Larry McCray
July 17, 2015, 8:15pm
“I always try to move forward and remember where I came from”
- 21st Century Bluesman Larry McCray
Larry McCray’s life story is pure Blues folklore. Born the eighth of nine children, McCray was raised in a one room country shack on the family’s farm in Magnolia Arkansas. He moved north to Michigan at an early age, and spent more than a decade working the General Motors assembly line while moonlighting as a musician. The success of his 1990 debut, Ambition, convinced him to turn to playing Blues full time.
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Today, after 9 CD’s and crisscrossing the continent and Europe to get the word out, the 55 year old McCray is one of the hottest acts on the circuit. McCray remains one of a handful of talented Blues performers pushing the genre across boundaries and into the new millennium. While McCray carries the tradition of the Blues as a music form, he fuses it with contemporary funk and rock rhythms. And he tops it off with vocals delivered in a big baritone and an incisive guitar style that bears restraint but is always threatening to go over the top.
McCray established his own label Magnolia Records with business partner Paul Koch in 2000 as a platform to “flex his contemporary Bluesman muscle”. The label has yielded five fine releases to date with the most recent, The Gibson Sessions, an ambitious wide ranging selection of 12 covers. While also noteworthy with the likes of Dickey Betts, Derek Trucks, and David Hidalgo guesting on the disc, it’s the song selection that catches the listeners’ attention. McCray puts his own stamp on well known material by artists ranging from Lynyrd Skynrd, through ZZ Top, to The Rolling Stones. (For example McCray turns Stephen Stills’ Latin inflected ditty “Love The One You’re With” into an aggressive Blues strut). And it’s all in keeping with McCray’s apt description of his approach to music in general: “The Blues is my favourite, for sure… but I’ve always been a Rock & Roll fan and I’ve always tried to write music that was Rock & Roll friendly”.
Combine the authoritative force of the music with McCray’s imposing physical stature, and you can’t help but “Feel The Power” of this 21st Century Blues Man!
