Alum Josh Ritter To Play Cat

Ritter Returns to Share Oberlin Tested Folk Tunes

Golden Days: Josh Ritter celebrates the release of his new CD next Thursday in the Cat. (photo courtesy Hungry Ear Records)

When folk musician and Oberlin graduate Josh Ritter was in Oberlin last spring for the Oberlin Folk Festival, he promised to return this semester for another performance. Keeping his promise, Ritter will perform Thursday, Nov. 9, at the Cat in the Cream for the release party for his brand new CD, Golden Age of Radio. The new CD, a follow-up to his self-titled debut album, appears more professional, with a dozen new songs and higher production values. Those who are familiar with Ritter, or have heard him perform before at Oberlin, will be familiar with a few songs on the new album, like "Come and Find Me," "Roll On," and "Other Side," since he tested them out on Oberlin audiences before recording them.

For those less familiar with Ritter, what follows is a crash course on his life and work. Josh Ritter, now twenty-three, was born in 1976 in the small town of Moscow, Idaho, the son of two neuroscientists. He discovered music, and in particular, guitar music, as a teenager, after attending an Arlo Guthrie concert and listening to a Johnny Cash album. While in Oberlin, Ritter majored in American folk music, and began writing and performing folk songs of his own. Since graduating, Ritter has taken his act on the road, opening for folk singers such as Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Lucy Kaplansky, Tom Russell, Carrie Newcomer and Lori McKenna. In addition, he has been featured on National Public Radio and the Oberlin-based live website HereandNow.net.

Ritter is known for his distinctive style, and many critics have compared his sometimes raw, sometimes wistful voice to singers like Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, John Prine and Nick Cave. Moshe Benarroch of the Folk and Acoustic Music Exchange, for instance, wrote, "Ritter sounds like someone who is going to be very well-known someday...he will soon have a cult following comparable to Waits in the 70's, or James McMurtry and Nick Cave today."

Highlights of Golden Age of Radio include the upbeat, catchy "Me and Jiggs," "Leaving," which has traces of Steve Poltz, and the tragi-comic "Harrisburg," with a chorus that goes "It's a long way to heaven/it's closer to Harrisburg/and that's still a long way from the place where we are/and if evil exists/it's a pair of train tracks/and the devil is a railroad car." Also enjoyable are "A Country Song" and "Song for the Fireflies."

What's next for Ritter? First and foremost he will be promoting "The Golden Age of Radio," and in March, he plans to tour Ireland and the U.K. with the Irish band the Frames. As Benarroch puts it, "Ritter is a man to watch. I believe he will make it." Ritter has already begun to acquire a cult following, and he is only just beginning.