TR Ritchie broke into music as a street singer in Seattle, performing for tips in the Pike Street Market while teaching himself the craft of songwriting in the fertile creative atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest’s mid-80’s music scene.
Though a Washington native he grew up in Oklahoma, and his migration back to the West began during college when he worked summers on trail and fire crews for the U.S. Forest Service in Montana, then later moved on to being a fire lookout in the mountains of northeast Oregon above Hell’s Canyon.
After college he moved to Seattle and music became his full-time focus. He got down to business, playing regionally in little clubs and concert halls, landing songs on anthology albums and getting favorable notice from music critics. In the early 90’s Ritchie went national and began releasing CDs on his own Apex label. Along the way he’s won numerous songwriting awards and carved out a niche for himself among the top ranks of first-rate performers.
He likes to keep it simple: An acoustic guitar, an eye for observation and a love of narrative. That’s the ground he knows and he’s gotten good what he does.
Gene Stout, music critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, writes of Ritchie and his music: "These are great songs, written by a man with keen insight and a wonderful sense of humor."
And Vic Heyman, posting to his internet review column Vic’s Music Corner provides this perspective, "If there’s a better songwriter on the road today, I don’t know who he is."
