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Jack Straw | a Grateful Dead cover performed at The Camp Store, South Carlsbad State Beach Carlsbad, CA

Welcome back to a special Deadhead addition of the weekly Wednesday jam! Jack Straw is such a fun song to play, I’m not sure why it took us so long to add it to our setlist. It’s in there for good now, especially on Freaky Fridays. Which reminds me, I should change the name of my Weekly Wednesday Jam to ‘Ramsdays’, where every day is a Freaky Friday. 

Kidding, that would be a horrible name.

After a recording session this past February, long after the engineer headed home, the band was still hanging out and drinking beer jamming and calling audibles. We were running silent with cans on, so we didn’t have to worry about noise or the neighbors, so we went through a number of covers and new originals. We recorded Jack Straw that night, had so much fun, decided to play it at our first show of the spring.

READ FULL STORY ON SUBSTACK:

https://open.substack.com/pub/theram/p/jack-straw-copy-mental-revenge?r=211fux&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Mental Revenge is a Waylon Jennings cover performed at The Camp Store, South Carlsbad State Beach Carlsbad, CA

Welcome back to my regular weekly Wednesday jam. This one goes out to all the Waylon fans there are out there, for there will never be another voice like his, nor a rhythm section like his legendary band. His bass and drums are the sound of a title fighter, and as far as I’m concerned, that voice is the incarnate voice of God himself. 

Being a 70s kid raised on the Dukes of Hazard, Waylon’s voice grew into what I imaged to be the voice of God almighty. This song is a doozy, it gets the blood flowing, it’s one of my favorite songs, to listen to and perform, period. Its delivery can be boiled down to just ‘a take no shit from anyone’ message, written at a time when country music was overflowing with men crying in their beers about 2 timing women. I think I first heard it on one of my all time favorite albums ‘Waylon Live’, when you can hear , Ralph Mooney at the full height of his musical abilities. He’s hands down one of my favorite soloists across all genres.

READ FULL STORY ON SUBSTACK:

https://open.substack.com/pub/theram/p/mental-revenge?r=211fux&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

‘Weekly Wednesday Jams’ & ‘Inside the Songwriting’ are moving to the Substack subscription model. Regular episodes provide a front row seat to concert footage and 2024’s songwriting processes.

Given all the ‘free’ content across the web, some artist feel reticent to leverage the subscription model Substack is built on. I don’t, Substack is a perfect tool for the creative mind, it helps the artists stay organized in their work. I assume that’s why I like it, and many of the artists I respect use it as well. So many features consolidated into a single, easy to use, platform. A few weeks ago, the day after a show, I easily scheduled out concert footage with commentary as weekly podcasts thru October on Substack. I’ve found it to be a perfect place to manage my band’s existing email list. 

It feels like a local artist community.

The subscription model? Brilliant. Paid subscription? Like it or not, it’s how commerce works now. Most musicians that use ProTools understand the subscription model already and have been using it for years, all of us have. Subscriptions are how we buy music, software, services, entertainment, etc. Why not learn how to leverage subscriptions as an artist? With a bit of playing around there are easy ways to manage the cost of your paid subscription tiers. I currently set mine (with discount code) at $5 annually. Nothing.

It’s the cost of a beer at a dive bar.

READ FULL STORY ON SUBSTACK:

https://open.substack.com/pub/theram/p/subscription-based-posts?r=211fux&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Warmth of the Fire performed at The Camp Store, South Carlsbad State Beach Carlsbad, CA

Welcome to the second ever Weekly Wednesday jam. Ram here, doing what I do best, recording away here at the home studio. This week’s performance is a taste of a brand new original. A big part of the great gift of songwriting is being able to introduce a new song to the band, then shortly thereafter to live local music community audience. 

Quick housekeeping, next week this series becomes subscription based.
Here are my current subscriptions tiers >

Over the 2023 holidays, I closed out the year with family and friends on our family farm in Amish country southwest of Philadelphia, PA. Whenever I go home, the floodgates open and I come in contact with the ghosts of my past. Us artists live in the physical world, the dream world, and the spirit world. That’s why most think we’re crazy. Lucky to be born under the sign of the Scorpion, I couldn’t care less what people think.

Our thoughts and actions can turn into ghosts if we’re not careful. My mistakes I’ve worn, taken the hit on the chin, came to terms with the fact that failure is often the best teacher in life. Being labeled as the family fuckup taught me humility, especially when losing the hard earned trust of those I loved dearly. Everything had to be earned back.

READ FULL STORY ON SUBSTACK:

https://open.substack.com/pub/theram/p/warmth-of-the-fire?r=211fux&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

All Photography by Daniel Hernandez | Instagram: @drhphotsd

On the heels of yesterday’s ‘Freaky Friday’ show at the Camp Store at South Carlsbad State Beach, CA, I’d like to take a look back to the origins of one of the best music venues in North County San Diego. It wasn’t that long ago that what is now hallowed ground to local musicians, was built on a knick-knack shop that sold bad coffee, firewood, and beer to campers. God that coffee sucked. 

Luckily for us, local beer, wine, and unique pizza offerings are part of the upgraded menu. To compliment everything else, year round live music was added to the mix! Only in California, baby.

READ FULL STORY ON SUBSTACK:

https://open.substack.com/pub/theram/p/the-ram-early-photographs?r=211fux&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

So Lucky performed at The Camp Store, South Carlsbad State Beach Carlsbad, CA

Ram here, welcome to my weekly Wednesday jam. Starting today, I’m going to cherry pick from live shows we’ve been recording and create an archive of my home recordings (as of this morning, I have 30 already scheduled to be released through the summer of 2024). Kinda reminds me of the old taper sections at Grateful Dead shows back in the day, those guys were onto something, they were there trying to capture magic. 

I’ve taped shows back in the day, so it’s understandable that I’ve grown up to be a bit of a home recording nerd, and built a working home studio. Like magic, the show goes by in an instant when your on stage. Instantaneous, while each note emanating from the fretboard is frozen in time for the performer. I’m in the moment, exploring the possibilities of each song with my friends, at the end of the night I don’t even know if the show was good, bad, or ugly.

READ FULL STORY ON SUBSTACK:

https://open.substack.com/pub/theram/p/so-lucky-3292024?r=211fux&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

How a few moonlight surf sessions changed my life.

A few years back, some local surfers from Carlsbad invited me on a boat trip, one of the many times I’ve beckoned to the call of surf travel. It was one of the most profound experiences of my life. Surf trips depend on good people, so care was taken when selecting from an already tight crew of local surfers. The results were so spectacular, I’ve already been back once and hope to go back to Indonesia again in 2024. It’s my sources of inspiration, as well as an endless spring of life.

Read Full Story on Substack:

https://theram.substack.com/p/cut-loose-album-art-backstory

Waking up Sunday morning feeling like I just ran a marathon. Three days, three shows.

I’m here in the home studio today loafing around in awe of this late October sunshine. The kids are rolling around, friends stopping by, can’t help but smile to myself. Days like this are why I love to call California my home. In my eyes California is the land of opportunity, the home of the American Dream. DISCLAIMER: I’m originally from Pennsylvania. Over the years I’ve heard so many people bitch about this state, its politics, its taxes, about L.A. traffic, how everyone is plastic, ect. My take?

Read Full Story on Substack:

https://open.substack.com/pub/theram/p/this-past-weekend-was-a-good-one

Creating a band leader’s living setlist for 2023 and forward.

By documenting my own music as a post mortem after writing and recording the song, it helps me ease into taking the song to the stage. Most people with think this is a completely overkill approach to music, but when I have musicians sit in with us, being able to easily provide charts has proven to be gold.

Read Full Story on Substack:

https://theram.substack.com/p/studying-my-own-music-charts-and

Shedding light on some of the stories behind the songs.

Most of my youth was spent in a small house shared with 4 other siblings, two parents, and a grandmother (both grandmothers by middle school). If you pull the siding off the old part of the house, beneath reveals a log cabin, the basement floor was dirt. In 1868 an ancestor on my father’s side bought the property outside of Downingtown, PA from saved civil war union army pay. 100 years later, I was born.

Read Full Story on Substack:

https://theram.substack.com/p/songs-of-wanderlust-about-the-music

Recording notes from these sessions, from winter 2023 through late summer.

Garcia (and Hunter) were some of the best damn storytellers to have ever lived. Even so, I’m trying hard to come up with a good reason why I decided to start recording Grateful Dead covers when I have more than enough original music to finish up. The music knows where to go, it’s up to us to follow the signals, sometimes taking the scenic route is the best way to get to where we need to be. 

2023 was a good winter for woodshedding, more snow than I had seen in my life in the Sierras, and San Diego was constant rain storms. Many trips to Mammoth last year, so much so I was just about snowboarded out by new years. Surf was abysmal last winter, luckily music was there for me back in the home studio.

Read Full Story on Substack:

https://theram.substack.com/p/rams-dead-vol-1-studio-notes