Rick Ramos

Hometown(s): Richmond, California/ Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

Talent:  Artist Management, Song Writer, Music and Video Producer, Guitar/Cuban Tres guitar and Vocals.

Bio:  Rick Ramos has been a professional musician all his life. He started playing guitar at 7 and performing at 12. At 16 he won a scholarship to the Stan Kenton Music Camp in Northern California. He joined the Richmond High Jazz band shortly after and performed and won various High School Jazz Band Competitions in California and Nevada.

Third Rail and Natural Impulse

In 1973 he put a band together with the lead horn players from the jazz band which became the Third Rail band (1973 to 1975) then Natural Impulse Band (NIB) (1976 to 1978) and performed as the guitarist with Lady Bianca Thornton through 1978.

Origins of the GTS Band

Rick took a break from music until 1983 when he met T.W. Johnson Jr. and rekindled his relationship with members of Natural Impulse as the GTS band (Got the Soul). The band became a popular R and B revue playing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Rick also played a short time with Little Bruce and the Billionaires where he met lead Vocalist Tommy Nunnelly. In addition, he played about a year with the PHD’s of Pittsburg California.

Ricky Rayband and the Shades

Lou’s Blues club in SF approached Rick with an offer to put together and small R and B act for the club on Saturdays from 12-3pm. It was great fun and Rick grabbed Ramiro Amador (Malo) and Linda Wiggins (Keyboards) to develop a concept around his Ricky Rayband persona.

Latin Soul Project

In 2004, Rick began writing Latin music and traveled to Cuba where he studied Cuban tres guitar from COTO (Juan de la Cruz Antomarchi Padilla) in Havana. He returned from Cuba to play guitar and tres guitar with Grammy Award winning trumpet player, Julius Melendez. This experienced supported him to create new music that was used on the Latin Soul Project CD (a mix of GTS and Latin Musicians) which resulted in a tour to Paris and Amsterdam.

Rick with Coto

This experienced inspired Rick  to create new music that was used on the Latin Soul Project CD (a mix of GTS and Latin Musicians) which resulted in a tour to Paris and Amsterdam. He produced a cd with 12 songs ranging from Blues to Salsa.

New Music-New Direction

During the Covid Pandemic with the lack of opportunities to perform, Rick studied recording and producing and began to develop jingles for Radio and Video commercials. He and his new writing partner Tom Fuglestad (see his bio) began writing music together to support the music for these projects.

“GTS is going back to our roots and taking original music from Third Rail, Natural Impulse and Latin Soul project, along with new music we just developed, and we are putting together an original show. We will keep doing the R and B revue when it is requested but we have lots of music to share with our community”

In January 2022, Rick signed a two-year record deal with Epsilon Records in the UK to release some of his original music from Natural Impulse.  He is working on a tour to the UK for 2023.