Jenny Ritter is the goat herding, choir conducting, former member of Vancouver Island’s beloved, now defunct, folk band The Gruff. Now she’s struck out on her own on the mainland and is releasing her first solo album.

For a bright spot in the cold and rainy winter months. Jenny Ritter brings Bright Mainland to the world tonight (October 13) at Saint James Hall. Sad Mag talked to her about leaving her previous band behind, busking for the internet age (i.e. crowd funding) and starting Vancouver’s best choir – and now their potential rival group.

Sad Mag: How long have you been working on this album?

Jenny Ritter: The process started last October. I started a crowd-funding campaign and I raised about half of the funds I needed for the album. I wouldn’t be releasing the album without that money, so it was pretty amazing. We started recording in March of this year. We went over Mayne Island and did a recording-slash-retreat. My producer (who played most of the instruments on the album), my drummer (who I brought from Saskatoon) and I just hid out in this house in the country. The only hitch was that I lost my voice as soon as I got there, so what was supposed to take ten days in total ended up taking another month. We recorded everything but the vocals and then I came back a month later and finished it in May. I’ve been sitting on it for a couple of months and I’m just releasing it now.

SM: What did you think about crowd funding as a way to finance an album?

JR: It was a great experience because it made visible the support network I have. It was interesting to see people I know and that I don’t know come together to help the project. I don’t want to call it donating because everyone who contributed gets some kind of reward for it. There were a couple of dissenters and I got some negative feedback from people who thought that crowd funding was akin to begging. But people will think what they think. I guess they’ve never tried to do a project they couldn’t afford to do on their own.

SM: How does your solo work compare to the experience of working in a band?

JR: It’s really different. I’m basically a dictator now. It’s a lot more work than being in a band where to some extent we split up the work, but now it’s just me calling the shots. It’s been difficult, and sometimes I wish I had back up, but I also find it kind of liberating to make the decisions myself and execute them as I see fit. I like having control over it. I’ve been joking a lot about being a control freak and I guess I’m starting to realize it’s not really a joke.

SM: How would you describe the sound of this album?

JR: I would describe it as indie folk. I would describe myself as a folk musician. I’m obsessed with folk music – new and old – so I think I have that in me. The songs that I write are not folk songs in a traditional sense, but they’re influenced heavily by it. So while I feel like a folk musician, I’m presenting the music in a rock band format with a drummer and an electric bass player and pedal steel and whatever electric instrument I can get my hands on. Just because you’re a folk musician doesn’t mean you don’t want to rock.

SM: What can people look forward to seeing at your album release?

JR: A lot of happy people. We’re going to play through the album beginning to end. I have a number of guests including members of my choir, the Kingsgate Chorus, who recorded on the album. I have some new songs too. All sorts of things will be unveiled. The general message of the album is hope and positivity, and I think when we perform that kind of feeling goes out to the audience. This will be my biggest show in a long time – biggest in terms of audience, and the size of the band, and excitement. And whenever the Kingsgate Chorus gets together there’s a lot of giggling, so I think they’ll be a lot of that too.

SM: How did the choir get started?

JR: I started the Kingsgate Chorus when my band broke up. There’s a specific feeling you get when singing with other people that I was longing for. I missed that harmony that you feel when…well, when you’re harmonizing with people. So I got a handful of friends that were really supportive and then within a few months it became about thirty people. I’ve now even started a second choir called the Mount Pleasant Regional Institute of Sound – the name still makes me laugh every time I say it because it’s so unnecessarily official sounding.

When I started the first group, I found that a lot of the feelings I had about life getting better were connected to the choir, so they ended up singing on some tracks on the record. And if you have a choir you might as well use them!

Jenny Ritter plays her album release concert October 13th with Tim Tweedale on steel guitar, Jay Hosking on bass, Kevin Romain drums and members of the Kingsgate Chorus.

Tickets are $20 at the door and $16 for members.