[Hear samples:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/boramsey2]
The first time I ever heard Bo Ramsey play live I had booked him myself into a community concert series in Ames, Iowa, where I live. I was fairly new to Iowa at the time, and new to Iowa music. I didn’t really know who I was booking. I’d barely heard part of a cut or two from Bo Ramsey and the Backsliders’ Live CD (Trailer Records) on KUNI radio, while I was driving to gigs. Without paying much attention, I pigeon-holed Bo in my mind as “one’a those electric blues guys.” I booked him because I knew there was a lot of talk about him in Iowa, and I needed someone with a draw. Since we were on the same label, I thought maybe I could get him, and I thought maybe he could prove to some of the people who didn’t believe it at the time that, yes, people in Ames would pay ten dollars for a sit-down concert that didn’t involve alcohol or a full band.
Bo played that show with bass player Marty Christiansen, just the two of them in a very intimate setting. I introduced Bo, and he came on stage humbly, almost shyly, sat down on a tall stool, and got down to the all-git-and-groove business of playing the most engaging live show I’ve ever heard. They played all sorts of Americana, roots music on Bo’s usual array of guitars, all of it with mesmerizing depth and masterful control. When Bo announced that they would take a break, then come back for a second set, I thought to myself, Well, they can’t take a break now, it’s too soon, they’ve only done a few songs. I looked at my watch. They’d been playing for an hour. I had completely lost track of time. For that hour, there had been nothing for me but that music. I’d never had an experience like that before. I turned to Jackie Blount, who sat next to me. With a stunned look she asked me, What just happened? I don’t know, I told her. I don’t know. Jackie and I have spent our time as musicians since then trying to figure it out. That show changed the way I listen to music. It changed the way I think about music, and it changed the way I play.
In 1999 when I was in the process of recording my 2000 release, Navigating Limbo, I was talking to friend and music critic, Jim Musser.
“If you could have anybody in the world play on this record, who would it be?” he asked me, though he already knew who I’d say.
“Bo Ramsey,” I told him.
“Ask him.”
“I can’t,” I told Jim Musser.
“Why not?”
“I admire him too much. I don’t have the nerve to ask him to play on my record, Jim.”
“Want me to ask him for you?” Jim knew from the beginning, I suspect, that this was his match to make.
“Yes,” I told Jim. “Yes.” “Yes.”
Bo Ramsey drove from Iowa City to Chicago on a sweltering day through snarly traffic for very little money to lay down stunning guitar parts on three cuts for Navigating Limbo. The signature, seductive slide guitar on Make the Boys Like Me, Bo cut in one take. He did multiple texture and solo tracks for I Am a Diamond (my co-write with Trailer Records founder, David Zollo). At the end of the last take, Bo said through the studio microphone into the control room to engineer/producer, Victor Sanders, That’s the one, throw away the others. Victor opened the control room mic and said to Bo, Okay, then turned the mic off, turned to me and said, We’re gonna use every one of those tracks.
During a break in recording, Bo and I went outside for some fresh air. How’d you get so good, I asked Bo. He told me this story: When Bo was around ten years old, during the summer when school was out, he’d go to the community center in the small town where he grew up. There was a big linoleum floor and a record player. Teenagers would bring their forty-fives and spin them all day long. Bo hung out by himself off to the side, younger than everyone else, caring about little besides the music on those records, until a group of fourteen-year-old Black girls took pity on that skinny White kid, opened their maternal rhythm and blues wings and taught Bo Ramsey to dance.
“I never forget that,” Bo told me, “when I play.”
At the time, I thought that was a strange answer to the question, How’d you get so good. But, in Stranger Blues, I can hear them. I can hear those young girls dance.
It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I love Bo Ramsey’s newest release, Stranger Blues. I love all of Bo Ramsey’s recordings … Well, all of them I’ve heard. Bo swears to me that he released some recordings early in his career that I wouldn’t love … but, I don’t believe it, and he won’t prove it, so we’re at a standoff. And, just in case you think that I’m too much of a devoted Bo Ramsey fan to have a valid opinion about Stranger Blues, Kyle Munson, music critic for the Des Moines Register, gave this new CD four and a half stars, more than he gives nearly any new release. (He also called Bo the Yoda of Iowa City roots music. That Kyle … he’s a corker.) Even though I always expect amazing records from Bo, he has still managed to surprise me.
Bo Ramsey is a great songwriter. Most of Bo’s work as a guitar slinger and as a producer is with songwriters who are the best in the business, among them Pieta Brown, Greg Brown, and Lucinda Williams. There are no original songs on Stranger Blues. It’s a collection of very authentic blues, gospel, and folk songs that have inspired Bo through his life as a musician and, for those of us trying to become Bo, it’s a revealing, informative, insightful, and important glimpse into what makes Bo Bo. These songs are not as lyrically sophisticated as Bo’s own songs. Instead of relying on lyrics to get the point across, Bo uses the most convincing vocals of his recording career, along with his legendary hypnotic guitar playing, to move us to that place in ourselves of very basic, and mostly inelegant phrases made of coarsely beautiful sounds; that place very nearly beyond words.
Bo, along with co-producer Pieta Brown, applies those experience-honed techniques on Stranger Blues that have made him a sought-after producer. Foundation is everything to Bo. The rest is secondary to the deep, lock-groove of drums and bass, an approach nothing short of amazing for a lead guitar player. Everything else rests on top of that foundation in an utterly intentional way. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is useless. No filler, and no aimless showing off. It’s a minimalist setting in which every note is essential, and where a simple slide, in exactly the right place, played with exquisite precision, and a fabulously dirty tone, will take your breath away.
These are only a few of my personal favorites on this spectacular release.
Freight Train
This is an instrumental version of Elizabeth Cotton’s familiar folk/blues song. Bo weaves multiple melodic lines together to form a sonic landscape of poignant, surprising, and moving chord inversions. Joining Bo in this rich guitar texturing is son, Benson Ramsey. This piece reminds me of some of the instrumentals on Ben Ramsey and David Huckfelt’s release, The Pines (Trailer Records), another of my favorite discs. Ben, heir to his father’s no-nonsense, swampy guitar style, is clearly the right person to carry the Ramsey tradition into the future. (I just heard that The Pines have signed with Red House Records, one of the most successful small labels in Americana music … Yeah!)
Jump, Baby, Jump
This tune by Mississippi blues woman, Jessie Mae Hemphill, could easily wind up sounding artless in less capable hands. But, you give drummer Steve Hayes a jump beat like this to play, and he’s gonna make you ache to move. Wrap Bo’s slithery vocal around that beat, and you end up with me dancing around my house, singing way too loud, Do it, baby, do it/Do it, baby, do it/Do it, baby, do it/Do it, baby, do it. You’ll see windows of the house next door to mine being lowered and locked. You’ll see Jackie Blount with a knitted brow, and a puzzled look. Apparently, this song isn’t as cool when I do it as it is when Bo does it … But, I suppose any of us could say that about any song.
No Place to Go
This haunting piece by Chester Burnett (never heard of him? … Howlin’ Wolf) may hold at least part of the secret to that in-the-moment timelessness of Bo’s live performance described at the beginning of this blog. This song is built around a steely guitar riff that repeats throughout the whole song without change or embellishments. Just the right tempo, and the deepest of grooves, produce a trance-like effect here. There’s plenty enough well-placed spooky guitar, ambient keyboard, and nearly scary vocal to keep things interesting, but it’s that riff and groove that pull you in.
Sitting on Top of the World
I’ve often heard this done as a bouncy, happy-go-lucky sounding, bluegrassy song, which I’ve always thought was weird. This has never seemed like a happy song to me, even though the title makes it sound like it’s going to be one. You’ll never hear a more appropriately dark version than this one.
Where the Sun Never Goes Down
This gospel song closes Stranger Blues with an absolutely chilling vocal, full of the regret and doubt of a sinner with one last good intention to keep his promises.
Bo Ramsey and Pieta Brown have reached a new level of artistry working together. Since its release last fall, their last duo project, Pieta Brown’s In the Cool (Valley Entertainment), has seen more action on my player than any other disc. Bo tells me that they have another Pieta release just about ready to go. I can’t wait. In the meantime, I can’t get enough of these Stranger Blues.
Hear samples of Stranger Blues at
http://cdbaby.com/cd/boramsey2
Read more about Bo at
www.boramsey.com and at
http://www.trailer-records.com/artists/ramsey.shtml.