BIO
A regular performer in listening rooms and house concerts from Wisconsin to his native Kentucky, Ritt Deitz has been writing and recording since the age of eleven. The Onion’s AV Club called his songs “concurrently earthy, ethereal and intelligent” and compared him to songwriters Greg Brown and Bruce Cockburn. Madison, Wisconsin’s Isthmus says, “Deitz combines rugged mountain sonics with an aesthetic that’s closer to ragtime than anything else. At times, he resembles Tom Waits in his ability to marry sophistication with down-homeness, which he puts on full display in his ninth album, Horses and Smoke.”
The Madison Observer called Ritt’s voice a “mix between a world-weary blues howl and a country twang […] with a warm hospitality befitting this Kentucky native.”
Cincinnati’s City Beat said Ritt’s “smart, perceptive and poetic songwriting […] glows with an aura similar to Springsteen at his most organic.”
With ten album-length releases under his belt, Ritt is probably one of the only American singer-songwriters who is also both a Knight in France’s Order of Academic Palms and a commissioned Kentucky Colonel.
Ritt played for years with bassist Joe Meisel and percussionist Dave Foss, but these days he records and plays out primarily with his son Wilder Deitz, (piano, mandolin, vocals), neo-soul and traditional player and founder of the Wilder Deitz School for Creative Music. Wilder has played with his dad since Ritt’s After the Mountains tour in 2006.
Article on the release of Hinge: Madison musicians Ritt and Wilder Deitz plan first father-son album
