HUNTINGTON -- Josh Ritter has seen many sides of the music business.
He was discovered while performing in Ireland, hitchhiking from pub to pub. He has recorded albums for major record labels that were praised in the national press, and he has appeared on TV shows such as "The Late Show with David Letterman" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." Yet, he grew up in rural northern Idaho, and to get back to those roots he has launched his spring time "Small Town USA" tour that will include a stop tonight at the V Club.
The show starts at 8 p.m., and the opening acts are David McMillin, Jeff Ellis and Billy Matheny. The Josh Ritter Band includes Zack Hickman, Sam Kassirer, Liam Hurley and Austin Nevins. The V Club is located at 741 6th Ave., in Huntington.
"As time has passed, I've found that I have been in mostly big cities," said Ritter. "It's odd, thinking about playing music and being from a small town and ending up in entirely large towns. It was less about playing small towns and more about playing places that I haven't ever played. And that's important for everybody in the band, that feeling of expectation, of pulling into a place that you've never been."
Growing up in an isolated, yet beautiful, part of Idaho proved to be an interesting life for this singer-songwriter.
"I'm up from the north where it is pretty agricultural with wheat farming and timber," said Ritter. "I love it. I can't imagine being from a better place. I grew up pretty far out of town, and it was an hour and a half on the bus every day to school. I got the chance to see so many things growing up in a place where you don't have the TV and a lot of radio and a lot of stuff coming in and disrupting (learning) how to entertain yourself. I think that is one of the most important things you can get as a writer, is learning how to entertain yourself. Not everyone is lucky enough to get that. For that reason alone, I love Idaho. We had a party line for a telephone, and the TV went off at 12 a.m., and we only got two radio stations anyway."
In 2006, Ritter put out an introspective and highly acclaimed album called "The Animal Years." But, instead of staying on the same path and trying to out "profound" himself on his next album, he cut loose with an upbeat and rocking new project last year called "The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter."
"There is no humor in music, in songwriting right now," said Ritter. "It just didn't feel fun. And so that is why I wanted to make this last record. This 'confessional' music sounds like somebody reading from a diary. How many times can you talk about love that way? It's boring. Those are pedestrian problems that everybody has, and there is nothing elucidating about it. It's hard to write about a break up in a funny way."
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