BIO
A musician, author and teacher, Ritt Deitz has been writing and performing music 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 said Ritt “resembles Tom Waits in his ability to marry sophistication with down-homeness.” 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.”
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.
With eleven 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.
Capital Times article on the 2022 release of Hinge
All content © 2026 Ritt Deitz