Texas has a reputation for being difficult to categorize. Superficial examination of typical Texan behavior reveals a pattern of strong-willed, independent, even contrarian individuals who stand up to the odds (successfully or otherwise), laugh in the face of adversity, and refuse to rethink obvious errors in judgment. These traits apply to humans at large, by the way, but Texans, well, they seem so incredibly proud of these sometimes fatal flaws. Someone once opined that “if one person, or two, or even three tell you you’re wrong about something, you can get away with ignoring them; but more than that, well, perhaps you should reconsider.”

Likewise the true troubadour. “A wee bit thin with a will to begin” might be Gordon Lightfoot’s self-description, but he also once remarked, “I never got really good at hockey.” That could explain the Canadian artist’s persistence in the business (Neil Peart also lamented his “weak ankles”, which kept HIM off the ice for the most part). But a troubadour lives the life he or she sings or writes or plays. That’s the experiential part that feeds the machinery of their craft. So what does one say about the lad that weighs in with a quintessential collection of original songs that still shine nearly fifty years later?

When I first caught the cool strains of “Muskrat Love”, the musicality is what drew me in. I may have been 12 or 13, but the smooth minor sevenths really got my attention. It sounded like what it was: not quite elevator music, not really folk, and definitely no pop sensibilities. This was a song about very specific rodents (not rats or beavers, for which they are often mistaken). Muskrats are their own species and genus, in fact, but share the family tree with lemmings and voles. Which brings us to the point of all this fact dartboarding: who would write a song about muskrats in love? And, while we’re at it, who would wax poetic about a flower and a pollinator?

Willis Alan Ramsey, of course. The mystery and the mythology of Ramsey was a thing of much debate in the years when some of us spent time at The Hop, a Berry Street bar (we’d call it a pub, now, because some basic foods were available) in Fort Worth that catered to an eclectic crowd with music from the likes of cosmic cowboys like Ray Wylie Hubbard and B.W. Stevenson, favorites like Delbert McClinton and Bugs Henderson and, later, Brave Combo and Timbuk 3.

Willis Alan Ramsey played The Hop one New Years’ Eve eve. Along with a host of others, I wondered when his next album might be forthcoming. When asked about it, he was known to respond, “What was wrong with the first one?” And that’s pretty much the way it remained.

“Muskrat Candlelight” (Ramsey’s original title for his song) was covered by America, of course, and later The Captain and Tenille, “The Ballad of Spider John” I found on Jimmy Buffett’s Living and Dying in 3/4 Time, and other tracks from his eponymously-titled debut were covered by the likes of Jerry Jeff Walker, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Waylon Jennings, and others. It’s safe to say that his narrative lyrics and straightforward melodies, coupled with an often whimsical style have made this album a real treasure for those acquainted with it.

“Geraldine and the Honeybee” and “Wishbone” are perfect examples of his signature style: the tales depict the earnest love of a bee for his chrysanthemum girlfriend (who, we learn, is “living in a compost pile”) and the stubborn reliance on fate (or luck) to pull us out of our doldrums. More introspective were laments and love songs like “Goodbye Old Missoula” and “Angel Eyes”, proof that his songwriting spanned everything from the downright odd to the heartfelt.

“Northeast Texas Women”, which closes the album, may be the finest example of what would become a 1970s standard of country folk and outlaw country; that feel of an inspired, underrehearsed-but-somehow-spot-on delivery of authentic country blues, complete with accompaniments of cowbell, coke crate, and “carpets and hallways”. Here in the 20s, we might say the lyrics are sexist and objectifying, but truth be told in the 70s it was meant (and received) as a love song to Texas women in general.

“North of Amarillo, east of old Dime Box, you can find your Cinderella or a genuine Goldilocks” is an inspired turn of phrase that has stuck with me since I first heard it, surpassed only by “you wanna get a Lone Star girl with her cast iron curls and her aluminum dimples”, and, yes, it is just that simple: “Texas women is Texas gold – kisses that are sweet than cactus”. Not many could make lyrics like this work, but Ramsey is definitely one of them.

As far as that second, album, it is, I believe, closer to release than it was before.

We can hope, can’t we?

“It was late in December, the sky turned to snow,

All round the day was going down slow…” – Time Passages, Al Stewart

History, I’m told, is written by the conquerors. Ultimately it seems, in our schools and even in our zeitgeist, the losers still manage to scratch and claw their marks into our collective unconscious. I’m a little jaded, I admit, but it strikes me as excessively ironic that the very first album I had chosen would be a time capsule from a troubadour of tales that situated on the fringes of human history. The spectacle at the U.S. Capitol on then sixth of this month left many of us speechless, but the insurrectionists there were little different than the anarchists of the early 1900s or the fascists in Europe during the 1930s.

So it’s hardly a shock that idle minds and idle hands would make of themselves a cautionary tale that plays into the hands of the manipulating powers-that-be. I think Franz Ferdinand would feel a little less pressure as the historical catalyst for a tragic cataclysm if he knew how we picked up and ran with the mustard gas. Let’s take a second to analyze: is the point of learning history (human, not natural) to memorize dates of battles and names of the influencers of history, or is to glean some context and understanding of the human condition that may save our sorry asses going forward? Your answer to that question definitely determines where you stand on the human evolutionary timeline.

Well.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Now, let’s talk about that time capsule I mentioned earlier, Year of the Cat (Al Stewart). Possibly one of the best (definitely one of the most literate) albums to arrive in the middle 1970s, Year of the Cat boasted a broad range of topics and pop hooks that carried historically-driven stories to the masses. (As a side note, I’m constantly plagued by an overwhelming feeling of despair that the broader music audiences of today lack the acquisitive nature of the audiences of 1976.). From “Lord Grenville” and “On the Border” to “Flying Sorcery” and “One Stage Before”, Stewart throws wave after wave of nostalgic reminiscence at the listener, a barrage of musically splendorous ammunition that permeates and ignites the soul.

“You were always Amy Johnson since the time that you were small” (Flying Sorcery) were lyrics which led me to a 1930s-era female pilot, the first to solo from London to Australia, and her tragic end in a Thames Estuary crash while flying in a WWII Air Transport Auxiliary ferry flight. Or, in “Lord Grenville”, “Our time is just a point along a line that runs forever with no end, I never thought that we would come to find ourselves upon these rocks again” left me with many questions, not the least of which was who was the title subject. a 14th century Lord and politician who fought aboard the Revenge following a protracted battle with 15 ships of the Spanish fleet. “On the Border” flips between the Spanish Basque separatist campaign and the Rhodesioan conflict, all driven by a superlative Spanish guitar improvisation by guitarist Peter White. The lyrics, prosaic poetry (“On my wall the colours of the maps are running” – the changing geopolitical topography of human civilization) and plaintive in their call to arms (“The ghost moon sails among the clouds turns the rifles into silver on the border”) for the oppressed, are never more haunting than in the final verse:

“Late last night the rain came knocking on my window, I moved across the darkened room and in the lampglow I thought I saw down in the street the spirit of the century telling us that we’re all standing on the border.”

This is hardly lightweight pop. It’s catchy, sure; it has Alan Parsons as both engineer and producer (engineer for Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” and The Beatles’ “Abbey Road” to name the biggies); but it has depth and complexity and connections to the higher human aspirations that set it apart from many of its contemporaries, and its successors.

I could linger on “One Stage Before” (an existential romp and Christopher Nolan-esque event horizon that any performer faces in the endless repetition of performances – “While others talk in secret keys and. transpose all I say and nothing I try or do can get through the spell”) or “Broadway Hotel” (the retreat to anonymity for those overwhelmed by…life?). But, still, it waits, like a vigilant sentinel on the window seat, watching a rainy day pass; quiet, observant, and introspective, there is the cat.

Let me state that I believe unequivocally that any song which opens with the lyric “On a morning from a Bogart movie” has already placed itself above other pedestrian fare. It’s not just that the Casablanca connotations inherent in the phrase evoke that film classic (helped along with the straight-on reference to Peter Lorre), but the song as a whole, lyrically, paints a tableau of a bygone era, which, amid masks and social distancing and so many unimagined future shocks, is perhaps mythologized now more than when it was first released.

“Year of the Cat” is filled with everything we eagerly devoured at Saturday matinees: the mysterious feminine presence, an exotic foreign setting, and a sense of the inevitability of the of a predestined assignation leading to heartbreak. Even recognizing the transitory nature of the protagonist’s realization of desire, there is no choice but to pursue the liaison which will ultimately dissolve. “Better to have loved and lost” Tennyson said but here, though “the drumbeat strains of the night remain in the rhythms of the new-born day”, the melancholy of the poet is replaced by an inevitability in the voice of the narrator.

Echoing that constancy of change is the instrumental bridge, cello to violin to acoustic to electric guitar and finally a jazzy Phil Kenzie sax solo every bit as memorable and penetrating as Raphael Ravenscroft’s “Baker Street” riffs. The seamless transitions between the instruments could be echoing the human shift from relationship to relationship, “like waves upon the shore of infinity.” The fullness of Alan Parson’s arrangements on “Cat” (and the rest of the album) elevate the stories, giving a feeling of completion, rather than a burial in overproduction.

All in all, Year of the Cat – for me – is about as perfect as an album can be: tales of history and nostalgia that produce a rare synergy. It’s got a folk-rock feel with jazz tones and a heavy dose of literate insight. But don’t take my word; carve yourself forty minutes of time, put on the phones, and listen, and let the stories paint your day.