Singing at sea, in Cape, Nashville and now Florida, Jessie Ritter's music keeps on working

Singer/songwriter and Cape Girardeau native Jessie Ritter is home, briefly for the holidays with big plans for the New Year.

Ritter, a Notre Dame Regional High School graduate, will spend 2018 planning her wedding, building a house and finishing up her first full-length album "Coffee Every Morning."

The only musician in a family of physicians, Ritter lives in Pensacola, Florida, where she found herself after "a series of musical adventures."

She traveled the world after graduation from Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, singing aboard cruise ships that sailed to the Bahamas, Australia and parts of Europe. She refers to that portion of her life as a happy accident.

"I was graduating college, the lease on my apartment was up, all my friends were leaving Nashville," she said. "And they said, 'Do you want to live on a ship and sing six nights a week?"

She was sold. Ritter said the experience was like a mix of college dorm life and prison. She wrote songs throughout her two years at sea, but said that none of them will be included in "Coffee Every Morning."

"They were all sad; I was just lonely," she said. "You're away from your friends and family, by yourself out there, nobody wants to hear those sad songs."

When her stint at sea ended, Ritter was faced with a choice: return to Nashville to stay close to the pulse of country radio, move home to Cape Girardeau to be near her family, or follow her heart to Florida, where now-fiance Brian Toups grew up.

"It's always a boy," she said. "I knew wherever the relationship took me, Florida was a good spot for singing. I figured let's take a chance and see what happens."

The two were engaged soon after, and Ritter found no shortage of performance opportunities in the "vacation population" state, gigging five nights a week at beach-side venues and resorts.

"I get to watch the sunset as I sing; it's my favorite thing ever," she said.

The degree she earned at Belmont, in commercial vocal performance and music business, gave her training in genres from classical to jazz, but also taught her about the other side of the industry: copyright law, royalties and self-promotion.

Publishing independently, and obtaining copyrights to the songs she writes and sings allows her to collect royalties -- albeit, pennies at a time -- when her songs are streamed. Additionally, there is no booking agent or promoter taking a cut off the top.

"It's the freedom of being able to do it yourself," she said. "Not having anyone tell you where to be, except for exactly where you want to be."

With her new album, Ritter hopes to break into the country-music charts, and though she has given thought to other occupations, she is enjoying life as a "working-class musician."

"I just keep singin'," she said. "I thought, you know if it works the next day, we'll keep doing it. If it works the next day, we'll keep doing it. And now I'm 25, and it's worked for enough days in a row that, we're just going to keep doing it."

Ritter said the variety of musical communities she has been a part of -- the wineries and downtown bars of Cape Girardeau, the country clamor of Nashville, and life by the beach in Pensacola -- have all shaped her style and identity as a songwriter.

"I grew up on country radio, and then I was more exposed to writers like Dolly Parton and Stevie Nicks and Lorrie McKenna of Little Big Town," she said. "Just listening to these great storytellers, and that's what I try to do, tell stories through a country song."

Jessie's said her first album, "Stories Told," combined songs that were all different, but "Coffee Every Morning" will be more cohesive.

"I found the songs I liked to play the most and that connected with people the most, and that's what this one is," she said.

To learn more about Jessie Ritter, visit her website at jessielynnritter.com, or find her on spotify and youtube.