shows people always give me books like crazy, so I go home with a big box of them," he said. "I really like that interplay between me and the crowd. It's a chance to share some ideas without telling them what to think."
One common interaction Ritter has is people asking if he's related to actor John Ritter, or just assuming he's the actor's son. If people ask, he tells the truth, but if they launch into a conversation assuming they're related, Ritter sometimes plays along.
"I had a psychic come up to me in Philly, and he had a picture of him and John Ritter," he said. "He told me my dad was in a really good place. So I called my dad to tell him. He seemed so happy with that."
