Last week singer/songwriter/emcee Ceschi Ramos offered up a new guitar-driven release with This Guitar Was Stolen With Years Of Our Lives (Fake Four Inc.) The album, filled with 10 tracks of guitar-inspired songs, is a departure of sorts, distanced from his most recent work, releases geared more toward Hip Hop culture. But as it goes, Ceschi is more than just an emcee as his new album attests. Throughout the release, he mixes together an assortment of anthemic tracks, melancholic balladry, all in the face of realism. This Guitar Was Stolen Along With Years Of Our Lives gives us all what some may have forgotten is strong and steadfast within Ceschi’s songwriting capabilities. I caught up with Ceschi soon after his touring ended as he and others celebrate the release of the new album.
New surprise album, why the decision to release that now?
I had promised people – it was probably a soft promise – but I had promised people the third installment of my trilogy on November 4th, 2019. Obviously, that didn’t come true so I wanted to stick to that date in some way. I was really aiming for it, I was like, “This year I’m going to put out something on November 4th.” It gave me a deadline to really want to put out anything I could actually finish. It turned out I couldn’t finish my Hip-Hop project because I couldn’t get to Canada; I couldn’t mix the record properly with Factor (Chandelier). It’s a complicated album.
Here in New Haven, I had been recording these guitar songs in June of 2020 at a studio. Over the course of a year and a half, this is what came out. Last month I got really serious about the final touches and this incredible musician named Baz that I met out in L.A., mixed it and helped me really polish it. FilthyBroke’s MJC mastered it and did a great job. So here we go, I put it out literally two days after it was mastered.
We’ve talked before about it; you’re widely regarded as an emcee but it all boils down to you being a musician. You’ve told me that before. What was the inspiration to create an album in this format, full of guitar-driven tracks?
I think it was first the nostalgia of pandemic. I feel like when I was in lockdown I got extremely nostalgic for a time when I was first creating, first learning my guitar. Like first listening to Nirvana and trying to learn those songs. Things like that and that was a big influence on these songs. I started making songs like this that I think I would have liked when I was thirteen. That was kind of my nostalgic journey with this record. I had done this split with Pat The Bunny some years ago and it let me know that I could make a record that was mostly guitar-based and people would feel it and not pigeonhole me too much as just an emcee. A part of me kind of wanted to make a bigger version of what I started on my side of that split. I even went to the same recording engineer who recorded the split and I used a lot of the same musicians, and so it’s almost like it’s an extension of that split as well. To some people, it’s their favorite thing I ever did. I felt like it would be a good breather between my Hip Hop projects.
Your music is like a coin where you have one thing on one side and something on the other. But most of the time everything seems to just come together.
Yeah for sure.
This album seems really personal, and you leave yourself exposed a lot. Do you want to talk about that a bit?
Again it was kind of like, I felt this way when I was in prison as well, there was this extreme nostalgia and a time to really process. So this was a time being in lockdown, and honestly being alone during lockdown, I had a lot of time to process the grief that I had been swimming through over the last years. I had lost so many of my closest friends and I never really processed it. I went really hard with Sad Fat Luck and Sans Soleil and I felt like those records expressed different stages of grief, but this record to me is almost like an acceptance record. There’s a lot of acceptance of death, loss, and also of just the pain of existence. That’s what this record means to me.
At times I’ve viewed it as kind of a celebration of their lives and how you carry it with you in your heart.
Definitely. That’s why I ended the record on “Lucky To Know” because all of that made me and “thank you all.” It is a thank you record but not just to the people I’ve lost in my life or loves lost, it’s a thank you to the people who’ve been so patient with me over these years and supported me as well. That’s why I wanted to make it free, I wanted to make it easily accessible. That’s kind of my reasoning behind that.
Who are some of your favorite songwriters that inspired your guitar-oriented songs here or your guitar music?
Aimee Mann is one of my favorite songwriters. Silvio Rodriguez, who’s a Cuban Nueva trova artist from the late 60s. A lot of Nueva Trova is actually from Latin America which is the new troubadours. It’s that youth movement from the late 60s/70s. Roy Brown is another Puerto Rican Nueva Trova artist, Pablo Milanés; a lot of Latin American music. Also, the Smiths, Elliot Smith, and Neutral Milk Hotel. Those are all huge influences. And some of my friends like Pat The Bunny is also a huge influence on me.
You recently toured the country and even flew overseas, how was that experience this year?
It was interesting. I’ve got to say, when we started the tour with Dark Time Sunshine I was like, “This isn’t right, it just doesn’t feel right.” The timing, I don’t feel like people were ready to be at a show. I felt like when I was in NY, that was the first show, and it just felt distant. The crowd, these people who I know, would be in the pit screaming with me, they were just distant. I was like, “Wow, this may not be the right time to do this.” We book a tour 3 or 4 months out in advance and at the time it looked like things were going to change. We didn’t know about Delta variants, etc.
It came to a time when we said we’re not canceling because we need the work. It’s that tricky line where you have to decide whether you work or not. We’re not getting unemployment or any of that. Especially Onry (Ozzborn) needed the work. It was kind of a big thing for me, I can’t have my friend not working. It wasn’t an ideal situation but over time it just felt good to remind ourselves of our skill sets. Remind ourselves that people really appreciated it. By the time I got to the UK, I really thought the UK tour was going to be canceled. It was already canceled four times. I really didn’t expect to happen and by the time I got there and it actually happened, it was really liberating. It was actually a great experience.
It seems like you had a good amount of support.
Yeah! And it was a lot of kids who had maybe heard the split with Pat The Bunny back when they were 14 & 15 years old and now they’re 21. They’re coming up and they’re like, “I can’t believe I’m seeing you in real life.” It was really emotional. The whole tour was really emotional to me because I just felt like it never would have happened. It was my first time really touring the UK and overall I’m really glad it happened. Ceiling Demons is the group I toured with there were really accommodating and helped me feel cared for.
So you just released an album and you just finished a tour as well. Is there anything else going on for the rest of the year? What’s in store?
I started a new band. It’s called Codefendants and it’s me, my boy Sam from Get Dead, and Fat Mike from NOFX. We’re making some shit and that’s what I’m going to be focused on for a bit until I can get back to Canada and work on my final project as Ceschi.
With the album now available through multiple streaming platforms, Ceschi offers a track-by-track Haiku breakdown for This Guitar Was Stolen Along With Years Of Our Lives.
01. “Long Shot”
Take a chance on that
Which you expect you’ll fuck up
Keep moving forward
02. “Consider It A Win”
Today breathing is
Enough to keep me alive
But miss your danger
03. “Heaven At Your Fingertips (feat. Anonymous Inc)”
When you kissed his head
On a hospital death bed
Everything was clear
04. “Teach A Rat To Fish”
Court rooms and bullshit
Money grab games disguised as
morals and justice
05. “If I Woke Up”
There are days when it’s
Hard to face your past faces
Hope she can forgive
06. “2020 BC”
Human condition
Hegemony put us here
Domestication
07. “Nod Off”
It is difficult
To love something that hates you
And will never change
08. “Give Me An Inch (feat. Child Actor & Anonymous Inc)”
Silence can hurt more
Than one million slaps to face
Love can be slow death
09. “Reminders”
Reminder to keep
Eyes mind heart open this life
Everything will fade
10. “Lucky To Know”
loss and the mundane
painful and beautiful times
Have created me
Social Media