Josh Ritter has been writing about the American condition for two decades now, which is funny because he never really set out to. “There are times when surrounding events become so overpowering that even somebody who’s generally circumspect is pushed to write about it,” he says. “That’s what happened with The Animal Years. That’s what happened again with Fever Breaks.”
He’s calling in from the road, promoting what might be one of his finest records — Fever Breaks — produced by Jason Isbell and recorded with the 400 Unit. The collaboration sounds like a natural fit in hindsight, but Ritter admits it wasn’t something he’d ever tried before. “I’d never worked with someone whose spot behind the microphone was the same as mine,” he says. “Jason and I both write from that lyrical space, and to see him with his family, on the road, writing songs that just knocked me out. It felt like I was watching someone make the same choices I’d made, just with his own spin.”
The result is an album that hits harder than anything Ritter’s done since The Animal Years, full of bruised Americana and political shadows. “It’s a really strange and dark time,” he says, “but I don’t ever want my songs to be educational. I don’t want to tell people what to think. I just want to describe the moment. When you describe a situation honestly, that’s when people connect.”
He brings up “All Some Kind of Dream,” one of the record’s most arresting moments — a Dylan-esque stream of images that feels both historical and painfully current. “There are times when not being specific is a waste of space,” he says. “That verse about the families in the holding tanks — yeah, that was real. But I wanted to place it against this whole window of political activism that stretches back to the Civil Rights era and ask, ‘Are we living up to the heritage we keep bragging about?’”
Ritter doesn’t shy away from the darkness, but Fever Breaks also features his most grounded love song in years, “I Still Love You (Now and Then).” “Writing about long-term love is harder than writing about new love,” he admits. “New love is all insistence. But to write about consistent love — love that’s endured everything — that’s a different kind of honesty.”
The balance of light and dark runs through everything on the album. “Ground Don’t Want Me,” he explains, is about “a guy so evil even the ground won’t take him,” while “Silver Blade,” a song he originally wrote for Joan Baez, found new life here. “I played that for Jason and Amanda the first time we hung out,” he says. “It just felt like it belonged on this record. It shares the same spiritual DNA.”
Speaking of Baez, Ritter lights up at the mention of her name. “She kind of taught me how to live on the road,” he says. “She’s been doing this her whole life, and that kind of longevity — that’s the thing I want most. I love doing this, and I’m drawn to people who do it for the same reasons. Not because they have to, but because they can’t not.”
Twenty years into a career that started with 2,000 self-pressed CDs sitting in his parents’ basement, Ritter still sounds like a man discovering new corners of his craft. “When I first got those CDs back, I realized how many that really was,” he laughs. “But my parents let me store them in the basement, and somehow, over the years, they disappeared.”
Now, instead of selling CDs out of a car trunk, he’s playing Carnegie Hall as part of a Van Morrison tribute — doing “Linden Arden Stole the Highlights.” “It’s one of those beautiful short-story songs,” he says. “It’s like a Raymond Carver story with a sax solo.”
As for the next chapter, Ritter isn’t sure, but the faucet’s still running. “You never know when you’ll get that time when the tap’s on,” he says. “You just hope to make something great while it’s flowing.”
He pauses, then adds: “It’s a stormy time, but storms have their uses. They shake things loose. You find what still holds.”
You can watch an earlier interview below!
