Celia Ramsay is coming to the Freight with a fine new album, a stellar band, and a trove of classic jazz standards, as well as warm and witty originals about love lost, found, bungled, and enjoyed. “Brava!” says the website CD Baby, which praises the album and calls the originals “fresh and funny.” Celia sings with a clear, clean style reminiscent of Keely Smith and has a taste for music that capture the perspective of what she sardonically calls a “woman of a certain age” – dark and honest, silly and bawdy, sultry and sublime. Her band features several Freight favorites, with Tony Marcus on guitar, Patrice Haan on vocal harmonies, Jeff Sanford on sax and clarinet, and John Wiitala on bass.

Celia has been singing since she was a little girl and grew up with a passion for the traditional ballads of Scotland and for American pop and jazz of the 1930s and 40s. Both traditions, she says, lean heavily on songs about love and its trials, tribulations, and triumphs. She worked as a letterpress printer in her 20s, then started a winery with her husband in a garage. In her spare time, she sang in a bluegrass band and called contra dances. Now her kids are grown, and she’s recording albums, last year’s Songs of My Father’s People: Mostly Scottish Songs About Love, and the one whose release she’s celebrating tonight, I'll Just Lie About It. The show promises to be big fun – and that’s no lie.

Visit Celia Ramsay's website

Listen to a track from Celia Ramsay:

Photo by Graham Ramsay