Just months after it’s well-received release, Band of Horses are bringing Infinite Arms to Australia. Before they took to the stage in Sydney, WB sat down with Tyler Ramsey, lead guitarist,  to discuss the album, tour and band.

WB: How has the trip out to Australia been so far?

TR: It’s been great. We were here before and I remember having a blast. Melbourne was a lot of fun but we’ve been pretty busy this tour and haven’t really been exploring that much.

Infinite Arms; what does it mean to you?

What does it mean? Music I guess. I don’t know if there’s a whole meaning to the album, but it means that we get to tour a lot and play shows and see the world.

Ben’s (Bridwell, the band’s lead vocalist and chief songwriter) called Infinite Arms the first Band of Horses album because of all the lineup changes in the past. Do you see the current state of the band staying like this?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, we’ve already been this band for three years now. It feels great, we travel a lot together, we get along really well and still want to hang out with each other all the time. It feels like the right thing, like we’re all friends and can continue to do this for a long time.

How does the songwriting process work in the band? Having Ben as the only original member do you and others sometimes find it difficult?

No, he didn’t make it hard at all. I mean, this last go round it was a lot of sending songs back and forth through emails and just kind of going back and forth and we were all doing that. It just felt really kind of natural, and worked out really smoothly.

‘Older’ had Ryan (Monroe, the band’s keyboardist) on vocals. Do you see a more collaborative approach on future albums?

I think that’s the way things are kind of going, but I think it’s always going to be predominantly Ben because that’s really what Band of Horses is based on; his voice and that style. But I think right from the very start they had a couple of songs that were written by other band members. It doesn’t seem like it’s really necessarily a big change to have that going on.

So going back a bit, Everything All the Time saw some success in Sweden and Norway, and Cease to Begin also expanded the band into France and Denmark. Was there a particular focus there, or was it just odd luck?

We did a lot of touring over there so I think that really did help to be present and have people to be able to come see us and help spread the word that way. Our only intention was to play shows and I think it just happened kind of naturally.

You were invited by Bill (Reynold’s, bass player) to tour with the band, how do the two of you know each other?

I had met the guys at the studio that they were recording Cease to Begin at, and then Bill needed to get over to where they were living in South Carolina so I drove them down there, I think for a rehearsal or a show. We all ended up having a great time hanging out. Bill and I have been friends for something like 17 years. And once we got together Ben asked me to open a tour solo, and then maybe an hour later asked me if I would play guitar in the band.

In 2007 you toured solo, as well as joining the band during their set. Will we see any similar situations where your own project is partnered with Band of Horses on stage?

Yeah, I’ve done that recently. We did some European shows where I opened up, I think about six of them. Anytime it works out that I can do that and they want me to do it, it’s always a blast.

So before you were asked to join the band, had you seen or heard much of them before, and what were your initial impressions?

Bill had joined the band about four months before I did and I got to see them. I had seen them in my hometown of Asheville, they came through and played a show at this really great club called The Grey Eagle which was down the road from where I lived. I saw that show and loved it. My roommate at the time was a big fan, and I’d heard their album Everything All the Time. I definitely was a fan, and then I got to see Bill play with them which got me really excited, like a proud friend.

This was your first experience in the studio with the band. How did it differ from previous recordings?

A lot of the recordings I’ve done in the past have been mostly just me kind of steering things, trying to play a lot of different instruments, which I got to do as well in this setting. It’s more relaxed to have all my friends, and everyone’s got ideas. Seems like it flows a lot easier than if you’re just trying to steer everything yourself. You get kind of stuck sometimes, or lead yourself down the wrong path and not know it. But with everyone’s good tastes and opinions everything seemed to flow along pretty well.

What do you and the rest of the band tend to listen to when writing and recording?

There’s a lot of stuff that we have in common, I think we listened to a lot of weird stuff that didn’t really apply to what we were doing. Not that it’s weird but it was just coming from a different place. I remember we were listening to this Kid Cudi song a lot when we were in the studio and listening to a lot of The Band and a lot of Kinks was going on. Just random things, whatever someone was into at the time.

The album was in the top 20 for two weeks here in Australia, and hit number 7 on the US Billboard 200. Do you tend to try and ignore the charts or see it as reward for the band’s efforts?

Cool. I think the only time I heard about it was when it was 7, and that was right after it came out and I was really excited about it. But I don’t really even know where to look to find out that information. Also, it’s great to hear about but for me I enjoy recording and it’s fun to play shows and that kind of stuff is probably going to be really good for us, and maybe I’ll pay more attention to it now.

When did you first pick up the guitar?

I think I was 14. I started playing piano first when I was a little kid, like nine years old. I played piano for a long time then picked up the guitar a little bit later and got really into acoustic fingerstyle guitar kind of early on which was a little bit weird from what my friends were listening to. But I think maybe when I was in high school I got really deep into playing the guitar.

What were some of your favourite acts as a child?

I have an older brother and an older sister and they were both playing music around the house. My brother had a lot of classic rock like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, and he still listens to a lot of classic rock stuff. And that definitely influenced me but I think when I got into high school and started coming up with my own path musically, I remember the first bands I was into were The Replacements, R.E.M and Dinosaur Jr., and Hüsker Dü and stuff like that. That was when I started playing in garage bands and kind of messing around trying to imitate those people. I remember the band I was in was trying to sound like The Replacements and my friend’s band was trying to sound like Dinosaur Jr. So we were competing to see who could do the best job of imitating somebody else.

How does it feel playing on the same stage as some of the largest acts and in front of some legends like Bruce Springsteen?

Oh man, it’s scary. We had him show up when we played a festival in the States called Bonnaroo and he actually came and was standing by the monitor mixing boards for the last couple of songs of the set and luckily I didn’t realise that he was there. I think we got off stage a little bit earlier and heard that he was there to see us play so we got back on really fast and played a few more songs, and one of them was the ‘Evening Kitchen’ song that I have to sing on, so it was really, really scary to know that he was there. But he talked to us right afterwards and was the nicest guy, so cool. It’s kind of mind blowing to be meeting those kind of people.