Eric Ramsey: A Songwriter Beyond Genre Labels in Arizona’s Music Scene
- James Mattison
- Jan 13
- 4 min read
Eric Ramsey: A Songwriter Beyond Genre Labels in Arizona’s Music Scene
By James Mattison (Desert Vibes Podcast • Emma & James Music)
Some artists spend a lifetime trying to fit cleanly inside a single genre. And some spend a lifetime doing the more honest work—writing the songs they need to write, even if the result won’t sit neatly on a playlist shelf.
That’s the heart of our conversation with Eric Ramsey: a working songwriter whose catalog pulls from blues, folk, and Americana without fully belonging to any one lane.
Eric’s story also highlights something we keep circling back to on Desert Vibes Podcast:
Regional scenes like Arizona’s don’t just host artists. They shape them—through open mics, showcases, brewery stages, and listening rooms where the audience actually listens.
Eric Ramsey and why genre labels miss the point
When people ask Eric what kind of music he plays, the best answer isn’t a label.
It’s a description: real songs, delivered with craft, pulled from a wide listening life.
He’s an Arizona-based singer-songwriter with a long-running musical output—and he’s also earned serious recognition in the blues world, including winning the International Blues Challenge (Solo/Duo category) and being listed in the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame.
Lap steel, baritone steel, and the “characters” inside a song
One of the most practical parts of this conversation was Eric’s approach to instrumentation as storytelling. He doesn’t treat instruments like interchangeable tools.
He treats them like characters.
Sometimes a melody wants a sharper edge. Sometimes it wants velvet weight. And sometimes the song simply refuses to land until the right instrument speaks its language.
Eric’s track “So Much Promise” is a great example—worked and reworked across years, drafts, and tunings before the lap steel finally unlocked the voice the song needed.
Check out Eric's track On the Record (Spotify).
The creative takeaway is simple yet challenging: hold the song loosely.
Because the right texture can fix what editing can’t.
Songwriting process with respect for the song
Eric gets candid about process—how some songs arrive like a lightning bolt, but most arrive like a sculpture.
The first chorus becomes the bridge. The opening verse becomes the hook after a hard cut. And the goal isn’t to suffer through it. The goal is to respect what the song is trying to say.
With time, writers get pickier about clarity and structure—verse–chorus–bridge is a tool, not a rule.
Collaboration, minimalism, and avoiding the “karaoke” trap live
We also talk about the on-stage reality every working musician knows: you want texture, but you don’t want the set to feel like a backing-track performance.
Eric balances minimalism with dimension by building parts live and/or working in duo settings so arrangements can breathe—making the performance feel present instead of pre-packaged.
In a scene like Arizona’s, that matters, because the rooms can be intimate. When the audience is close enough to hear every choice, you learn quickly what’s real.
Arizona music venues and showcases where songs get tested
Place matters in songwriting—and it also matters in career-building.
Arizona’s scene thrives on mixed-genre showcases and consistent stages that give songwriters repetition—the only true way to refine material.
Here are a few venue links worth embedding directly in the article when you mention them:
These are the rooms where songs get tested, refined, and set free.
The human side—midlife pivots, rescued dogs, and meaning handed back by fans
Some of the best moments in conversations like this aren’t about gear or theory. They’re about life.
We discuss rescued dogs and the steady perspective they bring. We talk about fans hearing their own story inside a song—sometimes in ways the songwriter never predicted.
And we talk about the midlife pivot: how a person can move from one trade into a touring songwriter life, not with a fantasy leap, but with family support, local stages, and community momentum.
That’s the truth of independent music: it’s rarely one big break. It’s a hundred small “yes” moments stacked over time.
What to do if you want independent music to survive in the desert
Here’s the simplest call to action we can offer—because it actually works.
If you’re a fan: show up, bring a friend, buy the CD or the shirt at the merch table, and follow the artist so the next show doesn’t disappear into the algorithm.
If you’re an artist: build locally before you chase “elsewhere,” keep refining songs in real rooms, and choose tools that serve the moment—not your ego.
And if you’re new to this world, start with Eric Ramsey’s music page and follow the trail outward from there.
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