Joshua B. Ritter[1] (born October 21, 1976) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and author who performs and records with the Royal City Band.

[6] His fascination with music began when he first heard Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country" on his parents' copy of Nashville Skyline,[7] and he purchased his first guitar at a local K-Mart.

[9] He initially enrolled in Oberlin's neuroscience program, as his parents were both neuroscientists, but he later created the independent major "American History Through Narrative Folk Music.

[14] While promoting Golden Age of Radio, he met Jim Olsen, head of independent record label Signature Sounds, who offered to remaster and re-release the album after hearing Ritter play.

The song "Me & Jiggs" was subsequently released as a single in Ireland, where Ritter was quickly becoming a word-of-mouth success, first opening for the Frames, then headlining his own shows.

[15] Ritter claims to have not realized the success of the Irish performances until stopping for a drink between cities and hearing the local band play a set covering his songs, something he was told they did frequently.

[16] In 2003, Ritter shared top billing with the French Kicks at Sepomana, the annual music festival produced by WRMC 91.1 FM.

Ritter and Ron Sexsmith headlined the Friday night singer-songwriter event at the Hotel Viking at the 2004 Newport Folk Festival.

He also appeared at Oxegen 2005, and has headlined with artists such as Joan Baez, who later released her own version of Ritter's song "Wings" on her album Dark Chords on a Big Guitar.

The deluxe editions also feature liner notes written by Ritter fans, including Dennis Lehane and Cameron Crowe.

This tour included three nights in Whelans Dublin, where he performed his albums Golden Age of Radio, Hello Starling, and The Animal Years in full.

The bonus disc includes four b-side recordings, two videos, new artwork, and liner notes by author Tom Ricks.

The limited edition two CD and one DVD set is a live recording of Ritter's performance of 21 songs at the Dublin venue on July 18, 2010.

On August 28, 2020, Ritter released See Here, I Have Built You a Mansion, an eight-track EP of rare and unreleased songs, some of which were meant to appear on Gathering but "didn't quite fit the shape of that record.

Some of his favorite authors are Flannery O'Connor, Philip Roth, and Dennis Lehane (who wrote the intro for the Deluxe Edition of Hello Starling).

[citation needed] The title of Ritter's sixth album, So Runs the World Away, comes from a line in the third act of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

He said of the novel, "Besides my songs, Bright's Passage is the first [written] work I've wanted anyone to see ... it's about a kind of sweet normal guy from West Virginia.