We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.

“God forbid a man grows up.”

That’s Tyson Ritter’s response (on TikTok) to anyone wondering why All-American Rejects’ new music doesn’t sound much like “Swing, Swing,” “Dirty Little Secret,” or “Move Along,” pop-rock anthems that catapulted AAR to fame in the 2000s. For anyone who came of age screaming the lyrics to “It Ends Tonight,” it can be easy to forget that these songs came out 20 years ago, when Ritter was barely out of his teens. Of course he’ll write differently at 40 than he did at 18. (Given that today is Ritter’s birthday, make that 41!)

But when hit songs are that embedded in a pop cultural moment, they can be impossible to get away from. It’s actually not dissimilar to the narrative playing out in AAR’s brand-new video for their single “Sandbox,” where the band tries to escape from a hoard of murderous puppets – like if Weezer’s “Keep Fishin'” visual turned into a Blumhouse horror flick.

Following a one-off cover of Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta,” plus a smattering of tracks across the past decade (notably the 2019 Send Her To Heaven EP and 2020 COVID relief single “Me Vs. The World”), “Sandbox” is a meaningful new release from AAR because it signals the launch of their first studio album since 2012’s Kids In The Street. A new AAR era is surprising in part because Ritter was only just talking about how kids don’t want new music from legacy bands. And yet, here we are.

What a legacy it is, too. Formed in 1999 in Stillwater, OK, AAR comprises singer and bassist Ritter, guitarist Nick Wheeler, rhythm guitarist Mike Kennerty, and drummer Chris Gaylor. In 2002, the quartet unleashed their self-titled debut, an 11-track blast of radio-ready hooks, pop-punk power chords, and Ritter’s tear-soaked, emo-influenced cry. After much MTV airplay, AAR released the more polished (and even catchier) sophomore album Move Along, which placed them at the epicenter of the suburban mall punk movement, which by that point had gone entirely mainstream.

AAR kept the momentum going through 2008’s When The World Comes Down (home to another ubiquitous single, “Gives You Hell”) and the aforementioned Kids In The Street. By the 2010s, however, Ritter was growing disenchanted with the music industry and had started accepting more acting roles. AAR never really quit performing or dropping a single here and there, but for all intents and purposes, they entered an unofficial hiatus.

That time away proved healing for Ritter, who also became a new father in 2021. “Is this my living? Sure. But man, I have to be able to hit the pillow at night knowing that I’m pushing myself, knowing my son doesn’t know me as this guy who was on top in the early 2000s,” Ritter says over Zoom from his house in Oklahoma. “He knows me as a guy who’s starting over again. Maybe that’s [where] a lot of my motivation is. I just want to show the people in my life that are here now — that might not have been before — that I still am trying to say something that I’m proud of.”


In our career-spanning interview, Ritter opens up about “Sandbox” and AAR’s next chapter, meeting 50 Cent backstage at MTV’s Spring Break 2003, acting opposite Brian Cox in Prisoner’s Daughter, and getting a post-smooch letter from Emma Stone after filming The House Bunny.

New All-American Rejects Music & “Sandbox” (2025)

You got veteran music video director Joseph Kahn to oversee the visuals for “Sandbox.” How did you connect with him?


TYSON RITTER: It was really random. My friend was like, “I just went to this screening of a Joseph Kahn movie, and they used ‘Swing, Swing’ in the whole intro, and it’s really elaborate and integrated into the score.” I was like, “Wow, that’s incredible.”

Then like a couple of months passed by and I knew we needed to start thinking about the visual identity of this record, which is a luxury that I hadn’t had really in the past, I guess. Starting with “Swing, Swing,” I remember we were going so fast because radio was kind of in front of everything for that record, that it was like, “You’re shooting a music video.” It was like, “Okay.” When you’re 17, you don’t really know what you’re allowed to participate in, I guess, when a major label scoops you up and then Cinderellas you into this jettison.

I remember my friend telling me about this Joseph Kahn thing. We gave him a sync for “Swing, Swing,” but I guess I didn’t resonate that it was him. Anyway, I spoke to my manager, like, “We’ve got to just cold call. We got to track down Joseph Kahn, just on the off chance that maybe [he’ll want to direct our video].” Then a couple of days later, he was like, “Let’s do an exploratory call.”

Joseph’s really a really interesting fellow. He’s very calculated artist. I think there’s people that sort of play chess with their art, and he very much is strategic and calculated. We had a call, and we hit it off. He bounced around a couple of ideas. [The idea we chose], I was like, “I don’t know why, this just sounds great.” It’s playing with the lyric of the song, and I think the song is really confronting if you pay attention to it. I think he married what we have always done visually, which has been a tongue-bursting-through-the-cheek band, but this is a song that isn’t about subject matter that we’ve approached before. I think it really softened the intensity of it. We made a horror movie with Joseph Kahn.

I feel music videos have gotten very secondary to the quick digestive culture of our current society. To ring true to our lineage of music videos, it was really a pleasant surprise to land that and to actually nail it. I’m so proud of it. We worked for two days in a row on it, and it was a lot of work, these Muppet slasher films.

Where did you source the Muppets — or the puppets, as “Muppets” are likely subject to copyright?

RITTER: They were crafted by these puppeteers that we worked with, and I forget their names because the day was just a gauntlet. But they came in and they were gone as quick as they came as far as the hellos and goodbyes. I know that they were really proud of their fabrication. Honestly, yeah, the Kirkland Signature Kermit that we got made was really cool.

Since you put it that way, “Kirkland Kermit” reminds me of Wonder Showzen.


RITTER: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s so funny, a friend of mine was like, “This is kind of Wonder Showzen.” I was like, “Yeah man, but we’re not shying away from it.” I was like, “Yeah, have people walked down a Muppet path before? Sure, but I don’t think people have taken it to this extreme before in a music video format.” Yes, yes. All flowers to Wonder Showzen.

You were on the Zach Sang Show podcast last year and musing a bit about how fans ultimately don’t crave new music from their favorite classic bands. How did you arrive at a place where you felt like you did have something new to say and write about as All-American Rejects?

RITTER: I think it was the time away from [All-American Rejects] that stated a perspective for me that was worth writing about. A lived experience that wasn’t just in an incubation of steel horses and midnight sunrises and moons of every state of the United States. We were in such a marathon with ourselves for the first 10 to 12 years of this band being in the major label system, trying to get a record out every two to four years. It became such a conveyor belt towards the latter two records that finally saying “Fuck this” was a really empowering thing to do. Not that we weren’t appreciative of the audience that we had created, but it was more like we hadn’t had anything for ourselves. It didn’t feel like, “Oh my God, we get to do this.” It started grinding on the “We have to.”

To be able to walk away from it for a second was — a lot of people are afraid to do it. I mean, I was afraid to do it, but I was so burnt out. There’s a big difference between a crafter and an artist. People that craft put in their 10,000 hours and they excel at their work. I felt like we were turning it into a craft as opposed to an artistry. I know that might sound silly coming from a guy who wrote “Dirty Little Secret,” but I was 22 when I wrote that. I think now being on the other side of 30, I have a perspective that I didn’t have when I was younger. Having this ability to inherently be able to craft a song is something that a lot of people lean on and just keep pumping out and serving the beast and shaking the purse strings for a commerce as an end result.

You sort of hinted at it before, but can you go into more detail around how “Sandbox” demonstrates where All-American Rejects are in 2025, as opposed to 2005?

RITTER: The songs that we’re known for were a very small bubble of me, right? It was about this relationship. It was a very tight world that I was operating in of what my circumference at the time of being young was. Now I feel like, going to the doctor as an adult is a very interesting thing. I wasn’t a cute kid anymore, and they don’t care. The people that I saw didn’t seem to care about me. They plugged me into a numbers game.

I think that made me realize we really only truly have compassion for, as a collective, for when kids are in jeopardy. When kids hurt each other, when a kid falls down on the street, four people will run to pick them up. As I was trancing out on this groove I was riding, I was like, “What about a war on a playground?” We sure seem to have a confronting moment in society right now about war and it seems so archaic and Cro-Magnon. I guess the song is about showing us ourselves, but through the lens of a child, and maybe it looks different.

I think there’s some imagery in there that is trying not to be prosaic, [but] trying to be evocative, hopefully not in a way that feels heavy-handed. This isn’t Orange Crush, but this is the All-American Rejects taking on a subject matter with a bit of a satire on our world right now. Last year it was unavoidable to not be invested in what was going on in the world, without having some sort of sadness. A lot of people, it was their sandbox that they were fighting within. That’s what this song is trying to speak to without trying to say anything [opinionated]. It’s just war in general, man. How are we still doing this shit in 2025? It seems so mind-blowing that we still resort to sticks and stones.


We’re taking longevity to new extremes. We’re beating disease, but we’re also doing this to each other. I know it’s not a new concept, but it just blows my mind that this is a world we live in.

Playing When We Were Young Fest (2022) And Dropping Out Of When We Were Young Fest (2024)

Given everything you’ve said about not being a kid anymore and needing to evolve your presentation as All-American Rejects, what’s your take on participating in nostalgia festivals with other 2000s pop-punk/emo acts?


RITTER: Speaking from a place of growing up and touring around with a lot of those bands, I know that they’re happy. My thoughts on it are, man, music just wants to get out there. Like the fact that Spotify has created something with an algorithm where a kid could be listening to a modern heavy rock band and then Ozzy comes on and they don’t know when it was released, but they’re like, “Holy shit, what’s this band?” Whether you label it “nostalgia festival” or whatever, it’s new music to a new audience. We saw it when we went out there for the first time on a headline tour for many years. I was like, “Who is this crowd, man?” It feels like I’m looking back at the same crowd I was playing to in 2008. There’s young people, there’s older people, there’s a swath of walks of life.

I think it’s only a good thing, and maybe it speaks to the fact that people are craving authenticity and music is made differently now. It is made in a congress of writers. It’s becoming a lot more of a processed experience in a commercial way. I’m not saying that’s how all music is made, but I feel like popular music [has] a big committee that is involved in making sure that it is perfect and sellable. I think a lot of people look before they listen now. Whatever it is, it’s waking up another underbelly movement of people going, “I just want to be able to feel what I’m listening to.” If that’s at a nostalgic festival, then rock and fucking roll.


How intentional do you strive to be about the way you’re presented on a nostalgia festival ticket? I’m thinking of last year when AAR dropped out of When We Were Young. It sounded like there had been a miscommunication around what your setlist would be? The fest advertised your set as being a run through of your self-titled debut album, but you had never agreed to that? Let me know if I’m getting this wrong.


RITTER: No, that wasn’t an issue at all. Every band on there was advertised as playing through their record. A lot of bands did, but that wasn’t a contingency on whether or not we did or didn’t play it.


Are you at liberty to shed some light on the decision not to play?


RITTER: I don’t know if it’s worth shedding light on. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get to play. We spent a lot of money preparing a show that we had never done before. Unfortunately, people within the former management of that festival chose to make us hold the bag and make us feel like a bit more disposable.

I will say this: Leading up to the show, we were contracted for main stage. We had switched three stages, literally days leading up to it. Times [that] were set in stone were of thrown all over the place. We were like, “This feels like it was a mismanaged experience.” We had already played When We Were Young, and we had no expectations. We had no idea there was going to be a crowd there waiting for us. We were just like, “Let’s go have fun, man. We haven’t done this in a long time.”

Then doing it again a second time, it’s almost like, you know how when you try to repeat the same thing twice and hope for the same experience? It wasn’t a big surprise to us that all the signs were kind of pointing to the fact that this wasn’t going to be the case.

We spent probably six months getting a show ready for this. We left a lot of money on the table and a lot of fans brokenhearted. But again, there were 60 bands that day, and we were one of the bands in tiny print. If there was somebody coming just for us, that person I feel really bad for. But you have 59 other experiences that day that are going to make up for it I’m sure.

All-American Rejects’ Late-Night TV Debut (2003)

You were still a teenager when the band made its late-night TV debut on Kilborn. Do you remember what was going through your mind that day?

RITTER: Tremors. I remember just trembling. I remember the nerves were overwhelming. When you play late night the first time, you really feel as if you’re playing to the world, regardless of the truth of that statement. This is the biggest thing you’ve ever done. Everything had been such a wild, surreal experience… It was just four guys from Oklahoma landing on Craig Kilborn, which I had grown up watching.

I remember it being a frightening experience. Craig was super nice, knowing nothing at all. I don’t remember who the late-night guest was, but I think it was probably somebody I was like, “Holy shit.”

There’s nothing like your first time. I remember the last time we played Leno, I was like, “You just play the audience. Don’t think about the cameras.” It’s a bit of a mind banana, but as long as you don’t slip too far on it, you can get it together.

Craig Kilborn was just… I remember we were on tour, my voice was thrashed. I was singing as hard as I could. A lot of singers would be like, “The last thing you want to do is push.” I remember I was just pushing as hard as I could to get those high notes. I don’t know that I executed that that well, but I think it sounded trashy and fun in a charming way.


Playing “Swing, Swing” On MTV’s Spring Break (2003)

Another sign you’d “made it” around that time was getting airtime on MTV’s Spring Break. AAR played during a bathing suit fashion show that year.

RITTER: It was like stepping into the television. I just remember watching, what was it, two years prior, Limp Bizkit was playing in Puerto Rico during the House Of Style part. Then, all of a sudden, 50 Cent, who had this monster hit was like, “Hey, what’s up guys? I guess we’re doing this shit together.” I was just like, “You’re 50 Cent and we’re these guys in vintage T-shirts from Oklahoma.”

One of the bathing suit models — she had to be like four or five years older than me. This has nothing to do with the House Of Style, but I was a bigger kid in high school, and I convinced my track coach, like, “Just let me walk on this track until the school bell rings.” I can’t run fucking track. But I slowly got myself up to a jog. I was living alone at that time. I think I was like 16 or whatever, and I lost my weight over a summer. All I had to do was get up off my ass and try. I was addicted to popsicles or some shit back in the day.

I’d always seen myself as the class clown, the friends of many girls but not boyfriends of very many. I remember this model came around the corner, and [as] I was singing, she shot me these eyes. It was so confronting. I was like, “Oh my God.” It was the first time a stranger had given me that “come hither” stare. That was the cherry on top. I just felt like, not only had we arrived, but somebody gave me some, I don’t know, masculine validation of being desirable. I remember I left with a higher head on my shoulders — maybe a little bit bigger too, for better or for worse. The whole thing was a dream.

I grew up watching MTV. My dad introduced me to it when Axl Rose had that big furry red microphone doing his live performance. I left Oklahoma and I went inside the television and became a Nightmare On Elm Street dream. I was waiting for somebody to rip my heart out and kill me. That probably would have been a great way to go.

And 50 Cent was so nice. I was just like, “Wow, this is crazy. He’s been shot nine times.” I just knew everything that MTV had fed me. I could be like, “Oh my God, the Road Rules cast is here. What the fuck?”

I’ve also heard that 50 Cent is exceedingly nice.

RITTER: [He was] all smiles, man. That’s what was cool — he looked like he was having the same experience as us. He was enchanted by the fact he was on MTV Spring Break, and I imagine he grew up watching this shit too.


Playing Himself On House (2007)

How did you officially cross over to acting work?

RITTER: I was a theater kid in my high school days. My manager basically was like, “Hey, maybe you should start going on go-sees or reads. I remember I went to see the production of House, and I read for this part that Dave Matthews ultimately got. I forget what the role specifically was. But I read for them, and I remember being so nervous. I had no idea how to do an audition.

Anyway, months later they called and were like, “Hey, we got the opening inciting incident,” which is I guess how Dr. House always worked. Somebody would [have] a symptom, then the rest of the thing was Dr. House trying to fix it or remedy it.

I got the call to come on for a day, and I remember the lady who I love from A League Of Their Own [Anne Ramsay] was my scene partner, and she’s such an accomplished actress that I remember I was like, “Oh my God.” I didn’t know how lucky I was. I had never seen anybody act for television before, so when she went into this stroke, I was like, “Holy shit, is this lady okay?” I was genuinely concerned for her wellbeing.

Playing Musician Oliver Rome On Parenthood (2013-2014)




You also had a recurring role on Parenthood, a show I loved. It had such a great ensemble cast. I know you primarily acted opposite Dax Shepard, but did you get a chance to matriculate with the other cast members much?

RITTER: Yes, a lot of raw talent, man. Mae Whitman was a beast. Peter Krause was someone who really gave me time. I was smoking cigarettes at the time, so I would always smoke sort of probably within an allowed distance between the studio door. He would always kind of rest outside a couple times, and I would be there smoking, and he would just chat me up and just give me his little nuggets of the business. The impression I got was, man, there’s no rhyme or reason to this shit. You just got to love what you do, if this is what you want to be doing more. I think just, it’s so funny, like anybody will say it’s those little moments that make you invest even more because it usually makes you ask questions about whether or not you want to do this. I’m so grateful for him for giving me time.

Dax is just like he is. The thing I’ve loved about the set that Jason Katims created there, was the words on paper were of course the blueprint, but those guys would walk into a scene and it would be jazz. I’ve always loved improv because that’s where I feel like, that’s just what I do on stage in between songs. I try not to be too scripted. When we brought those scenes to life, it just felt like it was living and breathing, and yeah, the character was very much an adjacent American Russell Brand rockstar thing. It was so fun to get lost in that and to really work more than just a day. That was such a gift to me, being comfortable in front of a TV environment when I was used to being on a stage and kind of playing to the back seats.

It helped me rein in my bigness. It was so funny, I’d do auditions and people would be like, “Yeah but more grounded,” and I didn’t know what grounded meant. I would do it pretty much the same way the next time. I think now that I do understand that the context of that word, yeah, it helped to ground me in my persona, I guess, as far as taking it from the stage and putting it in a more intimate space.

I love that you said that about Peter Krause — I’m also a huge Six Feet Under fan.

RITTER: He is just a hundred percent exactly how you hope he’d be.

Acting Opposite Emma Stone In The House Bunny (2008)

I expect the role you get asked about the most in career retrospectives is The House Bunny, especially considering how your scene partner Emma Stone went on to, well, have the career she currently has.



RITTER: She did a good job, didn’t she?

What stands out the most when you think back to being on that set?


RITTER: I remember doing it, and I was so put at ease. I loved how the whole set was comprised of this feminine energy, [and] I was kind of like this little brother to the whole cast. They would [be like], “Ty, you want to go walk to concessions?” I was just the fly on the wall who got to be, what was it, Colby? I think his name was Colby.

Everybody was really decent and super supportive of each other. The chemistry that all those girls made together to create that sorority was so authentic. I was of course stoked that the film came out so well, but I knew that it wasn’t going to be bad [while filming] because Anna [Faris] was so in it at the table read. She came in dolled up and fully did not break character, and everybody was just dying laughing.

Emma [Stone] was so good on set because she was — it was all jazz. You can feel it in those moments too, where she just keeps going. Yeah, she’s awesome. I have nothing but fond memories of that whole experience. Reading for Adam [Sandler], I was painting my girlfriend at the time’s house, so I came in just covered in paint and didn’t have any sort of discomfort. It was like, “Wow, you’re Adam Sandler, you’re my childhood best friend in film.”

When I got it, I remember, I think Zac Efron turned it down or something. It’s a very Hollywood story, like, “Oh yeah, this guy didn’t get it, so you’re going to do it.” I was very lucky to have landed that and have it be sort of this baptism by fire into me doing film.

Obviously we can’t know how Zac Efron would have been in your role, but your character turning out to be a little dorky — like Emma’s character — really fits your vibe. I can’t imagine it turning out any other way.


RITTER: Yeah. On paper [Colby] read as really jockey and cool. When we started doing the thing, I was so nervous about doing it… [Emma] was great. She pivoted perfectly. I mean, she was supposed to be that bashful person, but I was equally bashful, especially in the kissing scene.

She was so sweet about it. I think she was dating Teddy Geiger at the time, and I had a girlfriend… But at the end she wrote me a lovely letter. I have it in storage because I hid it from my girlfriend because I was like, “Oh no.” She said something that alluded to that I wasn’t a bad kisser, so I felt like a champion.

Playing Jesus’ 400th Inbred Son, Humperdoo, On Preacher (2017)

How were you sold on this role of “Humperdoo,” a clone of Jesus? I have so many questions. I have to admit I haven’t watched Preacher, so out of context, this is a bonkers role to see you in. You’re doing some wild stuff as Humperdoo…

RITTER: I always adored character actors. The things I had to do in the audition were complete primitive abandonment. It was great. You can play these really muted, nuanced scenes and all that stuff, but to be able to just swing for the fucking the fence and to leave nothing of myself — or maybe just my nightmares if I had no boundaries.

Being known for being — I don’t know. If you grew up in the 2000s, I guess I always shun the fact that maybe I was sold as just a pretty face. I was just like, man, I really love this because it’s not like, “Oh he’s going to go out for the boyfriend who’s the good-looking guy doing very little.” It was something that had nothing to do with any of that shit.

For that episode, the writer Mary Laws was listening to “Dirty Little Secret” while she wrote it. The way she muses is, she listens to one song for a whole episode. She and I have become great friends since. She couldn’t believe that I read for it because it was this weird happenstance that I got called in. They cast me, and I remember they were super sensitive about it not feeling like I was making fun of [Jesus], or that they were making fun of something that might be considered salacious.

We worked on this character. It’s so funny, you could write it off as being like, “Oh, this character is this thing,” but it was meticulously crafted. It taught me so much about the elasticity of my freedom within my own self. A lot of people [are] like, “Oh, Humperdoo, that’s funny,” which the show literally, Pip Torrens was on it. He had a fake eye, he lost a limb.

This show is blasphemous, this show is about pushing buttons. The writer of the original comic book, I think it was Garth Ennis; he did The Boys too. You have to walk in knowing that this isn’t about just making fun of the mythology for the sake of [it]. He had a lot of heated opinions, especially on religion.
I was really proud to have done it. Yeah, it was a seminal thing for me that taught me so much about getting better at what I do.

Acting Opposite Brian Cox In Prisoner’s Daughter (2022)




I’m dying to know what it was like acting opposite Brian Cox. Were you a Succession fan?

RITTER: Huge. Yeah, I was hugely invested in Succession. I literally finished the series, got the part [in Prisoner’s Daughter]. “You’re going to be playing opposite of Brian Cox in a couple scenes and they’re really heated and the temperature’s hot between you two.” He was just this jazzy sort of beatnik guy off set. I just couldn’t believe that this guy was playing Logan Roy. He’s just so watery and cool, man, like black turtlenecks and shit. Yeah, I remember at the end of the day I was stuck in it for a while. I didn’t want to break because I didn’t want to ever accept the fact that I was doing this with this guy. He came over and he was like, “Well done, young man.” That was like an anointment. Just to be able to get a hand to kiss the ring that was extending a compliment to me. These are the totems that you put in your war chest when you are fighting your battles trying to win roles.

It was such a beautiful experience. Working with Catherine Hardwicke, I had done a film previously with her called Miss You Already with Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette, and that was where we became collaborators. I’ve written songs for that movie, and she brought me in for this. I wrote a song for this. I got to work with one of my idols, this guy E from the band Eels.

All this, being able to weave the cloth of artistry into multiple mediums. Was it not Janis Joplin, but she paints… I don’t know why I’m blanking on her name. She sits in a chair now and sings, she’s an icon.

Joni Mitchell?

RITTER: Joni Mitchell. She said something about the easel because she’s a painter as well. She’s like, “When I get tired of writing songs, I go to the easel, and then when I get tired of painting, I go back to the guitar.” I think that’s just something that I find so enriching as an artist is being able to not only take my craft of storytelling in the song and to do it on screen and then to contribute to the audio, which is half of a film’s power. It’s so fun to be able to skate in all these worlds right now.

Getting Cast In The Idol (2021)

At the end of 2021, you were announced as having been cast in The Idol. That was before the “creative overhaul”…

RITTER: Mm-hmm.

I’m guessing the “creative overhaul” marked the end of your involvement in the series?

RITTER: We shot for five months with a great cast and an incredible helming director, Amy Seimetz. The experience I had was great. I had a really lovely couple scenes with Lily Rose Depp. And then there was a bit of a creative shift. That’s about all I can talk about I guess, because that’s all that I should talk about.

Fair.

RITTER: The rest of it is above my pay grade, as they say. I was a day player, but it was so cool because Tunde Adebimpe is — I hope I said his name correctly, the singer of TV On The Radio.

I was painting on set. He’s a painter. We have no sort of musical crosswires, really. His band is very different from mine. But we found common ground in art, just in discussion.

That was the takeaway for me. Being able to be around such a thoughtful gentleman that was in music as well, and kind of was in the same place with his band as I was at the same time. We had a lot of great conversations about where we were artistically at the time and what the tensions within our bands were.

That was the gift. I think everything happens for a reason, so that was the gift of doing Idol for me was not only getting to work with Amy Seimetz and Lily, but Tunde made me feel like I wasn’t alone in this struggle of the next chapter and what it was supposed to be.

That’s cool that you’re a painter, on top of everything else. How did you get started painting?


RITTER: I owe my painting to my son. My wife had bought me this startup art kit three years before my son was born and it just sat in my basement because I was afraid to try. I didn’t want do it half-hearted. When my son came, I felt the whole world open up with his presence, and I was fearless. I was like, “I’m going to fucking paint.”

I started by these impressions of people in my life. I felt like if I felt anything to connect me to painting, it would be because I felt so much for the people that I was trying to paint. It was very explosive and emotional for me. Now I’ve started honing that in a bit and realizing I’m not a unique person in that my family life growing up was very influential on the person that I am.

I think that’s what led me to what I’m painting. I call it this “golden age of wild, lack of ambition for American culture that was 1980s Oklahoma high school sweethearts” kind of thing. It’s a love letter to my parents, but these people had everything. They were making $5.99 at McDonald’s. They didn’t have to dream big, because life was affordable. Therefore, the sad tragedy, whether they had children too early, like my parents unfortunately did, the dreams didn’t have to go past the trees, let alone shoot for the stars.

It’s great to be able to paint because I feel like it opens up a side of me to realize how much I love the people in my life and how much I love this forgotten culture that Oklahoma, the confused melting pot that it is, is a special little American time capsule, even in 2025.

Collaborating With Eels’ Mark Oliver Everett (2024)




What has kind of come out of your relationship with E? You mentioned you were a really big fan before you met.


RITTER: Yeah, I remember college radio played “Novocaine For The Soul.” We got signed to DreamWorks. He was the celebrated son of DreamWorks. He always was this spirit around my up and comings — not only as a signed act, but in high school too.

I reached out to him for this song. It was a blind call. He humored it, caller ID’d me. He’s my favorite Eeyore. Very curmudgeon. Maybe I’ll get there with age. He’s a hard cookie if you know him. He’s a tough crowd to win over.

I spoke from the heart about this song that I wrote, and he’s like, “Yeah man, let’s do it.” That created this conversation where he was like, “Hey man, you said you might be writing some songs.” I was like, “It’s funny. I actually had a song,” this song called “Lay With The Lambs” on his last record, and I sent it to him. I go, “Man, I think I channeled you with this.” He’s like, “Yeah, it’s pretty good.”

Then a couple weeks later, he sings all his vocals into a USB mic for that record because it was COVID and we had to collaborate. I would get his vocal track on a text message, and I would throw it in the session. It was super removed from each other, but we both had our own space to be able to stay comfortable in this process. He’s like, “Hey, you mind channeling me again?”

I think I spent six months going back and forth with him and writing in my space, putting the music together. Some rough melodies would fall out, maybe a lyric would stay, maybe a verse would stay. It was all patchwork. And then he would either complete the thought or take it into a completely different direction. We were addicted to it. He’s writing his new record now. He’s like, “Hey man, you got any time?” I was like, “Ah, dude, I’m slammed trying to get back to me right now, but I would love to.” As long as he’ll have me, I think there’s a future for us to continue the conversation.

Of all the collaborations in my life, it was the most I grew. He saw me and made me feel like I wasn’t just in some band that was a pop culture moment. He honored me as a songwriter. To get flowers from a guy like that was like, “Oh fuck.” All this doubt that I’ve had over the last decade, all this insecurity about if I still have anything to offer, that was immediately quelled. It’s hard to communicate confidence in a way that doesn’t sound like ego, because honestly, I say it with very little ego that I’m just so grateful that I have a sense of belief in myself again. I think it’s large in part to doing that Eels record.

It’s funny. I sent him like the demo for “Sandbox,” and he goes, “Love that music, man. Can I have that one?” I was like, “No, this one’s mine, man.”