Josh Ritter will make his way to One Eyed Jacks in the French Quarter on Monday, May 16, but he won’t be alone. The singer-songwriter will be joined by the Royal City Band, a group of backing musicians that have filled out his sound on past tours and previous albums. While various configurations of the group–which currently consists of Matt Barrick from The Walkmen on drums, Zachariah Hickman on bass, Josh Kaufman on guitar and Sam Kassirer on piano–have performed with Ritter before, they’ve never been more necessary than they are now.

Ritter’s latest album, 2015’s Sermon the Rocks, finds him at his most explosive, his lyrical poetry now propelled by a savage river rather than a gentle stream. It’s an exciting turn, and it’s one that came to fruition at New Orleans’ own Parlor Recording Studio. It’s also the kind of thing that requires a rip-roaring backing band to pull off in the live arena. I caught up with Ritter ahead of his tour opener in New Orleans to discuss his newfound love for the Crescent City, Sermon on the Rocks, writing music for Bob Weir and more.

You recorded your newest album down here at Parlor Studios. What was behind your decision to record in New Orleans?

On the road you rarely get more than eight hours in a place and I’d never been to New Orleans before I played there. It was such a short amount of time, but I needed less than 8 hours to know that I wanted to come back. It was such a special place. You feel like it’s in your bloodstream and you’re in it’s bloodstream. It felt like the place to hang loose and that’s what I really wanted for this record, a real place to let loose and be somebody different than I feel like I normally am. So that was why, when I first started wanting to make a record and realized I had such a clear vision of what I wanted to make, that I realized early on that New Orleans was the place I wanted to do it. I wanted to have an adventure. I wanted to bring my band down and bring  my family down and really have an adventure. That’s what it turned into.

How did that adventure go? Any particular experiences that really resonated?

Well there was. Being in the studio with somebody who’s come up in the New Orleans recording scene, Trina Shoemaker, that was a thrill. It was a thrill to go in every day, to walk through a beautiful part of town to this incredible studio and to work there during the day and go out and get great food. It was just a thrill. It sounds sedate but it wasn’t. It was, musically, the most explosive time I’ve ever felt and I think so much of that was just the atmosphere and being down there. It was an adventure that I had wanted to take, and that I was taking. I just loved every minute of it.

You described  the experience as loose and explosive, and I feel like that’s a good way to describe the album, Sermon on the Rocks. Relative to your past records, it does feel a little more loose.

Yeah, I think one thing that I brought into it was a real confidence in the material. There was a real knowledge that I don’t always have of how to sing the songs. That was something that was very subtle, like I was in sync with my own desires and it made playing just a joyful experience. But the way we recorded the record was so loose and everything kind of came together that could influence our sense of a kind of on-the-go experimentalism for me.

Yeah so mean of your past albums have been, more or less, in the singer-songwriter mold. This one, to me at least, seems musically fuller in that the band is more of a driving force in the material. Was that a deliberate thing?

Well you know, I’m so proud of my band right now. They’re so good and they’re all such great musicians, individually, and I’ve been playing with them for so long. I started to, I think, write stuff with an eye for us performing it as a band and for various parts to really come to the sore. And I think it was a little less arranged and more at times, like, thrashed. Playing with those guys in that way is pretty fun, when you really get a hold of something and everybody’s communicating. We call it passing the monster around, that really good feeling of collaboration that comes from playing it live. That’s a lot of what we did. We played a lot of it live.

Yeah “fun” does seem like a good way to put it, especially compared to an album like The Beast in its Tracks. It does sound like you really were having fun recording it.

Oh yeah, yeah it was such a pleasure. To get up in the morning, get a really good cup of coffee and walk into the studio and know what you’re working on that day and just being able to relax in this great place. You’ve got some time to think about what you’re gonna do, you’ve got some time to hang out and talk to each other and then you get into a song and it’s just–everything about the schedule of the day had this beautiful, natural rhythm to it. And Trina was such a big part of making that ambiance. She was so great.

Yeah Offbeat does an awards show every year, the Best of the Beat Awards, and last year we named Parlor the best recording studio in New Orleans for 2015, Sounds like you had a great experience there. Can you talk a little bit about working there?

When I was looking for a place, Trina and I looked at a number of different places around town. When we walked into the Parlor, I felt like I could imagine us playing there. I felt like this was definitely the place. It had a bunch of great gear, a bunch of cool features with beautiful reverby rooms and lots of little nooks and crannies to take over and use. There were these big, plush rugs and everything. I felt like I was in the lap of luxury, you know? It was a great experience working there, I totally would love to do it again. I think it’s deserving of the hype.

I love the name of the album, Sermon on the Rocks. It actually has a very New Orleans ring to it. This sort of old world religion mixed with a new world hedonism. What inspired that title?

I was thinking that the record, it had a sense of that holy roller vibe to it. It was in the world and not of it, you know? A lot of like psychedelic religious imagery and a lot of dust in it. It felt very earth bound. And then I was looking back over the lyrics at the end of the session and realized that there were so many songs that had like mountain tops and mountain top  themes in them, so I started thinking about that a lot. Sermon on the Rocks was a take on the Sermon on the Mount and, I don’t know, it just sort of grabbed a hold of me. I couldn’t believe that nobody had ever thought of putting it in a title.

Switching gears here, you mentioned psychedelic religious imagery. I know that you’ve been working, at least a little bit recently ,with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. I’m a pretty big fan of those guys myself, and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that project.

Sure. My friend and bandmate Josh Kaufman met Bob and they really hit it off. Bob mentioned something about wanting to do a record of kind of cowboy songs, the kind of songs that he would’ve heard when he was a ranch hand in Wyoming. And Josh Kaufman was telling me about that and I thought it was so exciting. What a great project to work on, to like write songs from the Old West. So I wrote a couple and sent them to Josh and he sent them to Bob and Bob liked them enough that he wanted to do more. So it happened in this great organic way. I mean, I was so excited about writing in that style. It’s such a specific tone. And then to see where those songs go once they get to Bob, he could take them anywhere. It’s really exciting to work with somebody like that. I haven’t done much work with other people, but it’s great to be able to work with him. He’s like a pillar. It’s amazing.

Do you have any idea how or when that project is going to be realized? When will we have a chance to hear some of that material?

I think it’ll be soon. I’m not exactly sure, but I think it’ll be fairly soon. It’s going great right now. Now that they’ve got all the songs, I just  have to sit back and wait to hear what happens.

So you’re not actually involved in the recording process with that, just on the writing end?

No, I’m not, which is really cool. You can work on stuff and play it and pass it over and then you don’t really know how it’s gonna turn out. It’ll go someplace else, but it’ll be Bob Weir taking it to someplace else so you know it’ll be special.

Yeah that’s pretty incredible. So I’ve noticed that you’ve been posting a lot of visual art that you’ve been doing on your Instagram for the past year or so. Do you see that as thematically separate from your music or is it another outlet for similar ideas?

I think it’s separate. It’s like I have this drive to make stuff and it’s hard to go for a day without trying to make something. Sometimes it’s not music, sometimes it’s nice to just sit down and hand paint something. And the painting is really relaxing and takes your mind some place else and focuses on other things. I love it. It’s fun to share too. I like showing it once I’m done.

Between the recording of The Beast in its Tracks and Sermon on the Rocks you had your first child. Has that had an effect on your artistic output?

Yeah I’d say it really focuses it because you don’t have the time to sit around and wait for something great. You have to record and play and write fast. And in that way, I find that I’ve actually been able to do more since Bea was born than I did for something like Beast in its Tracks. So it’s interesting. It works differently than I would have thought. It really focuses you on your ideas, when you sit down to write them you really sit down to write tem. There’s no humming and hawing about it.

You’re going to be kicking off your next leg of tour dates here in New Orleans. What can we expect from that? It sounds like you and the band are really going to be firing on all cylinders.

Yeah it’s gonna be holy roller. It’s gonna be great. The band is so good right now and we’re lucky to all be on tour. It’s just gonna be really fun. We’ve had an incredible first couple legs of touring and this one is gonna be, well I can’t imagine it will be worse. I’m so excited about it. And to be able to start off in New Orleans is super special. I’m gonna be up early. I’ll be up early and walking around.

With a band that’s playing this tight, is there any potential for some live improvisation? Or do you prefer to keep things as they were arranged?

Oh yeah, we play a different set every night. In some way or another, the guys in the band, everybody kind of vibes off some improvisation within the parts. The parts never get static as far as I can tell. So different stuff happens every night in one way or another. Which is great, because with some tours there’s no difference from show to show and it gets to you. You notice.