Any good therapist will tell you that the key to a good relationship is communication. According to Ray Anderson, a.k.a. Mr. Ray, as he is known to his kindie rock fans, it’s also the key to a good concert.
Growing up in West Orange, NJ, in a house formerly owned by composing great Carole King, Mr. Ray began his own relationship with music at the age of six or seven with his very first Beatles song, “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” After experiencing what he calls a “bolt of lightening,” he “immediately started pounding on anything he could fi nd.” Eventually, Ray taught himself drums, guitar, bass, and keys, and has never taken a formal lesson. “I often wondered if it would mess with my muse,” he explains. “I just let the spirit guide me and nurture the talent.”
Luckily, the spirit also guided him to Bobby Bandiera, whom Ray credits with giving him his fi rst big break. Bobby invited Ray to play with Cats On a Smooth Surface, the Stone Pony house band in Asbury Park, where he often jammed with Bruce Springsteen.
Ray says that playing with “musicians that were so much better made me better,” and taught him when not to play, but to listen. Later, he and his wife, Patti, would form a pop/rock duo, Blue Van Gogh, and tour with Matchbox Twenty before Ray was eventually tapped by Meatloaf to tour with him in 1998. It was Patti who introduced Ray to children’s music in 1994, when she invited him to play at the North Brunswick day care center where she was temping. The little ones formed a halfcircle around Ray and listened, wideeyed, as he played acoustically to what he describes as a “little jury.” When the director invited him back, he began writing his own songs. “When you write a song for children, and they like it, they say one thing: ‘Mr. Ray, do it again,’” he chuckles.
Ray honed his craft at the day care and built a grassroots following, playing venues from birthday parties to museums, and eventually putting out the children’s CD “Start Dreaming!” in 2001. The spirit must have been guiding him again when his CD caught the attention of Sugar Beats Entertainment, a company owned, coincidentally, by Carole King’s daughter.
Sugar Beats gave him national distribution. Meanwhile, Ray’s children’s shows increased in popularity. Even so, he continued to play for adults, keeping “one foot in childhood, one foot in the grown-up world,” and to indulge in his two lyrical loves: performances and composing, ultimately creating two more children’s CDs and two DVDs. Today, Ray still lives a dual life of rockin’ out with children as well as their parents. Asked how he manages to straddle both worlds, Ray responds, “I’ve done both for so long, it’s just a matter of communicating to whoever is sitting there watching me, listening to me. It’s no form of genius; it’s just feeling comfortable in my own skin.” But perhaps his favorite person to write and perform for is his four-year-old daughter, Layla. Like many children her age, Layla fi nds it hard to sit still at the dinner table, so Ray started communicating the lesson to her through music. Has it worked yet? “No!” says Ray, but they’re working on it. Maybe the next CD will cover table manners.
For more information about Mr. Ray, visit his website, mrraymusic.com.
Come Play with Mr. Ray!
Mr. Ray will play an upcoming holiday show at Symphony Space, featuring a children’s chorus, band, and special guest star Shawn Taylor-Corbett from the kids’ show “Hi-5!” and Broadway’s “In The Heights.” Mr. Ray’s Holiday Show will be held on Saturday, December 6, at 11 am at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia, at Broadway and 95th Street. Day of show tickets cost $19 for adults, $13 for children; advance tickets cost $18 and $12, respectively. For more information, visit symphonyspace.org.
In addition, Ray is currently writing music and auditioning band members for a new program for ages 0-5 at apple seeds, scheduled to begin January 12. Called “songs for seeds,” the program will include each child, no matter how small, as a member of the “songs for seeds band,” and will introduce music and language from a new country each week. For more information, visit appleseedsnyc.com.
