Tyler Ramsey

The former band of horses guitarist and solo songwriter discusses how home and heartache fed into New record for the morning.

- Matt Parker

In 2015, Tyler Ramsey should have been buzzing. Band Of Horses, in which he played lead guitar, were confirmed indie rock darlings and commercial successes – playing everywhere from Madison Square Garden to Glastonbury. And on the personal side, he had already married, moved to the beautiful North Carolina countryside and become the father to a baby girl. Parenthood has a habit of changing perspectives, though. Pining for his daughter, his wife and home (a former horse ranch just outside Asheville), what should have been a victory lap came to feel more like a prison sentence. Furthermore, it came to highlight the songwriter’s increasing unhappiness with his creative direction.

“It started shifting everything,” Tyler tells TG. “Because if I was leaving home [at that point] and not feeling satisfied then it wasn’t really balancing out… Time is so precious when you have a child. It changed everything for me. My outlook, you know: am I doing what I need to do to be a happy and creative person and a good example? It all shifted.”

It was on a day off in a Nashville hotel room that the feeling hit him like a tonne of bricks. Stuck in a place he didn’t want to be with only a guitar for company he penned A Dream Of Home – the first song that would make his recently-releasedalbum For The Morning.