“Well, I know I disappeared a time or two
And along the way I lost me and you
I needed a new town for my new start
Selling VCRs in Arkansas at a Walmart
“I haven't had a drink in 19 days
My eyes are clear and bright without that haze
I like the preacher from the Church of Christ”
Released in 1994, Collin Raye’s “Little Rock” is an emotion-fueled country ballad that tells the story of a man trying to rebuild his life after addition.
The song — written by Tom Douglas and Dennis Robbins — sets the stage in Little Rock, Ark., as a place for starting over.
True story? Possibly. Is it believable? Definitely, and that is what turned the country singer into a vocal storyteller.
“My third album was called Extremes, and the first single off of it was ‘That's My Story,” which was a very fun kind of rocking up tempo — great for radio, you know. And then the second single was “Little Rock,” which dealt with alcoholism and a guy really struggling to sober up.
“And we had definitely had some resistance at Sony — at the label — about putting that out, because they thought ‘Radios, you just don't hear anything (like that), the song’s just too depressing, it's too heavy.’
“And we just kind of believed in it. You know, I believe this is going to be a big hit. I believed it, but at that time, nobody had really done anything social on the radio at that time. You’d just have to really dig back a ways to find something like that.
“But we got our way and released it, and it flew up the chart, became a multiple-week No. 1 Song of the Year nominee, Single of the Year nominee. So after that, it was kind of like, ‘Okay, we have proven that you can put out a socially-relevant lyric on country radio, and if it's good enough, people will like it.
“Then from that point on, when we did the fourth album — the I Think About You album — it was kind of loaded up with songs like that, because then the best writers in Nashville —which means the best writers in the world — were wanting me to cut their songs that they had written that nobody else would touch.
“So, from that point on, I was looking for songs like that, but I knew I had to be really careful because if you do those all of the time, then when people come to pay to see you live, it's going to be a really kind of heavy, possibly depressing show. So I was always had to keep it mixed up with the good fun stuff too, because the live performance is supposed to be fun.”
For Raye — Bubba Wray to his family — a career in music came naturally.
The son of a bass player and country music nightclub singer, he and his sole sibling, brother Scotty, found music at an early age.
“We were listening to music, like nonstop, and of course, it got in my blood and in my brother's blood,” he explained. “And he was like six years old, and could play lead (guitar), and pretty impressive.
“And I just sort of just kind of along for the ride. As I got a little older, he started showing me how to play and taught me how to play bass, taught me how to play guitar a little bit, sing harmony.”
Then the brothers started a band,
“By the time I was 13, I was hard into it. And of course, this was the 70s, you know. So the rules were a little looser back then. So, we started working nightclubs and bars around the Texarkana, Texas area. I was like, 15. They knew we were underage, but they didn't care. I don't think you could get away with that today. So, we were cutting our cutting our teeth the hard way.
“We wound up going out west for a few years because we got an offer to play a club out there. And people really, really loved this. I think just because we were Southern and we talked with Southern accents, and they thought, this is real.”
The brothers stayed in Oregon for about four years before an agent saw them at set them up performing in Reno, Nevada,
“My brother was with me ‘til those days, and then at some point, he just kind of was wanting to do things different than the way I was wanting to do them. You know, as brothers sometimes do, and we split up musically, and he moved back home, and I stayed out there a little bit longer. But, we always remained close.”
Raye was living in Reno when he got his offer for the record deal with Sony, and he said, “The rest is history.”
Since then, Raye has hit No. 1 16 times, achieved 24 top-10 records and earned numerous Male Vocalist nominations for his storytelling style, including "Love, Me,” "My Kind of Girl," "In This Life” and “Love Remains.”
He will appear at the Ashwaubenon Performing Arts Center on Friday, Oct. 17.
For more information, call (920) 494-3401 or visit ashwaubenonpac.org.
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