Some songs are written. Ray Ray Star’s was survived.
Long before “Ashes Next Door” earned him a Song of the Year – Rock Artist nomination at the 12th Annual Josie Music Awards, Ray Ray Star had already built a career most musicians only dream of. An internationally touring guitarist, a record producer and executive producer, Director of Marketing & Promotions for the NBC-aired Real Music Live, and, to a following that stretches well beyond the music world, the Rockstar Psychic, whose intuitive readings have made him a fixture in his own right. Rock and roll swagger was never in short supply. What sets him apart is what he has chosen to do with the rest of the story.
That story includes more than a decade and a half of sobriety, hard-won and never hidden. It also includes a night Ray Ray Star has described in stark, unflinching terms: a neighbor struggling with addiction fell asleep with a cigarette still lit, and the fire that followed took nearly everything he owned. He ran back into the building anyway, not for anything valuable, but for his two guitars. The neighbor did not survive. Out of that night came “Ashes Next Door,” the most personal record Ray Ray Star has ever released, a raw and unsoftened account of addiction and recovery that, featuring vocals from Chris Vayne, refuses to look away from either the damage or the healing. The past, the song insists, never fully disappears. It simply does not have to run the present.
He carried that same unflinching honesty into “Slow Motion Fall,” written from the vantage point of watching someone he loves disappear slowly into addiction while feeling powerless to stop it. There is no gimmick in it, no overproduction standing between the listener and the ache at its center, just a haunting melody that lets the pain breathe through every line. It is the sound of an artist who learned early, from the punk rock honesty of bands like Social Distortion, that the songs worth writing are the ones that tell the truth.
Ray Ray Star has directed a portion of the proceeds from “Ashes Next Door,” along with related merchandise sales, to MusiCares, supporting musicians battling the same addiction his own music refuses to look away from. On September 20, when the Josie Music Awards light up the Grand Ole Opry House, that same song will be in the room, nominated for Song of the Year among some of independent music’s most competitive company. Whatever the night holds, “Ashes Next Door” has already done the harder work: it turned a fire that took almost everything into a record that gives something back.
The official website for Ray Ray Star may be found at https://www.rayraystar.com
