So where did the album's mellow alt.country sound come from? Ramos admits that it's partly a case of growing older, entering a more reflective phase of life, but Race Horse also evokes artists that she's dug for years like Neil Young and Billy Bragg. "I worked for years as a vinyl DJ in those downtown clubs," Holly reminds me. "I became kind of a musicologist – plus all those old 50s and 60s singles, I know them all. I wish there was a way to make a living just doing that; I know so much obscure music…."
Holly's wide-ranging musical passions helped inspired her pal Jesse Malin to evolve from D Generation garage-rock vocalist to Bruce Springsteen acolyte; she and Malin co-wrote two songs for his most recent album Glitter in the Gutter. The process of pulling together her own solo debut album took longer, though. Ramos admits she's not a disciplined songwriter – the tracks on Race Horse accumulated over a few years, a melodic line here, a fragment of lyric there. "I'm rushing out the door, late to work, and something pops into my head so I run over to the answering machine and stick in on there…eventually my husband says the answering machine's full and I'd better get some of those off there." She rolls her eyes.
Eventually the scraps got worked into full songs; to fill out the CD, she wrote three more songs, "Evangeline," "Sick of Goodbye," and "Better Yet," which ironically turned out to be some of the album's strongest tracks. My personal favorite is "Better Yet," a series of spunky self-assertions with the cryptic quality of Zen koans – "I'm gonna say what I said and mean what I meant / I'm gonna be where I am and been where I went / I'm gonna do what I do and get what I get / I'm gonna love you / Better yet." Sung over a simple acoustic guitar, with just the faintest counterpoint of a distant lonely trumpet, it turns simplicity into a virtue. "We did that in one take, you know that?" she says proudly. "I like it when that happens – that rawness, that edge. I'm a big fan of mistakes and messes."
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