Rich Ruth, the recording project of Nashville multi-instrumentalist Michael Ruth, makes wholly immersive instrumental songs that thread the line between gleefully adventurous and calmingly meditative. His music starts in solitude with mesmerizing loops and drones anchoring the arrangements that are eventually colored in by an eclectic cast of collaborators. The resulting exploratory compositions, which combine spiritual jazz, synth-infused post-rock, and cosmic ambient, often beguile but they always soar with a palpable immediacy. His new album Water Still Flows is both his heaviest and his most cathartic. Across seven songs, the LP is both a document of an artist stretching the limits of his process and a testament to how songwriting can be a personally grounding force.

So far in 2025, Rich Ruth has made a very successful Big Ears appearance (performing on his own as well as with Allison de Groot and Lonnie Holley.) He was tapped to open a recent Jack White show in Nashville. He recently wrapped an excellent support tour with Etran de L’Air, as well as a co-headline run with Hooveriii. He performed with Phosphorescent in July, both as an opener and a member of the band, and at Newport Jazz Fest in August.

Here is selected press coverage of Water Still Flows

 “HOLY CRAP!!!” – The Needle Drop’s Anthony Fantano

• “Nashville multi-instrumentalist Rich Ruth’s new album Water Still Flows is absolutely audacious in its musical fusions and This one is a woozy kaleidoscope of spiritual jazz, post-rock, chiming minimalism, Berlin school synth sequencers, metal and drone. It is entirely possible that it shouldn’t work, but somehow it does.” Aquarium Drunkard
• “There is beauty and and there is brutality in Water Still Flows, but what makes the LP an essential document is that one keeps the other at bay. There is constancy in everything, and, just as importantly, balance.” – Raven Sings The Blues