David Ragsdale

Career After college, Ragsdale moved to Nashville to pursue a music career, and eventually joined country music singer Louise Mandrell on tour for four years in the late 1980s. In January 1987, Mandrell performed with her band in New York City on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. During this visit, Ragsdale stayed with a hometown friend who was working in New York, and the friend played for him the 1986 Kansas album Power. Ragsdale felt that the album was missing violin sounds, so he arranged a violin part and made a new recording with his own violin mixed in. Kansas member Phil Ehart heard a cassette tape of the recording and phoned Ragsdale to praise it, but Ehart did not ask Ragsdale to join the band at that time.

Ragsdale left Mandrell's tour in 1989 and moved to Los Angeles where he played rock music. Ehart phoned him there in early 1991, inviting him to record violin with the band at a studio in Atlanta. After a few weeks of sessions, the band welcomed Ragsdale as a full member, to begin touring that summer. ) He moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, and played in rock theater shows.

Musical style In his youth, Ragsdale was inspired by gypsy jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli as well as electric jazz violinists Jean-Luc Ponty and Jerry Goodman. Robby Steinhardt of Kansas was a major influence on Ragsdale. He often plays a Steinberger electric guitar. One experimental violin he played was a prototype headless electric model handcrafted in graphite composite by Ned Steinberger; in September 1991 this "priceless one-of-a-kind" prototype was stolen from Ragsdale's backstage dressing room at Showcase in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Discography

Solo David and Goliath – (Renaissance Records, 1997)

With Kansas Live at the Whisky – (1992) The Kansas Boxed Set – (1994) on the new track "Wheels" Freaks of Nature – (1995) There's Know Place Like Home – (2009) The Prelude Implicit – (2016) The Absence of Presence – (2020)

Guest The Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream – "Disarm" and "Luna" (1993) Motherland: Peace 4 Me – "Y" (1994) Kerry Livgren and Corps de Pneuma: When Things Get Electric – (1995) Queensrÿche: Hear in the Now Frontier – (1997) (on "Sign of the Times") Salem Hill: The Robbery of Murder (1998) John Elefante: On My Way to the Sun – (2013) (on "This Is How the Story Goes") Seventh Key: I Will Survive - (2013) (on "Sea of Dreams" and "What Love's Supposed To Be") Glass Hammer: Ode to Echo (2014) Spock's Beard: The Oblivion Particle (2015)