🎙 INTERVIEW: The Long Song—Process, Craft, & the Creative Life: In Conversation with Josh Ritter
** This is a LIVE interview with Josh Ritter about the craft of writing and reality of building a creative career.**
How do songs find their shape? How do different art forms—including songwriting, painting, and fiction—speak to one another? And how do you stay attentive to creative work as it changes?
American musician Josh Ritter has spent more than two decades building a body of work that rewards close attention. Across 12 studio albums—and alongside parallel practices in painting and novel-writing—his creative life is shaped by curiosity, craft, and a willingness to let ideas move between forms.
In this conversation, we’ll explore Ritter’s approach to making work across disciplines, with a focus on songwriting and his latest album, I Believe In You, My Honeydew. Together, we’ll talk about the realities of songwriting as a long-term creative practice and how working in multiple forms can sharpen a creative voice.
We’ll also explore:
How songs typically begin for him, and how they surprise him along the way
The role of intuition in shaping songs, written work, and paintings
His Substack publication, Josh Ritter’s Book of Jubilations
How a creative practice evolves over time
Staying open to discovery across a long creative career
About Josh Ritter
Josh Ritter is a renowned singer, songwriter, musician, artist and best-selling author. One of today’s most thoughtful and prolific voices, he has released eleven studio albums including 2019’s widely acclaimed ‘Fever Breaks’ of which NPR Music praised, “He remains a hydrant of ideas while embodying an endless capacity for empathy and indignation, often within a single song.”
His twelfth studio album ‘I Believe in You, My Honeydew’ is out now. Two-plus decades into his celebrated career, Ritter has written music that has transcended generations including luminaries such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Bob Weir covering his songs.
In addition to his work as a musician, Ritter is also a national best-selling author, having released two novels to date: 2021’s The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All and 2011’s Bright’s Passage. Released to critical attention, Stephen King wrote in The New York Times Book Review that Bright’s Passage “shines with a compressed lyricism that recalls Ray Bradbury in his prime…This is the work of a gifted novelist.”
“Josh Ritter remains at the top of his game two decades into a highlight-strewn career. He’d be forgiven for loosening his grip, but his hand has never felt surer.”
- NPR Music
“Harking back to Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and maybe a little Mark Knopfler, Mr. Ritter has always been a slinger of serious ideas and high-flown imagery.”
- The New York Times
“Mysterious, melancholy, melodic…and those are only the M’s.”
- Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly
Your Interview Host: Matt Trinetti
Matt Trinetti is the writer, published, TEDx speaker, and co-founder of London Writers' Salon and the Webby-nominated Writers' Hour daily writing sessions. He also writes SEEKING with Matt on Substack.
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