After his stint with the garage band, Kid continued to play a variety of gigs, but he points to his joining local harmonica ace Harman, as his big break. “That’s where I got my education. On the job training. From San Diego to Santa Barbara, six or seven nights a week, four sets a night! There was no job we wouldn’t take. We were opening for all the punk bands: X, Oingo Boingo, The Blasters, The Plimsouls. We were the blues guys with the sharkskin suits.”

He stayed with James Harman for seven memorable years, including several alongside Hollywood Fats (who tragically passed away in 1986). He recorded his highly regarded debut album, Two Hands One Heart for Black Magic Records in 1990. After making the guitar his life for over twenty years, Kid tired of the pressures and insecurities of the road. He married, started a family and, for the most part, removed himself from the business that had become such a huge part of his life. “While I worked other jobs and tried hard to be a good father, I’d occasionally hear records like Floyd’s “Hey Bartender” and it would remind me of the power of the music. Still, for the longest time I wasn’t sure I could go back to it full time.”

He kept his hand in music by playing occasionally as fill-in guitarist with bands at L.A. gigs. One was with harpist Lester Butler, a friend of Hollywood Fats. “I had to bow out of Lester’s band, The Red Devils because they started working so much I couldn’t get to my day job on time in the morning. One day I heard they were hanging out with Mick Jagger and had gotten a record deal…while I was dying on the job. One day I woke up and said ‘enough’s enough!”

Kid began doing more local gigs and made a record with hip vocalist Lynwood Slim called Too Small To Dance under the name The Big Rhythm Combo in 1994. The following year he got the call from Kim Wilson that changed his life radically. Though he was uncertain what challenges the role of guitarist for the Fabulous Thunderbirds would present, he took a deep breath and plunged ahead, joining a lineup that eventually comprised Wilson and Harman alumni Richard Innes, Gene Taylor and Willie J. Campbell.

Reviewing his 1999 eponymous CD for Evidence Records, the Los Angeles Times noted, “There are few guitarists in the country as thoroughly schooled in the tradition of the blues and fewer still who are willing to employ that tradition as an engine for their playing instead of a brake pad…” He’s also released West Coast House Party in 2001 and Greasy Kid Stuff in 2001.

For Kid Ramos, getting the chance to work with Floyd Dixon brings his career full circle. “I fell in love with the blues when I was just a kid. I went from admiring songs and records of Floyd’s to performing that material in James Harman’s bands and later in the other groups I worked with. From that first garage band all through the years with the T-Birds, Floyd Dixon has been a beacon, shining a light for me. He represents what’s instinctive, natural and inspiring—the best of the blues. That’s why it’s such an honor to get the chance to support him and let him do what he does best—be Floyd Dixon.”