Artist of the Week: Tyler Ramsey

Hometown: Asheville, N.C.
Fun Fact: Tyler Ramsey was packing up his equipment at Echo Mountain studios in Asheville, North Carolina just as Band of Horses were unloading theirs to record 2007’s Cease to Begin. By the time he returned to finish up his debut full-length, they were just leaving. Pleasantries were exchanged, and a few months later, he was a touring member of the band.
Why He’s Worth Watching: His finger-picked acoustic guitar arrangements and understated melodies connect the dots between the singer-songwriters of the '70s and the traditional country-blues of the deep South.
For Fans Of: Neil Young, Iron & Wine, James Taylor

Although the phenomenon of dreams inspiring art is so common that there’s even a word for those who plagiarize the work of other’s in their sleep (“cryptomnesia”), the somnambulant musings of songwriters has inarguably produced some great art. From Paul McCartney subconsciously composing the melody for “Yesterday” to Johnny Cash first hearing the mariachi horns for “Ring of Fire” during his REM cycle, some artists simply can’t find the off position on their personal creative switch. For Tyler Ramsey, a dream ended up as the umbrella under which an entire album would rest.

“It was this extended, really visual dream, with all these underwater scenes,” Ramsey says of his full-length debut, A Long Dream About Swimming Across the Sea. “The record cover is part of that dream. There was this green tiger in this field of seaweed, and all this weird visual stuff. It was one of those dreams that felt like an all-nighter. It had a lot of meaning for me at the time, for what it meant for going from one point to the other.”

For Ramsey, connecting those points was a long journey, with his family making stops in Cincinnati, Green Bay, Chicago and Nashville before finally landing in Asheville, North Carolina when he was a teenager. By then, he had developed his skills on piano and guitar, but he was still lacking a crucial bit of inspiration to show him what kind of music he wanted to make. “My brother always listened to classic rock, and he was a huge influence on me when I was real little,” Ramsey explains. “But when I decided, ‘Hey, this guitar thing is pretty cool,’ I was introduced to Leo Kottke and old country-blues fingerstyle players like Mance Lipscomb and Reverend Gary Davis and Mississippi John Hurt. It was really inspiring to me to hear someone who could sit in a room by themselves and make really full sounding music that was just composed on that instrument.”

On his debut, Ramsey does just that and then some, creating a mesmerizing blend of deftly finger-picked acoustic guitars, sighing melodies, and plaintive vocals that recall Harvest-era Neil Young sprinkled with some Mississippi Delta topsoil.

“I think everybody that writes songs hopes to keep getting better. I think I’m still a beginner and just figuring out…ways to… express myself,” he continues, pausing self-consciously as he struggles to do in conversation what seems effortless in his songwriting. “It’s just something that I like trying to do, so I’m going to keep trying.”