Ray Bryant

The man affectionately known as rayray has been on and around music his whole life. At 18 months of age my mother asked me what I wanted, my reply was "A Ditar) come to realize that it was a sitar that I longed for but with her lack of understanding I wound up with a guitar at age 6. At age 11 I tore my right (picking hand) index finger off at the first knuckle while skateboarding, which subsequently lead to a long time with no outside influence, I transcribed Randy Rhodes entire guitar part from Crazy Train and performed it with my fretting hand for my friends. They were still grossed out by my missing finger but they also thought I was cool enough to come and visit. At the same time I was blessed and cursed due to my mother being an insanely cool dancer so she taught me how to feel music by dancing to everything from Kool and the Gang, and Earth,Wind and Fire to the Beach Boys. My father spent much time in Haiti and introduced me to composer Joe Fabio and he gave me my first dose of island rhythms from all over the Caribbean. My exposure to house music and the beginnings of freestyle rap phrasing and the introduction to human beat making is a huge influence. As I grew I found that influences would come from every direction and I kept listening, and playing, entertaining and writing, I found Michael Hedges, at the same time as Jerry Garcia. I also brought in elements of electronica ala Simon Posford, and Bill Laswell. The music is the music, I hear it and try to describe it to my audience via the instrumentation available to me at any given time. Being spontaneous and delivering surprises to my audience is what I do best.