Brian Ritchie was born on November 21, 1960, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As a founding member of The Violent Femmes, he made acoustic bass a lead voice in the band’s music. His work on their 1983 debut, Violent Femmes, also included the xylophone part on “Gone Daddy Gone.”
That musical identity began with an enthusiasm for a very different group. Ritchie told WERS in 2023 that Yes’ Fragile was the first record he bought, and Yes were the first band he saw in concert. Chris Squire’s playing made him want to take up bass. Before the Femmes’ spare arrangements came that introduction to progressive rock and an instrument that could command attention. Finding his own sound involved a practical piece of invention: Ritchie converted his first guitar, an Encore, into an acoustic bass before buying an Ernie Ball model. He wanted an instrument he could play without electricity and carry more easily than an upright bass. The choice became central to how he played. His right hand had to generate the attack, while picking and muting could give each note its own shape.
Ritchie and drummer Victor DeLorenzo were already musical partners when they connected with singer and guitarist Gordon Gano. The trio formed in 1981. In their 2023 Life of the Record oral history, Ritchie explained that the space around Gano’s rhythm guitar and DeLorenzo’s percussion let his bass provide solos and some of a bass drum’s rhythmic function.
The xylophone on “Gone Daddy Gone” grew out of the instruments available that evening. Ritchie recalled having it with him, but no bass, when he and Gano played on the street. They worked out its xylophone arrangement that night. For the recording, producer Mark Van Hecke encouraged Ritchie to compose the solo instead of improvising through it. Overdubbing allowed him to contribute both bass and xylophone, putting two sides of his playing into the same arrangement.
The shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute, became another serious part of his musical life. In a 2005 interview with OnMilwaukee, Ritchie said he had spent nine years learning it and had released Shakuhachi Club NYC. The record put his flute at the center of a group with banjo, mandolin, tuba and percussion. Its repertoire included the blues standard “Motherless Children” alongside jazz compositions and Ritchie’s own pieces. Recorded with the musicians together in one room, it gave him a setting where breath, melody and interaction could shape the performance. His role extended to writing the album’s original material, taking him beyond the bass and arrangement work familiar from the Femmes.
Those experiences fed back into his approach to strings. In a 2016 Guitar World interview, Ritchie explained that wind instruments teach phrasing through the physical need for air. “You have to stop to breathe,” he said. He also described simplifying his bass lines. The sessions for We Can Do Anything carried his earlier work forward in another way: “Memory” used an older recording by Ritchie and Gano, on which Ritchie played bass and drums, as its blueprint.
