Ray Scott LIVE with special guest Isaac Barrager @ TRS 21&OVER

1444 Main Street,Springfield OR 97477

19 August, 2022

Description

Hey all Ray Scott fans, Twisted River Saloon is excited to have Ray Scott on stage in the PNW! Please get yourself a ticket and come on out for a great night of music and dancing. Isaac Barrager will be opening up to get things started. You don't want to miss this! See ya'll at the Saloon. BIOGRAPHY Somewhere along the way, country music went and got itself lost. These days, we’ve gotten to a point where, more often than not, you can’t tell the difference between a country music singer and a bubblegum, sugar pop, TikTok kid. Unless you’re listening to Ray Scott. From the moment you press play on Cover the Earth, Scott’s 9th release overall, that deep baritone voice and those whiskey brown, rich guitar tones reach right through the speakers and damn near slap you in the face. The fact remains, if you’re looking for solid country music, this is the way it’s done. While Ray Scott records rarely come with much surprise, Ray takes a few new shots on Cover the Earth. It’s not that he strays very far from his top dead center. Hell, with a voice like his and the lyrics he writes, anything Ray does is going to be country. That said, Cover the Earth has a few new bullets in the gun and a little more fuzz than anything he’s done in the past. “I wasn't just inspired by old classic country music. Obviously, that was a big part of it but growing up when I did, all that seventies and eighties rock was all around and there was a time I lived on a steady diet of that. “For this album, I wanted to stretch out a little bit. Like the song “Old Ways” I was hearing that as almost a Tom Petty feeling type thing. In a lot of these songs, you’ll hear a little bit of steel going on here and there, but it's not dominated by steel guitar like a lot of my stuff in the past. It’s pretty much electric driven and I tried to keep it pretty sparse. I want those parts to stand on their own and not be so filled up with stuff.” As much as Scott stretches his legs trying out a few new things, he still rides knee deep in the center of his self-carved lane. Still, if ever Scott had a gateway album to invite new fans in, Cover the Earth is it. Never losing his identity, songs like “Old Memory” and “Slow Dance” ring of that eponymous 90’s country sound and “Smilin’ on My Way Out of Town” is as much a George Strait song as it gets without being King George himself. As the pandemic of 2020 gave Ray the time to do nothing but focus on songwriting, he did so in spades thus giving him an abundance of songs to choose from. Consequently, Cover the Earth clocks in at a solid twelve songs, a full album as opposed to the EP route he has been traveling as of late. Of those dozen songs, the bulk were written solely by Scott. This was due, in part, to the pandemic’s strangling of songwriting get-togethers but more because that’s the direction he’d been drifting for a few years now. “Although I do enjoy co-writing some, over the last few years, I’ve been writing more and more alone. This past year, that approach proved itself pretty damned vital. It wasn't like folks were getting together to write alot outside of quarantine, and I'm not much of a Skype/Zoom kinda guy. The ability to be effective as a songwriter outside of the typical Nashville mold is pretty liberating, and it was a huge reason this album was born. There are only 4 co-writes out of the 12 tracks, so I get most of the blame here. As they say, live and die by your own sword.” Additionally, the time at home provided Ray with another opportunity he had never done before. Back when the world went and lit itself on fire, Scott had to pivot harder and faster than most. Having just released his EP Nowhere Near Done three weeks before the pandemic hit, as the lockdown stretched on with no real clarity on the future, Ray had to find a way not only to promote the EP but to earn a living as all of his tour dates went up in smoke. His solution? RAY-VE IN THE CAVE, a weekly livestream concert where he and guitarist Joe Cook would hang out with their guitars, a beverage or two and play a (mostly) all request concert. While he wasn’t the only artist to dip his toes into the livestream waters, he was one of the best as evidenced by being named as one of Pollstar’s Top 50 Livestreams (all genre). Better yet, it kept Nowhere Near Done alive to the point it was named one American Songwriter’s Top Albums of the Year for 2020. In addition to keeping him playing and connected with his fans, the combination of that weekly livestream along with someone digging up some old MySpace links helped shape Cover the Earth. “There were some songs that people kept wanting to hear as we played each week, so I sort of let that lead my decision to record some of these songs. “Forgivin’ Him” is one in particular. I wrote that years ago and it was supposed to go towards my second album, but I ended up leaving the label before it was ever released. It was one of these old songs that still existed out on an old ReverbNation link from MySpace. That's how far back it went! Some fans on the livestream would ask for it, so I played it a handful of times. Then when I’d play it, they continued to ask for it over and over.” Ultimately Cover the Earth is everything you’ve ever expected from Ray Scott mixed with a few new things for everyone to try. Not looking to put on a new face or play anybody’s BS game, simply put, Ray wanted to try stretch his legs a bit and evolve a little bit while staying inherently loyal to the center of who he is. “I didn't go into the studio with the intent to make it sound like a stone-cold country album. I wanted to show people that we can do a little bit more than that. I wanted to go in and give these songs the treatment I felt like they not only commanded but deserved. I just wanted have fun with this and try some new things and maybe attract attention of some folks who may not have looked my way before this.”