With Paul McCartney rocking the Bridgestone tonight, Nashville Cream managed to wrangle a last-minute interview this morning with
Brian Ray, who's been playing guitar with Macca for about eight years now. As die-hard fans and autograph hounds lined Sixth Avenue North outside The Hermitage Hotel hoping to catch a glimpse of the Beatle in question, Ray sat down with the Cream in the luxurious confines of the Oak Bar for a little tête-à-tête, during which he discussed his solo project, how he landed the McCartney gig and what it's like to tour with the greatest living pop legend.
Special thanks to Virginia Cannon, who handles artist relations for Voyage-Air Guitar, and who helped facilitate this interview. Voyage-Air makes guitars with folding necks for ease of travel, and Ray is an endorser. (Scene managing editor and resident six-string hack Jack Silverman took one of their acoustic models for a quick test-run and gave it a hearty thumbs up.)
In an effort to post this interview in time for tonight's concert, we transcribed as much as we could before showtime. There were a lot of other interesting portions, including Ray's experiences with Phil "the Road Mangler" Kaufman and Etta James, that we hope to include in another post later this week.
Nashville Cream: Tell us about your solo project.
Brian Ray: Today, my second album, This Way Up, goes on sale, at [my website]. I have two singles that just came out, like, three weeks ago, wherever digital music is sold — and it's a really fun, cool modern rock record that I just finished.
