Shortly after recording his critically acclaimed 2010 album “So Runs the World Away,” Josh Ritter found himself pondering a song he’d written about an everyday guy who believes he is receiving instructions from an angel.
“I had this song I didn’t really know what to do with,” Ritter explains, phoning from Moscow, where he’s been visiting his parents for a few days.
The Idaho-raised, Brooklyn-based singer had been wanting to attempt a novel for years. Suddenly, he was inspired to take the plunge.
“I figured I would just, like, use the song as a template and start writing,” Ritter, 34, says. “But then, like, seriously, the second page or third page in, there was a talking horse. And that was not in the song.”
The first draft flowed out of him in two months. The resulting novel, “Bright’s Passage,” has drawn widespread praise. In The New York Times Book Review, author Stephen King called it “the work of a gifted novelist.”
Ritter will read and perform acoustically at 8 p.m. Aug. 12 at the Record Exchange, 1105 W. Idaho St., in Boise. A few wristbands remained available at press time. Call 344-8010 for information.
Ritter, who wrote the novel while touring, says the experience immediately felt freeing. It wasn’t like crafting a song, which is shackled by an economy of words.
“I was just on such a roll,” he remembers. “And I loved it. Instead of choosing my steps very carefully along this tightrope, I suddenly felt like a dog on a beach: Just, dude, go. It was so exciting. It just felt like a pure, pure line, right from my brain to the page.”
Then the editing began. The drafts piled up. Gradually, Ritter realized that writing his first novel was actually quite similar to writing one of his famously literary songs.
“Really, it still is all about concision,” Ritter says. “You’re judging not only your attention span, but the attention span of the audience. I always think with a song, you’re invited to a party, and you don’t want to be the last one to leave.”
Ritter, who has been on a book tour since the novel was released in June, says he is developing a new respect for the grueling work authors put in after their novels are published. Ritter’s challenge comes from undertaking two careers simultaneously. Although he sometimes travels to a city exclusively for a reading, he also does daytime book events and evening concerts in others — plus the accompanying morning and afternoon press commitments.
“It starts to become a full day pretty quickly,” Ritter says.
But it’s worth it. Ritter, who describes this past year as both “insane” and “amazing,” has discovered that he gets the same buzz from doing a reading that he does from performing a concert.
“It’s exciting to read what you’ve been working on and to feel a reaction from people face to face,” he says.
Still, Ritter prefers to intersperse his readings with music.
“I’ve found that I have to have my guitar with me no matter what,” he says. “I need the guitar. So I’ve been mixing in some songs, and that’s been really good.
“And also, a guitar covers up more vital organs than a book,” he adds with a laugh.
Ritter plans to take time off soon to write music for studio album No. 7. Ideas are brewing for a novel, too.
Pretending that he’s not a musician first, novelist second, “is not only kind of folly, but it’s delusional,” Ritter says with a laugh. But now that he’s been published, there’s no turning back. (Especially with Stephen King in your court. That review, Ritter says, was “a little bit like if it was your first day on the ice and Wayne Gretzky comes down.”)
“The most gratifying part, and the most exciting part,” he says, “is feeling like you’re a horse in a field, and you look up and you see a whole ’nother field over there. And you can go and be in that field when you want to. That’s the most incredible feeling.”
ENTERTAINMENT NOTES
* It hasn’t been announced, but Def Leppard is headed to the Idaho Center on Sept. 17. ... Alternative-rock station V99.1 KQLZ-FM flipped formats this week and will simulcast the recently launched news/talk KINF-AM 730. At press time, it appeared Miranda Cosgrove’s gig Aug. 16 in Eagle would be postponed after a bus accident. Check my “Words & Deeds” blog (which I’ve been hitting hard daily) for updates.
Michael Deeds co-hosts “The Other Studio” at 9 p.m. Sundays on 94.9 FM; he appears Thursdays on Channel 6 News. Follow him on Twitter: @IDS_Deeds
