A week has passed since the curtain came down on the 12th Annual Josie Music Awards, and Ray Ray Star is still coming down from Nashville. For the rocker who spent his early days jamming in basements in North Delta, British Columbia, walking into the Grand Ole Opry House on September 20 as an official nominee was the kind of night you do not simply shake off on the flight home. It stays with you.
Ray Ray was in the room as a nominee for Song of the Year – Rock Artist for his searing single “Ashes Next Door,” a raw, haunting track written from the scar rather than the surface. That alone is a remarkable feat. The Josie Music Awards are the largest independent music awards show in the world, and this year’s nominees were chosen from more than 100,000 submissions. To have your song singled out from that ocean of music, and to hear your name connected to it on one of the most hallowed stages in American music history, is a moment most artists only dream about.
And what a night it was to be part of. The Opry House was packed with independent artists, songwriters and legends, all celebrating the kind of music that wins hearts on merit rather than major-label muscle. The evening delivered showstopper after showstopper, including Tony Orlando accepting the Icon Award and performing “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” alongside the song’s writer, Larry Brown, a performance that brought the house to its feet three times. For an artist like Ray Ray, who has spent his life on stages around the world, sharing a night like that with his peers is its own kind of reward.
If Ray Ray seems especially buzzed on the experience, he has earned every bit of that natural high. The deeper story running through his music is more than sixteen years of sobriety and a life rebuilt around creativity, healing and hope. He has never been shy about where the credit belongs. Reflecting on his career in a hometown interview this summer, he put it plainly: “But it’s all because of being clean.” Nights like the one in Nashville are the payoff for that hard-won clarity, and he got to be fully present for every second of it.
That clarity has fueled a career few musicians could match for sheer range. Ray Ray is an internationally touring guitarist who has commanded stages around the world, a record producer and executive producer who has worked with a long list of bands and labels, and the Director of Marketing and Promotions for the NBC-aired Real Music Live. His devoted following also knows him as the Rockstar Psychic, whose intuitive gifts have made him one of the most fascinating figures on the scene today. These days, he splits his time between Vancouver and Los Angeles, and by his own account, he is still pleasantly astonished by the life he gets to live.
“Ashes Next Door” connects with listeners because it was lived first and written second, the same honesty that runs through songs like “Slow Motion Fall.” The Josie nomination was the industry’s way of confirming what his fans have known for a long time: this is an artist whose music carries every mile of his journey in its bones.
So yes, Ray Ray Star is recovering from the Josie Awards, and it is the best kind of recovery there is. The glow of Music City has not worn off yet, and it probably will not for a while. But anyone who knows him knows he will not be resting for long. The guitar is waiting, the next song is calling, and the road from a North Delta basement to the Grand Ole Opry House is far from finished.
The official website for Ray Ray Star may be found at https://www.rayraystar.com
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