WhenMichael Rayreleasedhis debut albumin 2015, he says, he was trying hard to be “the cool guy.”
“You know what I mean?” Ray, 30, tells PEOPLE. “You gotta be ‘the dude.'”
Inside, though, he was still the guy who grew up in a double-wide trailer in small-town Florida, still the guy who learned about the Grand Ole Opry from his grandpa, and still the guy who has suffered his share of heartbreak, grief and troubles.
Allister Ann
But three years of meeting fans, he says, taught him “it’s cool to be vulnerable as a man.” Hearing people share their lives and stories, he says, helped him discover “it was okay to be really real, to be real open — and I realized that’s what we’re here for.”
Now, he’s channeled these revelations into his recently debuted second album, and its sense of authenticity begins with the title:Amos. It’s the first name of his beloved grandfather, who died just two months before Ray made his Opry debut in 2015.
A Florida phone company worker who spent weekends playing in a family country band, Amos Roach had a “passion for music that was unbelievable his whole life,” Ray says. “He passed that passion and love down to my dad’s generation … And then here comes us, our generation of the family.”
Ray says he didn’t think twice: “Yeah, absolutely.”
Though his grandfather isn’t the subject of any song, the name sets the tone for an album that Ray says is far more revealing and intimate than his first.
For instance, two songs — current single “Get to You” and “Her World or Mine” — offer a glimpse of what Ray felt during his breakup last year with his longtime girlfriend. The heartbreak expressed in “Her World or Mine,” Ray says, “is the reason I got into country music.”
The inspiring “Dancing Forever” put him in touch with his supportive relationship with his younger sister. “We all need to know that we’ve got that one person … [who is] always going to have our back,” he says.
The energy of “Fan Girl” offers a vicarious experience of his live shows, he says. And “Drink One For Me” brings back memories of his hometown of Eustis, Florida, and all the buddies who went their separate ways, many into the military.
In total, Ray sees the album as a reflection of thepersonal and professional growthhe has experienced in the last couple of years — and he’sdone a lot of growing. He’s purchased his first home. He’s learned the responsibility of being a touring artist who must lead a band and crew. More recently, he’s had to endure watching his father undergo a second open-heart surgery.
Because Ray is still under court supervision, he can’t comment on the outcome of his case. But he does say the episode has made him even more grateful for the blessings in his life. When he found himself, days after the arrest, sitting in the hospital waiting room through his dad’s surgery, he was reminded of his grandfather’s words: “If you think you’ve got something wrong, there’s somebody that would trade their left arm to be in your position.”
With his father now healed, Ray says, “everything else is good. God’s got everything handled with all that other stuff.”
source: people.com
