The Ramisco Maki Maki Rocking Horse is an alt-folk artist from the Scottish Highlands with a taste for fuzzy americana inspired by the likes of Beck, Hank Williams, Jeffrey Lewis, AJJ, and the Violent Femmes.
Besides your usual hoedowns and such, live appearances include a one-day nine-stop tour of Glasgow (UK), a roadside attraction tour in the US and several spontaneous pop-up shows spanning parts of the UK, Canada and Europe.
Ramisco performed at the BBC Pacific Quay studio in 2012 for BBC Alba’s RAPAL TV show which aired on April 25th 2013. His song, Seas Air Do Chorra-Bhiod was named, “Gaelic Song of the Year 2012”. In Sept 2014, Ramisco performed at The 100 Club in London for the Living Indie TV Road to Santa Maria final, the show was broadcast live online via Living Indie TV.
Ramisco has been podcasted, blogcasted and broadcasted in several time zones, including the likes of BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Radio Nan Gaidheal, The Tom Robinson Show, The BBC Introducing Mixtape, Amazing Radio, Netsounds Unsigned, The Waiting Room Radio Show, Kowalskiy Scottish Music Blog, KA Radio, Insomnia Radio, Last Year’s Girl, Idiosyncratic Transmissions, Ralph’s Indie Show, The Justin Wayne Show, Air3Radio, MESi Radio, Houdi Don’t Blog, Jungle Indie Rock Blog, Nicorolla Musikblog, The Dadada, Scots Whay Hae, Curious Joe, Three From Leith and so on.
More notably, Danger Danger was picked as a Fresh Fav on Tom Robinson’s website Fresh On The Net on April 1st 2013 (http://bit.ly/2h2Qiye) and was later play-listed on the BBC Introducing Mixtape on BBC Radio 6 Music (http://bit.ly/2gRYs7O); The Shrinkin’ Railroad Shtomp was played by Baylen Leonard on his show, The Front Porch which was broadcast on Nov 9th 2013 (http://bit.ly/HPrSBv); And Ramisco performed an acoustic version of Under the Sky for Traxx Radio’s Top 50 of 2013 which was broadcast on the 2nd of Feb 2014. Furthermore, Tom Robinson play-listed Under the Sky on the BBC Introducing Mixtape (Sept 15th 2014), played it on The Tom Robinson Show (Sept 20th 2014) and featured it in the BBC Introducing ‘Best of 2014’ Mixtape (Dec 28th 2014). He’s since play-listed several other tracks by Ramisco including And We Will Dance and The Four Five Six.
Ramisco’s music has also been used on TV, Chew Chew was licensed for use on an Irish TV show called The Science Squad (Series 3 Episode 4) and Won't You Sleep was licensed for use on UK TV show Hollyoaks. His alter-ego also had a song used in a US broadband advert in late 2015. Ramisco has since been commissioned to write and record exclusive tracks for the XA music library.
On Aug 23rd 2015, Ramisco debuted the lead track from his Possessed by the Gods of Cowbell Oblongata EP called And We Will Dance on Jim Gellatly’s Amazing Radio show, which was played again on Sept 6th 2015; featured on Radio Kaos Caribou (Aug 27th 2015); playlisted for The First 45 on Sine FM (Sept 4th 2015); playlisted on The Roddy Hart Show on BBC Radio Scotland (Sept 14th 2015) and included in the BBC Introducing Mixtape on BBC Radio 6 Music (Sept 21st 2015). Holy Barnacles from the same EP was debuted on Baylen Leonard’s Amazing Radio show, The Front Porch (Sept 5th 2015).
Radio Kaos Caribou broadcasted an exclusive 2-hour audio biography of The Ramisco Maki Maki Rocking Horse on Sept 30th 2015, it was named the Hoofography and can be heard at http://bit.ly/2h1BWg3.
The indie music blog, Ralph’s Life interviewed Ramisco to coincide with the broadcast of the Hoofography and the interview (http://bit.ly/2h1JrDz) received over 3000 hits during the initial broadcast of the show.
Ramisco’s 4th record, Possessed by the Gods of Cowbell Oblongata, was released on Nov 13th, 2015 and received a healthy amount of praise including a write-up in the JockNRoll music blog (http://bit.ly/1Otgvzb).
June 8th 2016 marked the release of Ramisco’s first 7” single, And We Will Dance, which was a very limited run featuring two different hand coloured designs featuring, Holy Barnacles, on the b-side. The single sold out within the day.
The following day Ramisco threw down a special one-man-band performance at the Pentahotel in Inverness as part of the XpoNorth creative industries festival. Besides the usual banjo and guitar, his setup included a kids kick drum, cymbal and tambourine fitted with homemade trigger pads which were connected to an Alesis I/O trigger module, an Akai XR20 drum machine and a Yamaha SU10 sampler.
And as one of the artists on the XpoNorth lineup, the Buzz Project kindly invited Ramisco to perform a song on their recording studio bus, the result of the session can be found here on YouTube - http://bit.ly/2h1F1wo.
Ramisco was booked for the Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival on August 5th 2016 and to support Chuck Mosley (Faith No More / Bad Brains) on September 25th 2016, however, due to ill health Ramisco was forced to cancel these gigs.
After a brief hiatus, Ramisco supported Jeffrey Lewis and The Burning Hell at the Lochcarron Treehouse in Lochcarron on September 9th, 2017. Fun fact: Ramisco helped build the Lochcarron Treehouse in 2011 alongside The Great Treehouse Challenge team and other local volunteers.
This was followed by a support slot for Spring Break at Mad Hatter’s (Hootenanny’s) in Inverness for their, ‘Tropicaledonia’, album launch party on April 14th, 2018. Watch Ramisco perform The Buckfast Song on YouTube http://bit.ly/rmm-tbs-mh.
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One Zero One Zero One Zero (2010), Fajita’s Basement (2011), Squawk! (2013), Possessed by the Gods of Cowbell Oblongata (2015) and And We Will Dance (2016).
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NOTABLE QUOTABLES
“pleasingly eccentric and imaginative alternative folk from the Highlands of Scotland” - Roddy Hart (BBC Radio Scotland)
“rollicking great noise” - Tom Robinson (BBC Radio 6 Music)
“if you hang out with The Ramisco Maki Maki Rocking Horse you’ll have an amazing time and you’ll probably get arrested” - Baylen Leonard (Amazing Radio / BBC Radio 2)
“the bastard offspring of the Violent Femmes and Beck” - Toby Stainton (Inverness Gigs)
“a bluegrass-loving, equine-obsessed alt-country rocker from the Scottish Highlands, with an immaculate line in Deep South patois” - Niels Footman (Living Indie TV)
“a true one off” - Alistair Braidwood (Scots Whay Hae)
“pretty feckin’ spectacular” - Clif (The Dadada Music Blog)
“rollocking americana” - Lisa-Marie Ferla (Last Year’s Girl)
PAST LIFE
Prior to becoming The Horse, Ray McCartney was a founding member, songwriter, performer and producer of The Kazoo Funk Orchestra. He performed as Little Beard before leaving the collective for brain surgery only weeks after recording a performance for BBC Alba’s RAPAL TV show late 2008. Ray was also the founding member / songwriter and frontman of El Jugador until the band split in 2005.
