Ramseur Records triples up, loses a headliner

Dolphus Ramseur, head of Ramseur Records in Concord, N.C., has hit the pay streak with the July 22nd, 2008 release of the Avett Brothers new EP, The Second Gleam, along with Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers first EP, The Confiscation, and Sammy Walker’s album, Misfit Scarecrow.

Dolphus is a prospector of bands, mining his claims with extremely fertile hands, picking gold from crevices with knives and spoons, picks and shovels.

He discovered the bedrock band of Ramseur Records, the Avett Brothers, playing an outdoor gig in their hometown of Concord, a serendipitous meeting that shifted the plate tectonics of Ramseur Records.

“I knew the Avett Brothers had something special,” Dolphus says. “I felt we could help each other out.”

Dolphus’ path from mill town to gold mine began when an early talent for
tennis lowered the moat and opened the castle door for this young man whose parents were the first of three generations to escape the drudgery of mill work.

Traveling the world in the 1970’s as a one-time junior tennis champion, Dolphus visited every record store he could, collecting music and developing relationships with the people who worked there.

A big fan of 70’s and 80’s post-punk music, led to a fortuitous meeting with English singer/songwriter Martin Stephenson who was interested in artists from North Carolina such as Doc Watson and Charlie Poole.

Martin visited Dolphus in Concord, recording with North Carolina musicians such as Sammy Walker, Etta Baker spawning hobby in 2000 that became Ramseur Records in 2000 with their first release, a spiritual collection by Charlotte based songwriter David Childers.

Sadly, the death of Dolphus’ father-in-law, with whom he’d been working with coincided with the Avett Brothers first release, A Carolina Jubilee.

Dolphus decided to make Ramseur Records his full-time career. Taking out a $15,000 line of credit, he knew he had to “sink or swim.”

“I was doing it all,” he says” I was putting out the records, booking all the shows, and moving furniture on the side just to put food on the table.”

“One day Scott Avett called me on the phone while I was moving furniture. He could hear me huffing and puffing. I had to confess that I was doing it just to make ends meet.”

“Scott said something like, “Well now I’m fired up! We’ll all keep working hard and we’ll make it. He put a lot of faith in me.”

Dolphus and the Avett Brothers struck gold when they were selected to play at Merlefest in 2004.

“I knew if I could get them to the festival people would remember three words, The Avett Brothers.”

“I like bands that are honest and real with songs people can connect with,” he says. “If something sort of touches me or moves me, I want to share it with others.”

Dolphus works like a cradler to his bands, rocking and guiding the everyday chores of the cradle box with one while pouring the sluice of total artistic freedom with the other.

“If they want to bark in a trashcan, we’ll put it out,” he laughs. “I trust them to put it out and they do.”

Ramseur Records is unique in the rapprochement Dolphus has created with his bands and with the people he works with whose lucky heads have been knighted by Dolphus’own brand of Excalibur.

“My label hasn’t been as lucrative as some but I’m in a great position of surrounding myself with people I really like and want to be around. Sadly, a lot of people work with people they don’t really like all of their lives, never seeing their families. I’m in a good position to be with people I really want to be with.”

Dolphus and his wife Dana’s two young sons help Dolphus out during the day, whistling to tunes like “Traipsing through the Aisles,” by Samantha Crain, the newest and youngest member of the Ramseur family.

“I trust their ears better than mine,” Dolph says. “Kids can usually cut to the core and spot something good.”

Dolphus’ eyes widen as he describes the anticipation Ramseur Records three new releases in July 22, 2008.

“All three projects are special because they’re so different in nature, but are all heartfelt music.”

“Sammy Walker is a forgotten folk singer, Samantha Crain is young and hungry, and the Avett Brothers have kept the ball rolling.”

Dolphus says that although the success of the Avett Brothers has “been a plus, we still conduct business the same Ramseur way by winning over one fan at a time.

Ramseur Records will continue to manage the Avett Brothers and is supportive of their decision to sign with American/Columbia Records.

“We are much honored to be joining the team over an American/Columbia. With Rick Rubin producing, I feel that we have found a great home for the guys in which they can expand on their artistic creativity. With the Avett Brothers and Ramseur Records, it has always been and will always be about the art. We have never put our billfolds in front of the artistic vision that we have shared. We are very lucky to have someone like Rich who also wants to share in this vision and help with his vast knowledge and experience,” says Dolphus.

Originally Published in Yes! Weekly

Samantha Crain parks at the Garage

Stepping across the street from the Garage in Winston-Salem last Friday night to discuss her new EP, The Confiscation, Samantha Crain, is stopped at the door by the bartender.

"I'm sorry," he says. "We don't allow children in here."

Blinks of surprise follow reassurances that Crain, a petite, full-lipped beauty with a brunette braid coiled around one shoulder, is indeed 21 years old.

She is the youngest and newest member of Ramseur Records, a Concord, NC-based record label managing stanchion bands such as the Avett Brothers and the everybodyfields. She and her band, the Midnight Shivers, are also recipients of the Oklahoma Gazette's 2008 Woody Award for best folk band. Further lifting the wings of this phoenix of a band is the honor of having a day officially dedicated to Samantha by the mayor of her hometown, Shawnee, Ok.

"It was really cool to receive the award in the spirit of Woody Guthrie because he is the epitome of Oklahoma," says Crain.

She has been writing stories since she was a child in composition notebooks her parents supplied.

"As soon as I could write stories about people, I did. I was quite the little liar and exaggerator and still am," she says with a smile.

The Confiscation is a compilation of five short stories Crain wrote and turned into songs. Each song has a different narrator expounding themes of betrayal, redemption and good versus evil.

In the process of taking the EP to the next level, she e-mailed Dolphus Ramseur, president of Ramseur Records about the possibility of opening for the Avett Brothers.

As the winds of fate and serendipity blow, Crain says she and Dolphus Ramseur, head of Ramseur Records, "found each other."

"We just started talking and everything fell into place," she says. "He's more interested in the long career than the fast buck."

Jacob Edwards, on drums, coined the name the Midnight Shivers, "because they needed something that evoked nighttime whisky drinking and front-porch smoking." He's joined by Andy Tanz on bass and back-up vocals and, for the tour, Nate Hendrix on electric guitar. The Midnight Shivers anchor the traditional folk-rock rhythms and steer Crain's Dylanesque acoustic guitar and harmonica duets.

Samantha's youthful appearance is in direct contrast to her velvety, sonorous voice thick with flavors of dark chocolate, licorice and nutmeg, melded with a unique blend of round vowels.

"As a child I had a lisp or a speech impediment," she explains. "I was from a family that was either very eloquent of had a very Southern drawl.

"When I sing I can make up words that sound like how I want them to be. Words are things that I experiment with. I can rhyme and mold anything together and I never sing the same song the same way. The tone and timbre is me but it's a whole new game each time.

Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers' 12-song set struck all the right notes, fusing a palpable collaboration of bands such as the Grateful Dead, Radiohead, Bob Dylan and the Band, all musical influences.

Four songs from The Confiscation were featured beginning with "Beloved, We Have Been Expired," a weary resignation of love's flame burning low, of "being the forgotten change in the pocket of your old winter coat." Crain explains the verse of this song: "The floors I sleep on at night, they speak to me. Their strange voices tell me all thing true.They say if something's dead, it's dead. There's no reviving it, just bury it and move on."

"Two years go when we started touring we slept on floors anywhere we could," she says. "I would lie on the hard floor and think about everything. I had really good therapy sessions, imagining hands coming out of the floor for a massage. Floors were the source I could go to to figure things out."

"Traipsing Through the Aisles," is a pulsing, surprisingly happy-go-lucky, shrug-of-the-shoulders song despite the theme of remorse as thick as a wet wool blanket.

"I'm lost inside my home and my clothes, in the rows of my mind and I know it's not a sign I just messed up this time.

"I did something wrong." The tenth song plays possum with the crowd, the band pretending to fumble for a song as the singer's back is turned, when in fact she swivels around with harmonica to lips, blasting the audience with all the vehemence of a Southern Baptist preacher pummeling his fist on the pulpit and spitting warnings of fire and brimstone.

"The River," conjures grim images of a man around town that discovers little girls playing beside a river.

"When he finds them the rest makes me shiver, he holds them down when their feet won't reach the ground and he waits for the struggle to end." Crain says this song was inspired by a Flannery O'Connor story of the same name that she and two friends read and decided to write their own version. Crain decided for her story that the man is purged of guilt and repents by agreeing to be baptized in the river where, "the preacher holds him down when his feet won't reach the ground and he waits for judgment to come, yes he waits for the Lord's will to be done."

"Writing is a meditation for me," she says. "I sit down and the chord progressions just sort of happen. The melodies are in my head. I keep journal entries in images. The best songs are the ones you can feel, see and smell."

When asked why only five of the twelve lyrical miracles performed Friday night were released as an EP instead of a complete CD, she responds with a lightening bolt of bare truth.

"I only had five-hundred dollars," she says. "That's how much it costs to record five songs.

Originally Published in Yes! Weekly