Note to Ray's friends and fans: Ray's MySpace is maintained by a friend, but Ray does check in from time to time.
Ray Bonneville calls himself a North American. Born in Canada, he moved
to the Boston area in his early teens where he started playing guitar
and harmonica. His last 30 some odd years have seen him seeking
adventure and playing music throughout the world. Being a dual citizen
allows him the freedom to live in both Canada and the United States.
Bonneville is a distinctive artist, a man who cooks up a deep groove
soup, stirring his own unique percussive electric guitar style, his
weathered voice, and soulful rack harmonica lines into songs that can
be believed. He uses his index finger and thumb, sometimes a slide, and
a Fender tube amp. He also brings his foot down on an amplified piece
of plywood on the floor. The result is a powerful and visceral sound,
with an almost primitive quality to it and a lot of forward momentum.
"When I first heard good blues and country music I was very young, but
I felt a deep excitement within, and I somehow knew right then what I'd
do with my life," says Bonneville, remembering his introduction to
roots music in Boston in the mid 1960s and early seventies. Over the
next decade, Bonneville honed his sound up in the Northeast, Colorado
and Alaska, and then moved around between Seattle, New Orleans, and
Paris, France in the 1980s.
"I remember playing in Memphis Slim's club in the heart of Paris in the
early eighties," says Bonneville. "I'd show up for the gig at four in
the morning after doing another show across town. The place would be
really jumping at that time of the night. "Slim was often there, as
were other jazz and blues players, and a whole slew of late night
characters from all kinds of places. After the show I'd take a taxi
back to my flat around eight in the morning in the full-on Paris rush
hour traffic".
In the streets and clubs of New Orleans, Bonneville soaked up the
prevalent back side of the beat attitude that ran through the music
being played there. "There were so many great drummers to learn groove
and time from, not to mention the piano and guitar players, and man,
the singers and horn players too! This was the place that influenced me
the most," he says. "It was infectious. In New Orleans, you learn that
solid rhythm is like a tightrope on which the notes and words can do
their dance."
Says Bonneville: "I'm deeply in love with playing live music. It's the
time and place where I really live, where I feel the most centered and
alive. When a show is over, I just want to get on down the road to the
next one, always
looking to get back onto another stage and do it again."
"I write the songs as they come to me, without predictability or in any
set way. They come from real life mostly, snapshots of emotions and
feelings lived and felt, and the recall of observations of things gone
by along the way. I'm forever looking to write another song, find
another groove."
Ray won a prestigious Juno Award, the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy,
in 1999, for his third album, Gust of Wind. His next release, Rough
Luck, and his fifth album, Roll It Down, were also nominated for the
coveted award.
Ray is currently working on a new recording, slated for release to the
world on the Red House label in early 2007.
