Josh Ritter on “Feeding the Monster”

Over the past year or two, I’ve become quite enamored with Josh Ritter, a singer-songwriter and guitarist who pens folk-infused tunes that straddle the alt-country and alt-rock genres.  His songs tend to be quite simple, structurally speaking, sometimes no more than three or four chord progression augmented by lush instrumentation.  He sings with an earthy voice that calls to mind both early Bob Dylan and Nebraska-era Bruce Springsteen.

Yet what makes Ritter, an aspiring novelist, stand out the most to me is his evocative lyrics, the kind that can bring a love affair in a missile silo to life.  It’s this way with words that makes his recent piece on the creative process in Paste Magazine a must read for anyone who taps deep within themselves for material.  In the article, Ritter explains how seemingly odd and disparate influences can somehow come together and inspire a song.

As someone who finds myself inspired by art — even though I couldn’t draw my way out of a cardboard box — and music — even though I’m hardly the most technically skilled musician — I especially liked Ritter’s take on how we can be influenced by others’ creativity, even if their medium is not our own.

“Of the four artists, I noted that none of them were songwriters. This came as no surprise. But I thought about how funny it was that people seem to believe only a songwriter can inspire another songwriter, or only a novelist can inspire another novelist. Two of the people I fed the monster each day were American, one was Scottish and the other English. Three were born around the time of the War. There was no telling why any of this stuff was important, or even if it was. I was too busy trying to keep my monster well-fed to ponder why it wanted what it wanted.”