HIS RECENT SEVEN-SONG COLLECTION HIGHER EDUCATION FEATURES THE TITLE TRACK WITH HIS FRIENDS LEE BRICE, BILLY GIBBONS, TIM MONTANA AND KID ROCK.

Michael had been profiled in Florida Country Magazine?

To make that point at the Luminary in September, as if he had aged wildly, he’d pat his pockets in mock shock, looking for the card key for his room.

“Why isn’t it working,” he asked. “Oh … that’s yesterday’s hotel,” busting into a rich baritone laugh, deep and quite real, perhaps another clue to Michael Ray’s success: Never forget who you are and where you came from.

Eustis Born And Bred

In Michael Ray’s DNA was and is music. Not sports or lawyering or becoming a fishing guide. His family in Eustis, which is 20,000 or so people, performed locally, little Michael plucking a stringless plastic Gibson before stroking a real one quite well. He formed a band and self-released music in 2010. He won a reality television competition in 2012 called The Next: Fame Is at Your Doorstep. He was awarded a contract with Warner Music Nashville. Ray’s first-place performance on The Next, a music observer said, “sounded just like he should have an album out already.”

Music for Michael Ray was as natural as living, inspired by his grandfather, Amos Roach. Mr. Roach died in 2015, just as Michael was to make his Grand Ole Opry debut. “His ear was unbelievable,” Michael Ray told the Tennessean newspaper. “I wish I got that other than some of the other things I got from him. We always laughed about it.”

And when Michael Ray debuted at the Grand Ole Opry in 2015, he performed with Amos’s guitar. In 2018, he released “Amos,” an 11-song collection that included “Get to You.” Amos Roach, in fact, had instructed Michael’s father, Jerry, to dial up country music to soothe his crying grandson in the hospital nursery.

Michael Ray’s storytelling plays out in his music, whether he’s writing, or his friends are. In Ray’s interview with Florida Country Magazine, for instance, he said of other song writers: “An outsider sometimes says what you want to say better than you can … but not always.”

He was especially thankful for Eustis and its people, or “where the moss is hanging, and you can barhop. There’s so much (other people) are missing.”

Island Hopper In Fort Myers

You see Michael Ray’s range and power and how his performances translate at an Island Hopper venue down from the Luminary. It’s the festival’s last night. Island Hopper is modeled after the one in Key West, and had become very cool, attracting musicians opening or writing for such performers as Kenny Chesney, Dierks Bentley and Lyle Lovett, among others. Island Hopper brings millions in spending to the southwest Florida region. It will be around for years.

On stage is a three-person ensemble seated on stools that includes the bassist Pat McCarthy, guitarist Jeff Coleman and Ray in the middle with his guitar. The trio powers through the band’s song list, which is sprinkled with backstories and bantering. That includes “Kiss You in the Morning,” “Think a Little Less” and Whiskey and Rain,” among a rolling set that rocks the place.

The band’s energy is off the map; even the two big security boys upfront, they’re working but into it. In that setting of three hundred fans at the Pinchers on First Street, the joy Michael’s music produces is clear: old guys lip-syncing and drumming their knees, rows of swaying women, one dude in a flag shirt gyrating in the center aisle. He is there with a tall woman who went missing. She had avoided whatever it is he’s doing, probably.

Everyone is having fun. The place is electric.

“We love you, Michael,” a woman shouts between songs. Another comes to the stage, Sharpie and a promotional Michael photo in hand. You know she’s out of her element. But it must happen. Michael Ray detaches from his energy field, like a Saturn ring, asks her name, and signs it. The woman is thrilled, has an instant memory. The venue applauds them. He plugs back in.

“Thank you, guys,” he says.

“And thank y’all,” he adds, perhaps acknowledging what Amos Roach and the universe have given him. And us. FCM

For More Information: michaelraymusic.com