KAYLA RAY
THE OLD QUARTER IS A LISTENING ROOM. LOUD CONVERSATION DURING ARTIST'S PERFORMANCE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. PLEASE CONSIDER THIS WHEN PURCHASING TICKETS TO SHOWS.
Dropping a needle on Kayla Ray’s music can feel a bit like driving down a sunbaked two-lane highway. You roll the windows down, feel a sticky-warm breeze circling your hair and you let the soundtrack of real-life stories fuel every mile of the drive.
And for Ray, a rising country artist and songwriter, that’s no accident. A native of Waco, Texas, Ray was baptized to the tune of Bob Wills and Tanya Tucker. She can recite Merle Haggard deep cuts without missing a beat and, as a kid, Ray often tuned into the Grand Ole Opry with her grandfather, (by whom she was raised) who built a makeshift antenna to ensure the family picked up a long-distance AM signal from faraway Nashville, Tennessee.
She’s spent her early years cutting her teeth in the industry, studying the rules of the road with country music’s Gimble family (Dick and Emily, the son and granddaughter of Country Music Hall of Famer Johnny Gimble) before tour managing for honky-tonk staple Jason Eady. In 2014, she graduated from backstage to centerstage, releasing her first all original album and touring the national independent circuit singing her songs – sprinkled with appreciation for the artists who helped raise her – Hank Williams, Tom T. Hall and, of course, Loretta Lynn.
Since then, she’s released three independent albums and has since built a fan base and a hard-earned ten-year touring history. This, in addition to her 2024 label debut The World’s Weight. A collection of songs doused in days of fall-too-hard love and nights of brown-liquored therapy, it debuted June 7th via Average Joes Entertainment.
