When once local but now internationally known singer-songwriter Kramies decided it was time to start work on a new album, he ran into a roadblock. He just couldn’t think of what he had left to say.
“In 2021 and 2022, I had seen the most success I could have imagined at the time,” he says one afternoon from Magnetic North in Beachwood, the studio where he did most tracking and vocals. His new album, Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour, arrives on Oct. 10. “Luckily, I fall in the middle where it’s very safe. I’ve fallen into this safe friend zone with the music business. It allows me to continually do this and continually get press and recognition. In 2022, that album was in every European magazine and beyond. When it was done, I was so relieved and had a sense of closure and freedom. I did over 50 interviews, and I thought I was done and could walk away, not from music but from that album feeling good.”
From 2013 on, Kramies had released new music non-stop.
“In 2022, I couldn’t see it getting any bigger or better,” he says. “I went into a weird space where it was a void. It was hard to pull new songs out. I was trying to write but I was in this place where I couldn’t dig stuff out of me. I was working on one song with [producer] Mario [McNulty] and doing the vocals here with [Magnetic North owner] Chris Keffer. I was putting so much pressure on myself. I couldn’t see the purpose of things. In the past Everything I write has a story. I see myself more as a Tolkien or a Charles Dickens who writes these soundtrack books.”
As he was working on “Social Light,” he wondered if it was too soon but he released the single, and it received an overwhelming amount of positive reaction from fans and critics alike.
“I thought that was cool, but I was still so lost,” Kramies says. “For this new album, I had to put myself into the character. Billboard and all these magazines had coined me the ‘American Dream Pop Troubadour.’ So I took on this character, and I fell out of love with the chase. This whole journey. I was releasing records over and over.”
That journey began when Kramies was still a teenager. He began playing shows with his shoegazer band Pot Roast. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the group played Flash Gordon’s, a now defunct venue that Kramies, who grew up in Fairview Park, describes as a “glam metal dive bar.” It was a formative experience.
After Pot Roast, Kramies joined a band called Grooveyard that featured Jerry Becker, who would go to join the San Francisco pop-rock band Train.
Then, he started writing his own Bowie-inspired songs.
He moved to Hudson and recorded a solo album at an old church there. With local musician Matt Cassidy, Kramies brought the album to life; it came out under the band name Channel. That band lasted until 1998. At that point, Kramies was using large amounts of drugs and had developed an addiction that he says impaired his ability to develop and mature as an artist. So in 2004, he decided to get sober and eventually signed a solo deal with Hidden Shoal, an Australian label with world-wide distribution. He’s had a long string of releases and tours since sobriety and has become well known for his unique songwriting and voice.
In 2022, he released a self-titled album featuring Tyler Ramsey (Band of Horses), Patrick Carney (Black Keys), Jerry Becker (Train), and Jason Lytle (Grandaddy) and followed it with “Ohio I’ll Be Fine,” a track featuring Becker on keys, guitar and strings as well as Counting Crows drummer Jim Bogios. In 2022, he also recorded music for the soundtrack to a French book and went back to France for his first book tour.
The songs on Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour have a lushness to them that makes it sound like a full orchestra backed Kramies on the album. That’s not the case.
“I played 90 percent of everything on this album. From pianos to guitars and all the synths and of course all the vocals,” Kramies says. “For some of the orchestral stuff, my guitar player back in Colorado plays guitar with a wrench and creates ambient sounds. The majority is me. Chris [Keffer] has done a lot of work fixing stuff. Mario changed a lot of it because of the level of professionalism. I worked with big names before but from an indie upbringing. Mario is beyond that.”
One of the album highlights, “Hollywood Signs,” references several real-life moments from Kramies’s past.
“One time, I recall, I was in the back seat of a convertible out of my mind on drugs driving up the pacific coast highway and I remember driving to Big Sur, and the radio was loud and there were surfers when I looked down at the ocean, and that was the image,” he explains. “I must have been 26 or 27 years old. London was also a memory in that song, and I took pieces and parts.”
In addition, Kramies recorded an acoustic version of Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour at Wilco’s studio the Loft. That version will arrive later this year.
“I’m gonna sit until spring and see what the momentum is,” he says. “I love being at home. Right now, I’m watching Only Murders in the Building, and I just can’t imagine going on the road and missing it.”
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