Ritt spent the winter of 2006 in the studio with longtime collaborators bassist Joe Meisel and guitarist / dobro player Craig Totten, sons Wilder (piano, percussion) and Mitch (percussion) and hammered dulcimer player Dave Foss. Singer-songwriter Sara Pace guests on backing vocals on four songs, including a lovely duet version of the Southern gospel standard "Wayfaring Stranger." Ritt's neighbor Andy Ewen, frontman of the Madison psychoblues quartet Honor Among Thieves, sits in on "Cloudy," an early Dire-Straits-like meditation on living by a road the highway department keeps widening every few years.

Upstream marks a musical turning point for Ritt with the regular addition of piano (Wilder), hammered dulcimer (Dave) and much more regular percussion (Wilder, Mitch). Upstream also features more backing vocal arrangements, creating a new ensemble feel unheard in his last two Uvulittle releases, After the Mountains and Collected (1999-2000).

Creeks and rivers (like the Ohio River he grew up by) weave in and out of the songs on Upstream. Most songs are new, but there are also a few older songs, newly recorded, like "Ice" and "Okay (I Agree)," in which water surrounds the poet. "See the forming ice / On the phone lines / Imaginary birds / Changing their plans" leads to rain rushing down walls inside a house, and the changing of the seasons. "Okay (I Agree)" (featuring backing vocals by Sara Pace) is a hallucinatory walk on the water: "In my dream I was walking on the river / Trying so hard not to break in two / All my friends they were swimming underwater / They could only say one thing / Okay, I agree." Like in a lot of Ritt's other songs, isolation gives way to some kind of long yearned-for unity, which in turn risks turning into something lockstep and overwhelming.

Or, like in "My Favorite Color," in which a man just out of jail tries without success to find his young daughter (born while he was gone), water brings some kind of vague release: "He looked across the river and he wished that he could swim / He'd climb up on the pilings where he'd sing and dive back in / He knew where he was going was where he'd always been / Sometimes all you have to spend is time."

Ritt's long-honed fascination with family and home and one-to-one connections with others (one-to-one connections that are unique and fragile and full of history) runs through Upstream, but this is by far the most aquatic record of Ritt's to date.

This collection of songs from Stay and Hillbilly includes the single Shake which was recorded just for this collection.

Since STAY is now out of print and HILLBILLY will soon be, Ritt has put together a collection of favorites from his first 2 albums for Uvulittle Records. Included is a new single, "Shake," on which Deitz plays all the instruments.

In addition to Deitz on acoustic guitar and vocals, a wide cast of players including Steve Burke, Joe Meisel, Jay Moran and Bif Blumfumgagnge round out the tracks with piano, dobro, electric guitar, lap steel, accordion and violin for a set of acoustic roots rock that ranges from rockin' to meditative.

A must have for fans and newcomers alike.

The songs move seamlessly from single, lingering melodies to the train-like stomp riffs that fans know from Ritt's vibrant live shows. Like this Kentuckian when he's on stage, Ritt's recordings are the fruit of years of playing - traditional music and rock and roll, in band after band, with pals, family and the occasional rival.

Ritt's latest record--his fourth--features longtime pal and high-school bandmate "Kentucky Jim" Faris on the standup bass, son Wilder Deitz on piano, veteran collaborator Craig Totten on dobro and guitar, and a host of other live-show regulars.

This is solid acoustic roots rock.

Pike 27 leadman Dave Purcell calls Ritt's songs "gritty and intelligent" and "sweet, gentle and smoldering."

Ritt Deitz's third CD, PLEASURE ISLE, is a story of pools, sex, trains, rivers, dogs, barges, babies, Moses, small hands, and softball.

Madison's Isthmus calls the release, "well-wrought folk-rock" from a weathered band of old friends, players Ritt has long shared stages and studios with.

Rhythm writes that "Deitz has one of those voices that rings with authenticity..."

This album is something of a song in itself. The music comes from a very honest and grounded space. It will stay with you.

"Stay, his second release, is full of gritty, intelligent folk with songs that are, by turns, sweet, gentle, and smoldering. Dietz's warm baritone and confident songwriting are a perfect match, like a welcome campfire on a chilly fall night." -- The Riverside

Features HILLBILLY veterans Joe Meisel and Steve Burke, with guest appearances by harper Turner Collins and Reptile Palace Orchestra violinist Biff Blumfumgagnge. STAY grows out of a unique sense of place and time, and offers compelling reasons to live by one's words and music.

Ritt Deitz's debut recording is "a quiet, sure-handed roots album that stands up to repeated *listen*ing." (Isthmus).

Ritt's songs are full of trees, children, liquor, and pie. Big-hearted acoustic folk music.