Bo Ramsey

So many guitarists use their instruments as weapons of ostentation that it’s a head-shaking surprise to witness Bo Ramsey playing the thing with a bass player’s tranquility. Every show has an element of optical impossibility. It’s like watching a ventriloquist’s dummy speak a brash, intricate language with which the ventriloquist himself is unfamiliar. During recent shows with Pieta Brown, Ramsey hasn’t so much accompanied her gentle tunes as he has drawn the highways receding through her lyrics about landscapes and laundromats inhabited by everyday people.