Ritter commented that the inspiration behind the album came from his desire to "play messianic oracular honky-tonk." Sermon on the Rocks was released later that year on October 16, 2015. In 2017, the album’s second single, "Homecoming", received notable attention after being featured in the season 2 finale of Showtime’s Billions. Ritter’s ninth studio album, Gathering, was announced on July 19, 2017. The first single, "Showboat," was released the same day as the album announcement. "[Gathering] is a record of joy and sadness and laughter and lightning," commented Ritter. Along with the announcement of Gathering, Ritter also revealed he was going on an international tour with the Royal City Band. "Thunderbolt’s Goodnight" and "When Will I Be Changed" premiered before Gathering was officially released on September 22, 2017. On August 28, 2020, Ritter released See Here, I Have Built You a Mansion, an eight-track EP of rare and unreleased songs, some of which were meant to appear on Gathering but "didn't quite fit the shape of that record." The EP also included a live version of "Lawrence, Kansas," as well as a cover of the Dire Straits song "Brothers in Arms." The first single from that album, "Time is Wasting," debuted on August 19, 2020. Other ventures Ritter also has an interest in writing, and has claimed many different writers as influences on both his songwriting and fiction work. Some of his favorite authors are Flannery O'Connor, Philip Roth, and Dennis Lehane (who wrote the intro for the Deluxe Edition of Hello Starling). The title of Ritter's sixth album, So Runs the World Away, comes from a line in the third act of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Ritter's own novel, Bright's Passage, was published by Dial Press on June 28, 2011. He said of the novel, "Besides my songs, Bright's Passage is the first [written] work I've wanted anyone to see ... it's about a kind of sweet normal guy from West Virginia. He goes to the first World War and he comes back and he has an angel. And it's about him and this angel escaping this wildfire for five days. It's sort of this short little comedy." Ritter's second novel, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All, was published in the U.S. in September 2021. Personal life Ritter married fellow musician Dawn Landes in Branson, Missouri, on May 9, 2009. In a February 2011 interview with the Boston Herald, Ritter