Ritt & Wilder Deitz
Grace Episcopal Church 116 W. Washington Ave., Madison, Wisconsin 53703
Mitch Deitz
Ritt and Wilder Deitz
media release: This event is available in-person - see gracepresents.org for updates on COVID-19 protocols.You can also enjoy a premium-quality livestream of the concert with audio by BKMastersounds and video by Microtone Media. Grace Presents youtube channel!
A year before the pandemic, Madison-area singer-songwriter Ritt Deitz and his musician son Wilder played Grace Presents. Since then, they have created their first fully father-son recording, Hinge, and will return with those songs to Grace's storied hall.
A regular performer in listening rooms and house concerts from Wisconsin to his native Kentucky and beyond, Deitz has been writing and recording since the age of eleven. The Onion’s AV Club called his songs “concurrently earthy, ethereal and intelligent” and compared him to songwriters Greg Brown and Bruce Cockburn. Madison, Wisconsin’s Isthmus thought of Tom Waits, adding “Deitz combines rugged mountain sonics with an aesthetic that’s closer to ragtime than anything else." Cincinnati’s City Beat said Ritt’s “smart, perceptive and poetic songwriting […] glows with an aura similar to Springsteen at his most organic.”
With ten album-length releases under his belt, Deitz is likely one of the few American singer-songwriters who is also both a Knight in the French Republic’s Order of Academic Palms (2012) and a commissioned Kentucky Colonel (2021).
Taught to play by his singer-songwriter father and mentored by NEA Jazz Master, Richard Davis, Wilder Deitz is a lifelong musician, composer and bandleader. When not playing with his dad, Wilder plays a formidable brand of original soul music at venues across the Midwest. For WVMO radio host and Synesthesia blogger Scott Collins, Wilder’s music is “nothing less than pure in intent and execution… Absolutely beautiful." Tone Madison called Wilder’s raucous live band “show-stopping,” “fresh” and “joyous.”
This show follows a four-night stand across the South last month--with shows in Louisville (5/12), Ft. Thomas, KY (5/13), Vienna, VA (5/14), Wilmington, NC (5/15) and a hometown record release show in Madison on May 21. This is their last local show until mid-fall.