Josh Ritter announces new album "Sermon on the Rocks"

Sermon on the Rocks, the new album from critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Josh Ritter, will be released October 16. In addition to the studio album, a deluxe version of the CD and vinyl will be made available, which will include a bonus CD of Ritter’s early Sermon on the Rocks demos and home recordings. More information regarding album and vinyl pre-sale will be announced shortly.

Produced by Ritter and Trina Shoemaker (Queens of the Stone Age, Emmylou Harris), the 12-song album was recorded over two weeks at New Orleans’ The Parlor Recording Studio and features Matt Barrick from The Walkman on drums, Zachariah Hickman on bass, Joshua Kaufman on guitar and Sam Kassirer on piano. Of his inspiration behind Sermon on the Rocks, Ritter comments, “I wanted to play messianic oracular honky-tonk.”

In celebration of the release Ritter and his longtime touring band, The Royal City Band, will embark on a series of special tour dates this fall. Over the course of his acclaimed career, Ritter has released seven full-length albums, including his most recent, 2013’s The Beast In Its Tracks, which debuted at #22 on the Billboard 200 and #8 on the Top Rock Albums chart. The record also received widespread critical praise—NPR Music called it, “...gorgeous and glorious,” while Pitchfork asserted, “Beast is contemplative and forgiving, a means of burying one relationship to commit to another, and Ritter nicely evokes the excitement and resignation of such a transition. ”Additionally, in 2011, Ritter made is debut as a published author with his New York Times best-selling novel, Bright’s Passage (Dial Press/Random House). Of the work, Stephen King writes in The New York Times Book Review, “Shines with a compressed lyricism that recalls Ray Bradbury in his prime...This is the work of a gifted novelist.”

SERMON ON THE ROCKS TRACK LISTING

1. Birds of the Meadow
2. Young Moses
3. Henrietta, Indiana
4. Getting Ready To Get Down
5. Seeing Me Around
6. Where The Night Goes
7. Cumberland
8. Homecoming
9. The Stone
10. A Big Enough Sky
11. Lighthouse Fire
12. My Man On A Horse Is Here

• “How refreshing and inspiring it is to encounter a young artist whose achievements match his ambitions.”—The Washington Post
• “The 10 Most Exciting Artists Now” —Entertainment Weekly
• “100 Best Living Songwriters”—Paste Magazine
• “...the most exuberant outburst of imagery since Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,’ in 1963.”—Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly
• “...established him among the cream of the young singer-songwriter crop...”—The New York Times