On August 13, Ray performed at the Pennysaver Amphitheater in Farmingville on Long Island, where he shared the stage with fellow country singers Joel Crouse and Sam Hunt. “That was great. It was a lot of fun,” he said.
His breakthrough radio single “Kiss You In The Morning” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Airplay charts. “Two buddies of mine wrote it and we listened to songs, and the demo stood out to me. I like the way the melody was flowing, so we set it aside and we kept going back to that one. We decided to record it as one of the first five songs that we cut,” Ray said.
For Ray, the song selection process for the album was “tough.” “I wrote every day for the record, and Nashville has some of the best songwriters in town, so I wanted to make the best record I could possibly make,” he said. “I just wanted to make a well-rounded record, that has different songs on there, and not everything was the same. I wanted to make something that people could listen to at any moment.”
He listed the closing track, “Somewhere South,” as his personal favorite song on the album. He listed country queen Reba McEntire as his dream female duet choice in music. In his spare time, Ray enjoys doing laundry and “trying to get to the lake at some point.”
Ray grew up listening to a lot of classic country, which included such artists as Porter Wagoner, Earl Thomas Conley, Waylon Jennings and Loretta Lynn. “My dad was the one that turned me to John Mellencamp, Bob Seger and Lynyrd Skynyrd,” he said.
“Stay grounded and keep a great team of people around you, and play any place that you could play because you never know that one place might be the one that changes your whole path,” he said, sharing his advice for aspiring singers and songwriters.
Ray defined the word success as “doing what you love for a living.”
For more information on rising country singer Michael Ray and his new album, check out his official homepage.
