Nashville has its own royalty, its own rules and its own sacred ground. It is a town that has heard every kind of guitar player there is and is not easily impressed by one more. On September 20, a rock guitarist who started out in the basements of North Delta, British Columbia, walked into the Grand Ole Opry House as an official nominee, and Music City made room for him.
Ray Ray Star came to the 12th Annual Josie Music Awards nominated for Song of the Year – Rock Artist for his single “Ashes Next Door.” The Josies are the largest independent music awards show in the world, and this year’s nominees were drawn from more than 100,000 submissions. His song stood in a field of thirteen. For an independent rock artist, there are few bigger rooms to be recognized in, and there is no more storied one.
The distance he traveled to get there is worth measuring. He joined his first band, Lethal Virus, as a guitarist at fourteen, a kid in a Canadian suburb with an instrument and a plan to be a rock star. The road from those basements to the Opry House runs through a lot of clubs, a lot of countries and a lot of years. Very few who start down it ever see the inside of that building with their name on the program.
There is something fitting about a rocker being honored in the house that country built. The two traditions have always been closer than their fans like to admit. Both are built on a guitar, a handful of chords and the nerve to tell the truth in three or four minutes. Nashville honors songs above all else, and it is telling that Ray Ray’s nomination came in a songwriting category. The town did not recognize a look or an attitude. It recognized a song.
He did not treat the trip as a quick stop for a ceremony. He made a pilgrimage of it. He went to RCA Studio B, the Music Row room where Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and Dolly Parton made records that changed popular music. For a rock guitarist, Studio B is not foreign territory. A good share of rock and roll’s foundation was poured in that room, and standing in it is a reminder that the wall between the genres was never very high.
He also paid a visit to Ernest Tubb’s tour bus. Tubb, the Texas Troubadour, is credited with helping bring the electric guitar to the Opry stage, which makes him an ancestor to every player who has plugged in since. Ray Ray is an internationally touring guitarist who knows what it is to live between one stage and the next. One road musician standing at the bus of another, decades apart, is its own kind of handshake.
Nashville also suits the other side of him. Ray Ray is a record producer and executive producer, and the Director of Marketing and Promotions for the NBC-aired Real Music Live. He understands how the business behind the music works, and no city on earth takes that business more seriously. With “Ashes Next Door” now followed by “Slow Motion Fall,” featuring Matt Pascale, he arrived with a body of new work and the know-how to carry it forward.
Rock musicians have been coming to Nashville for years, looking for the thing the town does better than anywhere else: respect for the song and for the people who write and play it. Ray Ray Star went looking for it too, with a guitar on his back and a nomination in his pocket. By every sign, he found a town that speaks his language. The rocker went to Music City and discovered it was his kind of place.
The official website for Ray Ray Star may be found at https://www.rayraystar.com
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