About Michael Ray:

When rising country singer Michael Ray made his first exploratory trip to Nashville, he got a life-changing piece of advice from an industry insider. Go home.

“He said, ‘Don’t move. The way the music industry’s going to become, you’re not going to be able to get a record deal just doing a showcase anymore. You’ve got to bring something to the table,’” Ray said. “He said, ‘I want to you to go back to Florida, grab a band and become the biggest you can be in Florida on your own, and then I want you to come back.’ So I put a band together of friends of mine and we started to play.”

Turns out it was the best thing Ray ever did. He built a rowdy fan base tilling the same fertile Southeastern soil Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan used to start their careers and returned to Nashville three years later to claim a record deal, a publishing contract and a few unexpected opportunities along the way.

Ray will soon complete the journey from tiny Eustis, Florida, to the big time with the release of his first single “Kiss You In The Morning” from his forthcoming Warner Bros. Records album due spring of 2015. He arrives with fans in the know already numbering in the thousands, the ability to sell out large clubs in presale and the promise of a future star. Scott Hendricks, Warner Music Nashville’s executive vice president of A&R and Ray’s producer, calls Ray “country with an edge.”

“Michael, he’s got it all,” said Hendricks, known for his work with Blake Shelton, Brooks & Dunn and Alan Jackson. “He sings well. He’s a really seasoned entertainer. Girls find him not hard to look at. He’s got the drive, the motivation, the work ethic, the right attitude going into this thing. He’s been great to work with in the studio, just getting better and better every time we’re recording. He takes it seriously, and we do have really high hopes for him.”

“He is all about energy, energy, energy, both in his music and how he presents it on stage,” Hendricks said. “There aren’t very many moments where you’re going to have time to rest when you watch him because there’s a lot of energy he’s putting out.”

“Now he’s stretching the boundaries from state to state to state to stretch those fan bases,” Hendricks said. “Some guys kind of stop when they get here. This guy is a road warrior. He’s out there all the time, playing wherever they will allow him to play to build his fan base. We just need to get those fans some food, some new music to have.”

Did you know…

• He first played guitar with his grandfather, who had a local radio show with Michael’s second grade teacher
• Was raised in Central Florida, where he grew up hunting alligators
• His first big concert was Garth Brooks in Orlando and he has admired Garth ever since
• He played the Country 102.5 Country Music Festival in the summer of 2015
• He played country 102.5’s Wicked Awesome Monstah Bash in 2015

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