Interview: Boo Ray is a bob cat on the prowl

There’s no conceivable way to know how much pain you’ll endure when you walk out that front door. But you must. You’ll lace up your boots, slip on your weathered corduroy jacket and set your gaze upon the dusty trail suffocating beneath the sun’s burning rays. The wilderness rekindles your spirit, at first, but that’s predictably short-lived. There will come a time that you’ll feel utterly aimless and unfulfilled and probably wander off into the forest to seek out some numbing agent. That’s standard fare for such a pilgrimage. Americana music-man Boo Ray‘s own quest for truth is speckled with side-winding detours dating back at least 20 or so years; 2006 was a watershed moment as he mounted a west-bound trip to sunny Los Angeles for artistic renewal and freedom.

Hurt and addiction and tears rattled his ribcage, often leaving him for dead by the side of the road (in metaphorical terms, of course), and against his better judgement, his vices soothed him into a catatonic state. But now standing triumphantly in the light, the warmth wrapping his skin, Ray calls upon financial struggle, depression, addiction, all the weary layers of living for his brand new record, Tennessee Alabama Fireworks. “My life’s been shot through with it,” he writes to B-Sides & Badlands over email of the album’s skeletal baseboards of anguish an “emotional debt,” as he parses with “We Ain’t Got the Good.” In turn, he learned to be more present in the here and now, most resoundingly felt with “Outrun the Wind,” the record’s most encouraging set-piece.

“You’re not out of the woods but you’re in the neighborhood / You might of drawn the short straw but you did the best you could,” he wipes the flood of tears away from our eyes. Ray has a way of cutting right to the heart, opening up your emotions in a way few others can or are even willing to do. He continues, warbling in his gentle, off-kilter tenor, “There’s no way you could’ve known it’d hurt so bad hurt so bad / You didn’t mean to make anyone sad no one’s mad / You just need to make it through one more night / Through the night you’re gonna be alright…”

That’s just barely scratching the surface of his story, one as indebted to heartbreak as it is his innately victorious spirit. He’s clawed his way through valleys of unimaginable darkness, and he’s got the scars to prove it, riding along side an ostentatious display of body ink. There’s a juxtaposition of pain and pleasure at work just below the surface, and through his work, you’ll feel both in equal measure. “I think that makes me part of a real big group of people who’ve had terrible struggles with their families, their loved ones and/or their own interconnected alcoholism, addiction, poverty and depression,” he says. “I hadn’t been to a dentist in at least seven years until a couple of years ago when I had healthcare for ten months. I got my front teeth fixed and got my gold tooth as a symbol of self-care, because I couldn’t afford any kind of healthcare for a long time. The gold tooth didn’t cost any more than regular.”

Addiction (among numerous other toxins) has poisoned nearly every corner of the country, and so Ray’s new record is an urgent, hyper-vigilant reflection of past, present and future traumas. “It’s off the charts and incalculable right now, I’d think,” he says. “By the time you consider the amount of disfunction caused by alcoholism and addiction in terms of the prison population, population of people living in poverty, unemployment, failed jobs, failed marriages, broken homes, broken relationships and childhood trauma, it’s pretty overwhelming.”

“Outrun the Wind,” then, is a soothing ointment, of sorts, to alleviate the stress and offer the finest form of escape. That solace feeds into the entire record and prompts the listener to both find their flaws and dissolve them into the ether. “I’d been sitting on [‘Outrun the Wild’] for a while, not able to wrap it up,” he remembers. That’s when he enlisted songwriter Will Rambeaux (Jo Dee Messina, Blake Shelton) to flesh out the lyrics and core musical drive, oiling up the rivets and re-upping the gasoline tank. “Will had the idea to really accentuate that loping 6/8 time feel with the melody like that. [This song] is a lullaby ⏤ speaking to anyone in a critical care moment. Weather it’s great physical trauma, devastating emotional trauma, the death of a loved one, the first few nights of detoxing off of drugs or alcohol, an emotional breakdown or suicide attempt, there’s some relief in wholeheartedly committing to the present. Doing the spiritual, mental, emotional math always leads to that place, because that is really all there actually is.”

Within the song’s rippling undercurrent, Ray drew upon Sweetback’s “Softly Softly,” extracted from their 1996 self-titled long-player, for some musical fusion. “There’s a short staccato note on the snare hit [in that song], and the tempo’s just right so it sounds like a heart monitor in a hospital,” he describes. “It’s incredibly dramatic and real effective. So, I was definitely thinking in terms of tempo and keeping in mind that a human heart beat is about 100 bpm and using those chord stabs real back on the beat to make it real dramatic.”

Tennessee Alabama Fireworks [produced by Noah Shain (Nikki Lane, Dead Sara, Cody Simpson) at Nashville’s Welcome to 1979 studio] leans comfortably into flashy theatrics, from the cement-pressed “Gone Back Down to Georgia” to the cool feathering of instrumental fixture “Dee Elle” to the soCal rollick of bookender “Skin & Ink.” And Ray has never felt more at home, flipping guitar licks over classic rock grooves that are caked in thick ’80s mud and a proclivity for rabble-rousing and shocking the status quo into submission. The world might be going asunder every second, minute, hour of every day, but the outlaw vows a new day is truly dawning. He should know; he’s at the crest of the revolution. “I don’t even know anybody who’s not damned struggling right now,” says Ray, whose songwriting is hellbent on honoring such contemporary stylists as Delbert McClinton, Dwight Yoakam, Lowell George, Jerry Reed, Leon Russell and Tom Petty.

“Don’t Look Back” brings attention back on the future, discarding the past like so many bubblegum wrappers into the scorched desert air, while “We Ain’t Got the Good” rallies his commercial promise with a simple, glossy love song. Between each album excerpt, Ray colors with wisdom and carefully draws real portraits of what it’s like to stumble and recover in the world. Too, “Honky Tonk Dream” is a penetrating gaze through smoky bar-tops and the soft swing of low-hanging lights, hushed whispers and stolen kisses filling out the rest of the scene. “Over In the corner lovers quarrel / Lord they fuss and fight, oh love is war / Boys, a pretty girl can tear your heart in half  / Me and Jimmy Lee we just sit back and laugh,” he swoons over fluffy chords and a drum’s stifled puffs.

Tennessee Alabama Fireworks is out now.

Below, Ray discusses how he’s changed through the album, smart melodies, tattoos and past relationships.

Do you feel different from before you wrote and recorded this music?

Yes, I do. I’ve felt different after each record I’ve made. Each album, each batch of songs has been an attempt to improve, problem-solve, evolve, ask and answer some of the specific elements in developing the sound, writing the songs, recording the records, designing the harmonies, distilling the drumbeats, arranging/interpreting/expanding the new songs for the live show and working the new songs into the live show. So far, I play most of the songs off of each record since the 2010 ‘Bad News Travels Fast’ album every night. It’s kind of metaphysical the way the songs are written and then exist after recording an album. Then, we use the new record like blueprints and evolve the sound further for the live show. Each record has become an important new part of our sound.

Welcome to 1979 Studio boasts a rich, dynamic roster of talent who have recorded there. Is there a magic to that studio you felt became infused on this record?

It’s a vibe, for sure. You halfway expect Donna and Fez to walk around the corner, but it’s not bougie or anything like that. It’s utilitarian as hell with walls of 2″ tape stacked on shelves, heavy-duty outboard gear, video monitors and some moody damned lamps. So, it’s this great combination of a creative environment to lightning striking and the built in capability of capturing it in the best way possible. Cool history to the building, too. It was a record pressing plant specializing in singles, I believe.

In your career, how important is a recording studio? Does recording location really matter all that much or does it greatly impact the music itself?

I don’t know if it’s necessarily the location, but I’m not saying it’s not either. I think it has a lot to do with the relationship the recording engineer or producer has with the gear, the microphones, the console, and the signal chain he or she builds. It’s not just about the gear, and it’s not just about the producer. It’s about the relationship, experience, technical ability, creativity and experimental spirit exploration.

“Gone Back Down to Georgia” is an instant hit. The blues-funk slink of the melody plays marvelously against the big horns, almost swallowing the listener hole. The story of the song is that you witnessed a relationship crumble. When you wrote this song, what were you remembering most about that time in your life?

That year I made more than a couple dozen trips to down Georgia from Nashville trying to save that relationship. So, I was remembering the road a lot and probably actually wrote most of it on that stretch of I-24 between Chattanooga and Nashville. Starting with that big bend in the Tennessee River right as you leave Chattanooga, to the railroad trestle crossing over 1-24 at Running Water Creek, to the Tennessee Alabama Fireworks [billboard].

What did you learn most from that relationship?

Oh my gosh, what a question. I don’t know what I learned most, but I got to feel the other side of the destruction of addiction, and the only reasonable conclusion I come to is to have more understanding, more empathy and more compassion. As a sober alcoholic/addict, even knowing first hand what it feels like to be in the grips of the disease myself, I wasn’t able at the time to be as understanding, empathetic and compassionate as I should have been.

“20 Questions” might be standout on the record, and it works as such a cool stylistic companion piece to “Gone Back Down to Georgia.” It has such a meaty, evocative lyric amidst such a freeing production. Is this about the same relationship?

I wrote “20 Questions” with my great songwriting pal Bob Lewis, who has a great new EP out called ‘End Of An Era.’ We knew we were writing for my record, and it’s inspired from the finale fireworks of that relationship. But once the idea of the song was established, and the black humor of it emerged we just rolled with it. [See: “I told you that Davina was crazy / You said that you could handle her fine / Ain’t that just like everything else that I said.”]

What’s so evident with these two songs, especially, is your knack for a memorable, infectious melodies. Is melody the easy part for you in the craft?

I see ’em as a pair, too. The chorus melody of “Gone Back Down To Georgia” just came out pretty immediate and intuitive. As far as the degree of difficulty of crafting the melody, I sweat that part a bunch sometimes. I literally might sing the same four or eight bars of melody on a section everyday, all day for a week solid.

“Dee Elle” is a nice reprieve for the record. As an instrumental, what is its meaning? It’s placed as Track No. 7. Is there any significance to that?

One day a childhood photograph of this woman who was the love of my life, with her sweet brown eyes and intelligent smile just obliterated any animosity I had toward her for the way we were ending.

“We Ain’t Got the Good” feels very countrypolitan, late ’80s or early ’90s neo-traditionalist. But it carries with it a distinctly modern appeal. What provoked this song?

This song was started on Skype with my songwriting pal Davy Ulbrich and stopped 20 minutes in by he and his gal’s feuding. He Skyped me back 30 minutes later from the Super-8 just down the street from his house. We wrote the verses that night. The next day I had a writing session scheduled with writin’ partner Travis Porterfield and told him the story and played him the parts of the song as they were assembled at that point. We made some headway, crafted the verses further, wrote the bridge, but we still needed a big legato chorus melody. Travis took the song home with him overnight and came back the next day with that big chorus melody and a bow on it.

You bookend the album with “Skin & Ink,” which is a ferocious electric guitar-soaked song. It’s flavored with some horns in the background but is a rather low-ridding smolder. It’s got some gnarly guitar solos, too. How did this one come together?

I wrote that song with a couple of heavy-hitter Nashville songwriters, my pals Steve Pasch and Brian White. They were willing to follow me on the approach of starting at the top of the page and writing down until we got to the chorus without knowing what the chorus was going to be. Recording that song, Paul Ill on bass and Justin Cromer on drums just laid way back and made it greasy as hell, and my great buddy Smith Curry just slayed all that lap-steel pickin’.

Of course, in the song, you’re talking about tattoos, which you have plenty of from excursions with motorcycle culture. So many folks wear them as badges of honor. Is that the case for you?

Sure. Honor, defiance, rebellion, identifying with a tribe, symbolic memorial and personal narrative are all things I’m exploring and expressing through tattooing. A big part of it for me, too, is that I can’t draw, and it’s not for lack of trying. But I found that in the process of tattooing, some artists have worked with me to develop, design and execute am image that was in my mind and didn’t even exist in physical form that I knew of. Tattooing has been a significant part of gaining knowledge about visual art for me.

Why write a song about it? Was there a particular moment (or tattoo, even) that inspired this song?

I was talking with Jim Palacios from NOLA County Radio the other day, and he said I nailed it with painting the scene at the Lost Love Lounge down on Dauphine Street in New Orleans. So, maybe the setting of the song is as much part of the narrative as the yarn about tattoos. It’s culmination of stories that turned into its own story.

Photo Credit: Price Harrison

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