Q&A: Josh Ritter doesn't force his songwriting

Domenica Bongiovanni
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Josh Ritter's lyrics possess a combination many writers strive for — layered meanings on top of words that sound good together.

As for the latter, he chooses words that seem to fit together. An easy, bluesy rock song on his latest album, "Henrietta, Indiana," about people falling on difficult times in a hardscrabble town, is a solid example. The town, of course, doesn't exist. Ritter said the name just came to him and sounded like a place in a fable.

And his stories?

Ritter said he makes those up, that they happen like a sneeze as he sits before a blank page. He doesn't force it and tries not to overthink, he said.

Fans will be able to experience Ritter — who works in a combination of indie, folk and rock — on Thursday when he and the Royal City Band play at Lafayette Theater.

Here are excerpts from his interview with the Journal & Courier.

Question: You did a lot of work in folk studies, and a lot of songwriters will listen to folk music, which of course becomes part of them. But I feel like listening to folk music and then really studying anthropology or folk studies is different. What drew you to study that?

Answer: When I gave up trying to be a neuroscientist, I was casting around for something, and I knew that I loved to play music. I knew that I was going to be a musician. I just knew it.

I was just drawn to these recordings and stories of these people who made this music, you know. Just this kind of music that was recorded and from this long, long tradition going far, far back.

I guess what I really wanted to do was find my place in the tradition, you know. I wanted to go into music with a kind of a firm footing. The thing that I learned is that people have been making music for so long and they never in history have been wildly rich because of it. Recently it's happened.

But it made me feel like, "Oh, I can go out into the world. I can be a part of this tradition. I can support a family."

Q: I notice you have a lot of biblical references in your work. Why do you incorporate them? Is it a personal exploration of Christian faith or commentary on it or something else?

A: Well, I wouldn't consider myself to be a believer. I mean, I believe in a lot of other things, you know. I believe in, like, friends and whiskey and music and my kid. But I'm not a believer, but I find that those stories come out of me naturally. They just keep on coming out of me.

Some of these stories connect as symbols of larger, like, issues and larger stories with larger themes. And I think that's one of the reasons why they come out of me.

I'm perplexed by it. I think about it a lot and wonder why. It's a mystery to me.

Q: From your 2013 album to your 2015 album, that transition has been called pretty smooth by critics even though they're different lyrically and musically. Following up one strong album with another strong album isn't easy to do, so I wondered if you intentionally wanted to make it different or if it was a product of personal growth or just being in a different place in life?

A: Well, I think that it's a number of different things. I do believe that, like, as an artist, one of your primary states is dissatisfaction, you know, and occasionally boredom with what you're doing. You start to try and find ways out of it, try to find ways to write in a new fashion.

I really experienced that after "The Beast in its Tracks," I like experienced this feeling of "Well, I've said all there is to say. I'm empty," you know.

And then you go in and you start hearing new music, you start reading new things, meeting new people, having new experiences and suddenly there's new songs. I mean, I'm kind of in one of those spots right now where I'm thinking more about writing than writing.

You just have to wait and not do anything rash, you know. Not record a record of stuff that's not good.

Q: I know that you also write prose ... do you find that those music writing and other writing processes are the same for you?

A: I've only written one novel, I haven't written any short stories or poetry or anything like that. I find that it's in a lot of ways very similar, you know. You're trying to be concise, you're trying to put the perfect word after the perfect word after the perfect word.

And you're just trying to, you know, create a world, and I think that those things are so similar. I mean, then there's the obvious differences like timeframe. And novel takes so much longer to write. I could write a song in an afternoon and if I wanted to share it, I could share it that evening, you know. That's something that a novelist doesn't get to do.

If you go

  • What: Josh Ritter. With The Steel Wheels
  • When: 8 p.m. Thursday
  • Where: Lafayette Theater, 600 Main St.
  • Cost: $25 advance, $30 door

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