Trio The Pines owes a lot to Iowa

The Pines, a trio of Midwestern musicians, includes two sons of guitarist extraordinaire Bo Ramsey, sidekick and tasteful electric guitarist, alongside acclaimed Iowa singer-songwriter Greg Brown.

The Pines will be starting their tour in Little Rock on Wednesday, opening for Texas band Israel Nash at Stickyz Rock 'n' Roll Chicken Shack.

Benson Ramsey and David Huckfelt began The Pines as a duo, with Alex Ramsey helping out on keyboards over the course of four albums until gradually becoming an official member.

"He always kind of played with us, but about five years ago he decided to do everything with us," says Benson Ramsey, six years older than his brother. "We've always gotten along, even on normal brother kind of stuff. We grew up around our dad and all the great Iowa musicians. That was our world -- a lot of folk and blues music.

"As far as me learning guitar from our dad, he's not real technical, but he showed me the chords and sort of let me take it from there on my own."

The Ramsey boys grew up in the Iowa City area, where their father and Brown still make their homes, in a musical orbit. Brown is married to Arkansas native Iris DeMent and Bo Ramsey is married to Brown's daughter, Pieta Brown. All have their own recording careers and sometimes contribute to each other's recordings or tours.

"I was playing in [my stepmother] Pieta's band for a while, trying to find myself, I guess you could say, and she suggested I go to Tucson, Ariz., where she had lived for a while," Benson Ramsey says. "So I did that, and that's where I met and began working with David, who's also from Iowa.

"That's what brought us together, that he was familiar with Iowa music -- folk and blues and songwriting are what brought us together."

The two men made a self-titled album for Iowa-based Trailer Records in 2004 and eventually came to the attention of Red House Records, a prestigious singer-songwriter folk-rock label in Minneapolis, which has gone on to release three albums by The Pines: Sparrows in the Bell in 2007, Tremelo in 2009 and Dark So Gold in 2012.

Ramsey and Huckfelt create a delicate blend of melancholy guitars and voices and the result owes much to another Minnesota musician, Bob Dylan, along with a more obscure influence, the late Nick Drake. Ramsey handles electric guitar duties and sings, while Huckfelt mainly plays acoustic guitar and sings.

The Pines now call Minneapolis home, even as they "spend a fair amount of time in Iowa," and Ramsey readily agrees that the legendary Midwestern winters might have something to do with the creative process that seemingly comes so easy to him and Huckfelt.

"We spend a lot of time indoors when things get extreme," he says. "When it gets dark at 4:30 p.m. and the cold gets pretty intense, it's certainly a factor in how we work on songs. But you get used to it and the cold doesn't really slow you down."

Ramsey and Huckfelt write together and separately, and record mostly their originals, although their first album contained the traditional "Careless Love," and the second had two covers: Mississippi John Hurt's "Spike Driver Blues" and Spider John Koerner's "The Skipper and His Wife."

"We recorded our next album in the spring and since then, we've been hibernating and enjoying the summer," Ramsey says. "We'll release it next year, and it will be all originals."

Ramsey says he is looking forward to his first foray into Arkansas and regrets that the group will just miss its opportunity to take in the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena-West Helena, which was held over the weekend.

The Pines have opened shows for Arcade Fire, Mavis Staples, Jolie Holland, The Holmes Brothers and Bon Iver, as well as for Greg Brown and Pieta Brown.

Style on 10/13/2015