Ted Ramirez & The Santa Cruz River Band – Hard Road Traveling: Songs For Heros, Hobos, Winners and Losers

Texas troubadours may be the best known, but the troubadour tradition runs all along the U.S.-Mexico border, and thrives particularly in the tiny towns, villages and ranching communities that dot the Arizona borderlands. In many such communities, a single troubadour emerges as the most popular source of the traditional corridos that document the regions tall tales and historic vignettes, and of original compositions depicting modern events.

In Tucson, the city council named one: Ted Ramirez, Tucsons Official Troubadour. Ramirez descends from a family that has lived in and near Tucson since it belonged to Spain. Hard Road Traveling introduces his music to the rest of the world.

Ramirez writes and sings popular music, as in music of the people and the places they call home. This is not Calexicos post-modern desert, but the ancient one, and the experience of it that every Tucsonan shares.

Originals such as Red-Tailed Hawk and Across The Border are interspersed with two of the borderlands greatest hits, La Llorona and El Pastor, along with covers of Tom Paxtons Ramblin Boy and the Billy Bragg/Woody Guthrie song Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key. The last of those isnt as out-of-place as it might seem; Guthrie, after all, was writing popular folk songs.

Throughout the record, the all-acoustic picking is terrific. Ramirez, who teaches guitar, is accompanied by bassist Arthur Miscione and multi-instrumentalist Gil Brown on steel string guitar, mandolin, banjo and harmonica. Sharing vocals are two representatives of a Tucson family that never seems to sing a note wrong: Michael and Bobby Ronstadt.