For North Carolina-based singer-songwriter Tyler Ramsey, life is like a roller coaster, full of expected and unexpected twists and turns. His new album New Lost Ages, out February 9 via Soundly Music, finds the songwriter examining the contrasting, opposing emotions one experiences in life.
Lately, he’s thought a lot about the many twists and turns of his life, including his time with Band of Horses, transitioning to performing as a solo artist, and starting a family. Some of the observations he’s made during these reflections form the lyrical backbone of many of the album’s songs.
“This is an album of hope, and this is an album of despair,” says Ramsey via the album’s press release. “It is an album of shadows and light. It is about the calm that follows the storm and it’s about the dark clouds when they roll back in again.”
As he has gotten older, Ramsey’s gotten better at sensing and examining the shifts in his life and seeing the ups and downs. He’s always anticipating the next one to come.
“It’s a part of being alive,” says Ramsey during a recent interview. “I’ve had some pretty deep dives into some hard times over the past handful of years. I think coming out of those or trying to come out of some of those led to a lot of these songs and a lot of the material that’s on this record exploring that dynamic or that kind of rollercoaster existence.”
The ten-song album was produced by Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty, The Shins) and features a dynamic mix of rock and folk music. It was recorded at three different studios in Seattle, Washington – Avast! Recording Co., Stone Gossard’s Litho Studio, and Electrokitty Recording Studio. Ramsey is backed on the songs by a tight knit rhythm section of bassist Morgan Henderson (Fleet Foxes) and drummer Sean Lane (Ann Wilson).
Scummy Water Tower recently caught up with Ramsey to discuss the importance of creating a dynamic sound, why Phil Ek had been on his shortlist for a while to produce an album and how he gained confidence in himself as an artist making the album.
You dabble in a bunch of different sonic areas on the album. How do you think the album highlights your growth from your previous albums and your desire to not stay in one genre?
Every time I make a record, there is an attempt for me to really look at the last one and think about…a lot of times even before a record comes out, I’m thinking, “oh, I should have done this,” or “this sound could have happened here.” There’s a lot of things that I question on the records and sometimes I wish I could have gone back and done them again and stuff. But this time I feel like I had a lot of things in place and a lot of sounds in my head for what could happen on these songs, and I had a little bit of time to really play around with them.
And the main thing about this one is that I really made the decision to work with Phil Eck who produced the record, and it’s really the first time I’ve ever given it over to somebody like that. I’ve worked with people and we’ve kind of partnered on production ideas on my records before, but really this is the first time I ever hired a producer and said, “you are going to produce this record and I’m going to listen to you and I really want you to tell me what you think needs to happen to make these songs the best they can be.” I trust Phil, obviously he’s done some incredible records over the years, and I know his attention to detail is incredible to witness and just really just laid into that.
I said, “let me know what you want me to do to these songs, if you want me to work on the songs themselves and try to make them better, or if there’s any problems that you think you see in any of the forms or anything like that.” I really just kind of handed it over to him and said, “let’s really be a partnership in this and see how good we can make this record.” And that was the whole process. That was a big step for me, was really just trusting somebody else with things that I’d put so much work into.
I think it really paid off. It really was a really beautiful experience to have that much trust in somebody and just end up with something that I really think turned out beautifully.
How did you get connected with Phil to work on the album?
I met him first when I was working on Infinite Arms with Band of Horses. That was the first studio record that I did in that band, and Phil was originally on board to produce that record. So, I got to spend a little bit of time with him in a couple different studios. Bill [Reynolds] and I were kind of the new guys in the band. But I just really loved watching him paying so much attention to everything. I don’t think I’d ever been in a studio with somebody that did whatever it took to get the sound that he was hearing in his head. He really wanted to do good work, but he ended up quitting as there were some differences between him and the singer. He left and we didn’t get to finish that project together. But over the years I just had him in the back of my mind as somebody that I wanted to be able to work with.
And I was out west playing a show in Seattle with Carl Broemel. We were doing a duo tour that took us kind of across the country and we were playing in Seattle. I was walking down the street to find something to eat, and Phil and his partner drove past me. He spotted me walking down the side of the road and texted me. He’s like, “are you in Seattle right now?” And I was like, “yeah, we’re playing here.” He ended up coming by and I gave him a copy of my last record For the Morning. And he really liked it. He had just mentioned, “Hey, maybe someday we can do something together.” And when I heard back from him about that record and that he was into it, I said, “let’s make a record.” I sent him the new songs and he was into them. He really liked them. So, we just kind of worked towards that for a while and then finally made it happen.
How did he most impact the direction of the songs?
I would say sonically was the main thing. I said to him, “if you want me to rewrite anything…or basically I just said “tell me what you want out of this. I’m trusting you.” And he didn’t have a lot of things to say about “oh, you should work on this or work on this.” What it ended up being was he really did what I thought he was going to do, which was find the sounds and make these incredible, just make it sound beautiful and take what I do and pay more attention to it and make sure that I was doing the work in the studio that needed to happen to make the record what it ended up as. Making sure that I would not just settle for a take on the guitar or settle for a pass on the vocals or whatever.
But he really was like, “do that again. Do that again until it was what it needed to be.” And then just dialing in these sounds, guitar sounds, the drums were incredible. Just everything that he really has been honing his whole career just showed up in this. Just beautiful sounds. The things that make all those records that we all love are magical, because he knows his way around in there and that’s his world and he’s so good at it. But he brought that to what I was already doing. He brought that attention to detail and that knowledge of this is what amp we’re going to play through, and this is where the drums are going to be, and all those things that he’s been honing his whole life, and it came together and surpassed my expectations really.
Was there a song or two that really benefited from his input?
I would say that the whole project did. I am trying to think of a specific moment that I could take out on the record, but there’s so many of them that I can think back on. Even if you just listened to guitar, the electric guitar, or you listened to the drums, he was so happy. I remember him being so happy with the drum sound that he was getting, and I’m terrible. I’m not an engineer. I know how to work and write songs and I know how to play guitar and I can sing and everything and play piano, but I never know what drums are supposed to sound like, and it’s crazy.
I just don’t, but he was so happy. Him and the guy that played drums. Morgan Henderson played bass and Sean Lane on drums. I remember them just being really excited about what they were getting off just out of the drum sound alone. So, there’s so many things that he brought to this record, but even just the most basic things, just capturing a sound that he was excited about made me really happy.
You’ve described the album’s title song “New Lost Ages” as a bit of a contemplative wakeup call to face reality. What were you hoping to convey in that song? How did it come together?
Back to that first thing we talked about, but I think a lot of times when I write songs like that, I’m kind of just talking to myself and I don’t want things to be bleak all the time. I think there was a moment in that song where I was like, “this is just bleak.” I felt there was a way to turn it at the end where you can show a little hope or a little bit of light. So the exercise in that song was like, “alright, I don’t want to leave it here sitting here and not have some sort of hope, but in that hope and that song…I might appear courageous. It’s almost like I didn’t believe it myself, but I think that that song was just that. It was trying to talk about how bad things are, and a lot of it was just in my own moment and then just trying to find a way out of that into something better.
“Flare (For Neal Casal),” is a very personal song for you. What was your inspiration for that song and the lyric line about seeing a flare?
That song was a reaction to hearing about Neil Casal passing. I was out at the beach in some cheap condo that I’d found and just had an acoustic guitar and a little keyboard. And I actually saw a flare. It’s literal, that part of the song is that I thought I’d seen a flare as the sun was going down. And I didn’t personally know what you’re supposed to do if you do see one or if even flares. I don’t even know if flares are still a thing in the world, but it’s like I thought I saw something go off out in the water and the sun was going down and it was getting dark, and I was like, “well, man, if someone needs help out there, I need to figure out a way to at least let somebody know that could help if there’s even a situation happening.” I maybe didn’t even believe what I had seen, but I just made a couple of phone calls and tried to let somebody know. I ended up calling the local police department and fire station or something and got passed on to other people.
But then it just got me thinking about the people that end up taking their own lives and if someone that’s really in a bad place. Maybe they are trying to signal you or anyone that they can help them out. What can you do with that information if you even see it? Or if you even believe that you saw someone sending you signals. Or there’s people that never let on what’s going on in their lives and they make that decision at some point without any sign at all. It was just a reaction to that feeling of like, this feeling of maybe hopelessness. I had met Neil on a tour where I opened up for him for five shows. I kind of latched onto him as somebody that I hoped would become a friend, and I had hopes to maybe work with him in the future.
I thought about getting him to play on some songs or getting him to maybe produce. He came across as an old friend of mine or something in a way. So, it really struck me. I’ve lost other friends to suicide and I’ve lost friends to drugs and things like that. So, it just hit me that time and I just ended up writing that song and imagining someone sending out a flare and people not seeing it who were distracted. That was the whole arc of that song. And it talks a little bit about being on stage and as a musician who might be dealing with depression or dealing with hard times, the feeling you get from the crowd. There’s a lot in that song. There’s not a lot of lyrics to it, but there’s a lot in it for me, and hopefully I don’t like to really necessarily spell everything out, but I’m hoping that some people can hear that song and maybe it can help somebody out.
It sounds like you’ve been taking a deep look at yourself in recent years, examining your memories and looking at the good and bad of what makes you who you are. And doing that gave you confidence to move forward with a better state of mind or more informed state of mind. Why was that process important? How has it helped with moving forward with life?
A lot of my songs do dive into my own personal world. I haven’t really found part of my writing where I’m talking about things that aren’t connected to me. There’s not a lot of things that I’ve written that aren’t just talking about me. It could be a more lighthearted affair if I was like, “I’m going to make up this character and make up a story about this person or whatever.” I think that that’s the way a lot of people write, and I think it’s a cool exercise, and someday I’ll probably try and do that.
But a lot of the things I’m writing about are just things that I’m processing and especially I think on this record, there’s a lot. Well not even especially on this record, it’s where I get my desire to write. It’s working through things that I’ve come across in my own life. Generally, it’s working through things and trying to understand them or just explain them at least or get them out. So, there’s a lot of that in this record.
The most important moment of writing things like that for me is just realizing…when I’m writing the song and working through it, and then I write that last line and I realize that the song is done, it’s a real big emotional moment for me, and it can be really therapeutic for me to write these things. So that’s the moment where I feel like I’ve just worked through some issues or whatever. And then a lot of times I can get that feeling again when I’m playing these songs for other people. I feel like I have a lot of people that come to see me play that get a lot out of what I’m doing for themselves. It seems like a mutual kind of experience a lot of times.
It’s hard to see sometimes if you move through something and gotten to the other side. I think that’s kind of a repeating element of what I do as a writer is I feel like I come through things a lot of times. I’ll need to walk into something else that I need to get through. And it just seems to be the way that life goes for me, I guess. And I’m sure it’s that way for a lot of people. But yeah, these are just ways for me to express moments in my life or kind of work through things and try to get some footing and some understanding of what has passed and what’s coming next and that kind of thing.
It sounds like the question “where to from here?” was a big part of your processing, at least according to your bio.
Honestly, that was written in my bio and I’m like, “I don’t know what, I don’t think that really is actually saying anything.” And I actually have recently taken that out of the bio because it was just a conversation I was having with somebody, and I don’t remember even saying that, but it’s not really a question where to from here, I don’t think that I have that question really. I just keep going forward. I’m not always seeking out what’s next.
I really just feel like I’m just trying to be in the moment and get through it or enjoy it or whatever it takes. But yeah, I don’t sit around thinking, where is it going? What’s going on next? How am I going to plan this out? It’s just I tend to be more of a “I’m rolling with what’s currently happening” kind of person for better or for worse, I guess.
What did you like most about recording with Morgan and Sean?
Phil was like “I know how to make a record here in Seattle, and I know musicians and I know the places, and I know the rooms really well.” He said, “I’ve got these people and they’re fantastic, so let’s use them.” Sean Lane and Morgan Henderson were incredible. I knew they would be, and I knew Phil wouldn’t just throw people out that weren’t going to just be the best. So, we tracked all their parts in the first week of the session, but really after that, it was more just me and Phil and his assistant engineer Garrett, just in the studio. And I was layering the parts.
So, we had the bass and the drums down, and I did the work after that to come up with the parts and guitars, acoustics, electrics, pianos, some synthesizers, and the vocals and all that stuff. And then we reached out to some other people. I had Carl Broemel play some pedal steel and some guitar and sang harmonies on one song.
I just got really lucky to have a really fantastic drummer and bass player that I got to work with for the first week, and we laid everything down and it was the foundation for everything that obviously came after that,
What did you like most about the studios you worked at?
We worked at Avast for the first part, and then we moved to Stone Gossard’s Litho Studio for the second session and did a lot of overdubs there and vocals there. And then we moved to this small studio called Electric Kitty, and that’s where we did the last overdubs and the last bit of vocals there, and then he mixed it there. With Avast, it was maybe the most exciting just because it was the first session, and it was all just building from the ground up and seeing what we were going to get.
We did some incredible work in Stone Studio. There was this grand piano in there that maybe was the best piano I’ve ever gotten to play, and that ended up on a lot of songs. And the majority of the vocals happened in there. And that was really fun to work with Phil on vocals as well, just because he’s so, again, attentive to detail, and he made sure that I got it right. He made sure it was the way that it needed to be. So yeah, I enjoyed all of it really.
What were some of the biggest surprises making the album?
It wouldn’t be a surprise necessarily, but just the excitement of starting to hear it as it came really close to the finish and getting things from Phil, like rough mixes and things, and just realizing that what I had hoped would happen actually had happened by taking this huge leap and hiring Phil and just being going for it. When I first started realizing, “oh yeah, this is why I did that,” and that these songs sound incredible. It wasn’t really a surprise. It was a beautiful moment of like, “oh, okay. Wow. It worked.” It worked and it worked better than I had even hoped. So maybe that was a little element of surprise, I guess.
What are you most looking forward to in the year ahead?
I’m really just excited to see people’s reaction to the record and see how many people I can have listen to these songs. I’m excited about touring again, I haven’t really done a lot of touring since 2019, obviously, and I’m trying to wrap my head around what that’s going to be like.
I just want people to hear this record and really my excitement is to get to continue to do this for a while longer. It’s a really weird world right now and playing music and getting back out and putting another record out after everything kind of fell apart. And I think there’s so many things that are just up in the air, and I think the music industry part is so screwed up right now that I don’t really know what to expect. But I really just want to get to keep playing music and get out and play shows for people. And I’m excited about that process and seeing how that goes, but I can’t wait to hear some feedback on the record, and I’m excited to hear a song come on the radio or something.
It’s been a while since I put my last record out and I just am excited for that feeling of like, “oh, this project that I’ve been working on for so long is finally just released and I can relax a little bit and get back into the creative mode again and start writing more and hopefully get to do another record.”
It looks like you’re getting to a lot of different places on your tour next year.
Yeah, I’ll be getting all over the country and hopefully back over to Europe for a little bit. Yeah, it’s all kind of still coming together, but the first initial tour is all over all the way out to the West Coast and back, so that’ll be nice. And then, yeah, we’ll see what happens after that. Hopefully, maybe some little festivals. I don’t really know what to expect. I just really just want to keep doing this. So, we’ll see how the world treats me.
Tyler Ramsey’s new album New Lost Ages comes out February 9 on Soundly Music. You can pre-order and pre-save the album here.
