For some reason, Ireland has been very good to Josh Ritter. It's where the young American singer-songwriter made the leap from coffeehouses to halls as the opening act of Irish band the Frames. It's where he met vocalist Gemma Hayes, with whom he toured the U.S. last summer, and where he met Dave Odlum, the producer of his third album, Hello Starling . It's also where he was voted best international male singer over Justin Timberlake in something called the Hot Press Reader's Poll.

"It's just a funny thing," says Ritter, reached while travelling through Lloydminster, Alberta on his current tour. "It [Ireland] was the first place people listened to me at all. It was a crazy thing to go from playing one or two songs at open-mike nights in front of 18 other musicians to playing these places to 400 or 500 people. So I just went back and it grew. That allowed me to quit my temp job."

Originally from Moscow, Idaho (pop. "about 12,000," says Ritter), the 28-year-old left for Ohio in his early 20s. While attending Oberlin University he recorded his 1999 self-titled debut before settling in Providence, Rhode Island, for a year. Boston, where he worked on his second record, Golden Age of Radio , was his next roost, but at the moment he calls the tour van his home. The reason for this is that Hello Starling , released a year ago, is proving so popular that he finds himself constantly hitting the road in support of the disc. It keeps coming out in other parts of the world (August in Canada), garnering award nominations (including the U.S. Shortlist Music Prize), popping up in television series ( Six Feet Under ), and generally collecting positive notices. Ritter's heartland Americana is keeping his tour itinerary particularly full in the U.K.

"The momentum changes," says Ritter, "and something else happens somewhere else. I never expected it. We started playing in England last December and the shows have gone really big comparatively."

Hello Starling shows a still-developing talent. The influences are obvious, and some songs not only recall certain songwriters but specific periods of their careers. The early-morning folk strum "You Don't Make It Easy Babe" echoes Blood on the Tracks --era Bob Dylan, for instance, and the acoustic-rock "Man Burning" borrows from pre- Born to Run Bruce Springsteen. But then a tune comes along that is so strong and so transporting that such comparisons fall away, especially in the yearning, post-party euphoria of "Kathleen" and the soaring alt-country of "Snow is Gone".

The next record is mostly written, but Ritter doesn't expect to start recording until February of 2005. "I've got the mood and the kind of sound I want in my head," he says. "But it'll take some sitting-around time where I can let it all coalesce. You spend a lot of time writing and performing and comparatively little time in the studio, and I'm just starting to hear sounds I know I want."

In the meantime Ritter, as the opening act for Ontario chanteuse Sarah Harmer, has a Canadian tour to finish, including a show Saturday (October 16) at the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts. And then more shows in Ireland where, surprisingly, he still has something to prove.

"There was a band called Sleepy Hollow in Cork," recalls Ritter. "This is in the early stages of me playing with a band. And these guys played Beatles songs and Dylan songs and my songs. We played a show and they were playing next door and we went in. I really wasn't very good at playing with a band yet and these guys were just ripping through my songs. I kind of want to play for them again to prove that we can actually do it."