Cover Story
Josh Ritter
What Comes After Heartbreak
By Josh Jackson
Every time Josh Ritter takes the stage, he’s tapped into the kind of pure joy that most of us only find at those really important milestones—engagements, marriage, childbirth. In between songs—or in between verses, or when he stops to take a breath between syllables—he breaks into a wide smile, returning the affection from audiences who learned to adore the Idaho native soon after his breakout album The Golden Age of Radio in 2002.
But back in 2010, in the middle of a tour, his marriage to singer/songwriter Dawn Landes began to crumble with a phone call. He learned “things that happened,” he says, “that were just...