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Bo Ramsey to perform a hometown show

By Steven Horowitz

Bo Ramsey likes to take things slow and easy. Anybody who has heard him play electric guitar knows that he likes to take his time and squeeze all the beauty he can out of a chord before he plays the next one.

That’s why it’s such a pleasant surprise to learn that he’s put out a new album, Fragile, so soon after his last one, Stranger Blues, which was released in late 2006. This is his first new record of all original material in 10 years and only his 11th release during his 30-year career.

“The record came in pretty quick and went down pretty quick,” the laconic Ramsey says over the telephone from Minneapolis as he was about to leave on a short European circuit with Greg Brown that covers France, Italy, Holland and Great Britain in five days. “We call it our jetlag whiplash tour,” Ramsey jokes.

But he’s resolutely proud when talking about his new disc. “I hadn’t done a record of my own songs for awhile because I was so busy working on other people’s records,” he says. “The songs may not have a common theme, but when I listened to them, these songs seemed to live together and form a whole. They go together well.”

Ramsey has worked with a notable list of artists, including Brown, Lucinda Williams, Iris Dement, Kevin Gordon, Dave Moore, Teddy Williams and his wife Pieta Brown. He wrote some of the songs on his new record before he started working with Williams in 1998, which really skyrocketed his career.

“I wanted to record those older songs," Ramsey says. “I thought they were worthy of recording and worthy of offering up, but I had put them on the shelf and didn’t do anything with them. Once I had in my head to let them out, they became the seed of the new record and the other songs just seemed to come out of the air. Now they live and breathe as one.”

He’s formed a small band and launched a tour to promote Fragile. Ramsey will be playing the Englert Theatre in Iowa City on Saturday, April 26 with Steve Hayes on drums, John Penner on bass, Nate Basinger on keyboards and Al Schares on guitar. Hayes’ and Schares’ connections to Ramsey go back more than three decades.

Ramsey said his proudest accomplishment is being able to make a living as a musician for so many years, which he noted is not an easy thing to do. He’s looking forward to playing Iowa City, but he looks at it from two perspectives.

“Iowa City is special because its home,” he notes, “but at the same time, it’s just another town on the map. I try to play the best I can no matter where I am.” Ramsey is a consummate professional, which is why so many other musicians hold him in high esteem.

While Ramsey won’t name names, he’s currently producing a New York band that heard his work and sought him out. “They contacted me out of the blue,” he says, adding that he’s had to refuse many other offers so that he could do his own work.

Ramsey doesn’t want to talk about other artists, but he does offer some words of wisdom.

“The best advice I ever got was, 'assume nothing.' I saw it on a sign on a wall somewhere," he says.

That’s useful information when conversing with Ramsey, because he doesn’t like to say more than he needs to say. He lets his music do the talking, and it speaks eloquently.