The Last Laugh

But Ramsey never fit into Russell's glamorous and chaotic world; indeed, by his own admission, he was "pretty much traumatized" by it. Like Tom Petty, Phoebe Snow, and other young artists on Shelter Records, he wanted out. "Phoebe Snow said, 'Get the hell off that label.' I said, 'I can't--I've got a big contract.' She told me to get my attorneys to buy my way out. I couldn't, because I wasn't selling records."

Instead, Ramsey let his contract run its course after Shelter threatened to keep him under contract until he delivered a second record. (At one point, Ramsey thought he might be under contract indefinitely.) His debut may have been a masterpiece, but there would be no followup, no comeback. He tried making another record in Austin, but nothing came of the sessions. He struck out before he ever stepped up to the plate.

"My contract ran out just in time for disco and '80s dance music," Ramsey recalls. "Things went from nice listening environments to drunken-cowboy stuff. Then, about the time mechanical bulls showed up in the rooms I was playing, I stopped playing. But in a funny way, it's come full circle, and there are a lot of good listening rooms now, like when I started in the '70s."

Given the circumstances surrounding his only album--recorded over the course of a year in five studios in three states--we're fortunate to have songs such as "Goodbye Old Missoula," "Watermelon Man," "Satin Sheets," and "Boy From Oklahoma" at all. Those songs and others have been covered by Jerry Jeff Walker, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Waylon Jennings, Shawn Colvin, Jimmy Buffett, and Kate Wolf. "Muskrat Love," one of the prettiest tunes you'll ever hear, was covered by America and then turned into a huge hit by Captain and Tennille.

But aside from its gorgeous melody, that song won't tell you much about Ramsey's art. "Ballad of Spider John," which opens the album, gets closer. Spider John is based on a character Ramsey met while hitchhiking--in his words, a "small-time thief, an incredibly guilty thief, who only robbed himself." He sang:

I was a supermarket fool
I was a motorbank stool pigeon
Robbin' my own time
I thought I'd lost my blues,
Yes, I thought I'd paid my dues
I thought I'd found a life to suit my style

The story of Spider John is as broad, wistful, and full of betrayed possibility as America itself. Spider could be Elvis or Robert Johnson, or Huckleberry Finn, the cocksure kid, born to lose, who finally realizes his deepest wish--and then throws it all away.

The question Ramsey repeats in "Wishbone"--"How you goin' to save your soul?"--is the central question, and answer, of his strange career. He has always cast a cold eye on the commercial aspects of music, not because he believes himself to be above the music business, but because he sees no benefit in the compromises it entails, no reason to make music on anything but his own terms, even if that means never making another record again. He will, he says, but he knows better than to say when.

"I've said as much over the years, and those projects haven't happened," he explains. "I don't want to say something again and have it not happen, as it has so many times before. I always thought I'd have many records out by now. My path has been a unique one, but every artist's path is unique. I'm not somebody who wants to make a vanity record. I don't have any desire to make a modest record; I really want to make something that's important and will last a long time. But there's not a lot of record labels knocking at my door. But I think I might get the last laugh."