Music Monday – Interview with El Ray
When it comes to music are you a single genre listener or do you like to get adventurous? I am very much the kind of listener who, if I like something then I like it, no matter the artist/genre. Yes, even the often unfairly maligned country. I discovered El Ray via Instagram earlier this year and absolutely fell in love with their music (and their hilarious reels) as it’s so varied while keeping that country core. After chatting with the guys on Instagram I decided to see if they’d be up for a little chat about themselves and their music to help them reach some new listeners.
(We had some audio issues as the guys were driving, so I’ve transcribed what I can. We will hopefully be catching up again with the guys though, so stay tuned. – Ed)
So let’s start with who is El Ray?
Me Carson Butcher and Drew Harrison from Kentucky and Mississippi. We both loved country music growing up but were not the country boys where we are from, we were more into rock, hip hop. We both moved to Nashville, and we actually met at church and made friends straight away and wanted to hang out and make money somehow. So we tried tiktok stuff, we even made a tv pilot (Carson is a kickass director – Ed) before we thought let’s do a country band, can’t be that hard. Turns out it’s harder than we thought but it’s super fun.
Where do you look for inspiration?
All the oldies. Writing while listening to Rascal Flatts, Hunter Hayes back in the day, Kenny Chesney’s Summertime – we were just passing the aux back and forth. We’re a hillbilly and a redneck so we have the pedigree to be able to do this. We just go with what’s authentic to us, which is why it varies into different genres – that’s who we are as people. That’s what you can find on our playlist if you check our spotify.
Speaking of playlists, I know you’re on the road right now, so who is on your road trip playlist?
We’ve actually been on a funny metal, rock thing, so we’ve got some Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Of Mice And Men, Drowning Pool, and then we’ve got Avery Anna, Travis Jennings, David Morris, Skrizzly Adams, a bunch of funny stuff. It’s what you get when you put 2 guys with extreme ADHD together.
What does your writing process look like?
D – We kinda sit down with a guitar and when Carson and I are writing we play around till we find something we like, it’s usually melody then lyrics. We complement each other in that space, I’m melody and lyrics and Carson is feeling and emotion.
If there’s a feeling we like we go with it. We’ve got a couple of guys we write with – Will Edwards, Connor McMurray. Those guys are really talented so sometimes they bring stuff to us and we finish it. It helps to be collaborative.
Speaking of being collaborative – you’ve done some really cool collabs this year – Starletta, 2Live, Skrizzly Adams – if you could collaborate with anyone who would it be?
I’d love to do something with Travis Scott or like Gavin DeGraw. And then, I’d like to do a heavy thing with, like, Saliva. We are drawing a circle around what El Ray sounds like, and as long as we stay inside that circle we’re good. It’s a pretty wide circle as you know.
Do you prefer writing and recording or playing live?
We haven’t actually played live as El Ray. We’ve personally played over 400-500 shows between us in other bands but when we started El Ray we decided we weren’t gonna play live until we had a solid following. It’s not that we’re saying we’re not playing till we’re famous but we’ve got families and even these last two days away from our families has been hard.
If some of our friends wanted to take us out for a one spot or two, we’d be down, but it’s about the right opportunity. We’ve played every dinky dive in America, it’s fun to cut your teeth when you’re a teenager, but now we’re pushing thirty (still young – Ed).
What’s next for El Ray?
Exciting things. Going back to the collabs thing, we’d love to do something with the Christmas allstars, like Buble. We have a Christmas EP of 3 songs, classic Christmas stuff, that we are working on. We love Christmas, it has a special place for us, it’s gonna be really sweet. The working title is El Ray and Friends Christmas. Some of our buddies we write with consistently will be on it, our producer will be on it, and Carson and his wife Alexis are doing a track on it.
More singles coming out before then.
So you guys gotta fix international shipping on your merch store cos this girl wants merch, that Good Boys shirt is too good! Is that gonna be album art maybe at some point?
Good Boys is actually the last track on our EP – Emo Cowboy. One of the reasons that came up is cos Skrizzly who we worked with recently does really well on soundcloud, so we were putting our stuff over there but each song needs an artistic touch so that happened.
What would you say to people who aren’t sure about checking you guys out?
C – We like to have fun, and our music reflects that. It has that backbone of American country but with our twist. We’re by no means the first people to do that, but we relate to the emotions that people have. If you’ve never listened to country before, we’ll be your precursor. We’re a good place to start and you might stick with us.
D – Also we are fully independent. We wanna stay a fan of all the fans. No red tape for us. We wanna put out as much as possible, and keep people coming back so there’s always something new. We run all of our socials, Carson and I are the only ones on it, we love interacting with fans. (Ed- I can attest to this!)
You get too big that you can’t have enough attention on it, I wanna keep that. Be thankful to the people who put us on their backs.
So where should people go if they wanna check you out? Spotify, iTunes…?
Spotify is the one, which is funny cos they don’t actually pay that well, but it is the big streaming platform, it’s the new touring 100 days of the year. People like to see how many streams you have to see how you are doing.
They’ve done really good by us. We’re on the Wild Country editorial playlist – Haw Yee is number 12, What Goes Around is 30.
We’d love to hear from you guys if you check out El Ray, let us know what you think/your favourite songs either in the comments or via our socials.
