![]() and slow down, and it’s become their permanent home base since the pandemic. He and his wife kept a house in Maricopa for when they needed to get away from the hustle and bustle of L.A. Right about the time COVID slowed everything down to a halt. Meanwhile, Sugaray won Soul Blues Male Artist of the Year at the 40th Annual Blues Music Awards in Memphis in December 2019. In 2019, his album “Somebody Save Me” was among the top blues selling albums that year and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Some 48 hours later he flew to Italy to record the album “The World That We Live In” with the horn-based The Italian Royal Family band. By 2017, just as he was coming off a tour, his wife/manager told him about these guys in Italy who wanted to record with him. He joined the L.A.-based supergroup The Mannish Boys and their classic blues in West Coast, Texas and Chicago styles, and, boy, did he arrive on the scene. Living Blues magazine that year noted that “Sugaray is a first-rate blues artist with a deep-running, church honed soulfulness.” He moved to Los Angeles and decided the time was right to strike out on his own, formed the Sugaray Rayford Band, and recorded his first solo album, “Blind Alley,” in 2010, on a bed of blazing horns and bluesy bass lines. Just six months after that, the Texas-born song-belter and music-shaper placed second overall at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis. He joined an R&B group at first, then found himself part of a spontaneous jam with other musicians in, in his words, “of all places the tiny town of Temecula.” The right network of people soon followed, he developed a blues band, and five months later they were recording. Then, his wife inspired him to return to music. While living in San Diego, Sugaray didn’t even play music for almost 20 years as his journey led him to working his avocado ranch. “There’s a great group of about 20 young blues players that are really making the scene. ![]() He reminds me of a mix between Al Green and Marvin Gaye.” If I am listening to anything I’m gonna be listening to like Curtis Mayfield, some Marvin Gaye, Earth, Wind & Fire. My son was telling me the other day ‘You tour all over the world but you don’t know who that person is, this person is, this person is.’ I’m old school. “Dude, it’s kinda funny, because I do so much music I don’t listen to music. Q: What’s in heavy rotation in your listening these days? I really didn’t have my ‘come to Jesus moment’ with the blues until I started doing music again out in California.” I heard him playing some Bobby Bland on 8-track in his truck, and I really dug that but I was a gospel kid and I wasn’t allowed to listen or play that music. And he’d be playing some Johnnie Taylor, Jimmy Shine, that sort of thing. I had an uncle named ‘Abeya,’ and don’t ask me how to spell it because all these years I’ve never known how to spell it. “People ask me ‘Did I hear blues?’ The only blues I ever heard was my uncle. Q: Who are your biggest musical influences? What happens to a lot of gospel singers is if we quit doing gospel we usually wind up in the soul world and the blues world. “I grew up gospel, and gospel and blues are so intertwined. How does the Southwest and West influence you? Q: You have history in Texas, California and Arizona. “Nothing beats playing live and being in front of people and working out all the problems before we start doing the big shows.” The band will be working out new material from the forthcoming album “In Too Deep,” due out March 4 on Forty Below Records. “I got a bunch of young cats working with me now,” the frontman said Wednesday, from his home in Maricopa, about 35 miles south of Phoenix. It’s a smaller club than he’s been playing with an audience that has grown with each album and live performance, but the Room’s rich history is the perfect venue to “put legs under the band,” as he says of the new lineup, which will go out on a 15-date European tour in April, following a dozen U.S. showcase at the Valley’s famed Rhythm Room. In the meantime, his Sugaray Rayford Band has spent the downtime putting together a new lineup, and Phoenix blues fans get to see him do what he does best this Saturday night with an 8 p.m. He’s seen his band’s tour schedule go from almost 200 dates a year down to about 10 over the past couple. The Grammy-nominated blues man has been as impacted by the COVID pandemic as any performer. Twitter: Rayford is ready to get out on stage again.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |