Michael Ray's 'Dive Bars & Broken Hearts' EP reflects mature, timeless pop-country appeal

Michael Ray knows that everyone wants to hear what he has to say.

"Sometimes, when life shakes you, you have to redesign the [metaphorical] foundation of who you are," he tells The Tennessean late on a Wednesday afternoon in a conversation in Music City's West End neighborhood.

He's a four-time country music chart-topper and Nashville divorcee. However, his eight-month marriage to award-winning country star Carly Pearce ended just as COVID-19 cases spiked 230 percent nationwide in 2020.

His June 23-released "Dive Bars & Broken Hearts" EP reflects how his time inside of home and mind combined with the best of the genre's decade-long pop-aimed sounds and styles (on the EP, he works with producer Michael Knox, famed for his work with Jason Aldean -- "my missing link, he hears and sees the type of must-hear melodic structures that I love") created appealing material.

The content of Ray's material needs context, though.

"Get Her Back" is a triple-entendre-driven song that includes the lyrics "Send a text, show her who her friends are / Cut deep, get even with a broken heart / Luckily for her, I wasn't raised like that / But, damn, I wanna get her back."

No, Ray didn't write it himself.

It's penned by Dallas Wilson (though not related to her, he co-wrote Lainey Wilson's recent hit "Heart Like A Truck"), Jordan James, Lalo and Michael Tyler.

However, because country music feels like it ages artists in 20-year cycles -- you're 20 until you're 40, 40 until you're 60, and so forth -- a bitter kiss-off anthem could be Ray's ideal move because he's caught in one of the previously mentioned age gaps.

However, the back end of those gaps can be vicious.

One day, boyish immaturity is rewarded with acclaim and financial gain. Twenty-four hours later, your professional exploits must reflect maturity and responsibility.

Successfully navigating the honesty and precision required to age both gracefully and suddenly has recently yielded Tyler Hubbard (age 36) a pair of No. 1 singles on country radio ("5 Foot 9" and "Dancin' In The Country") and Chase Rice (age 37, via his 2023-released album "I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell") shocking and unprecedented critical acclaim.

Unlike other country artists who share his age, Ray's conversations are not dotted with acknowledgments of therapy sessions to navigate the traumas of growing up hard, poor and then being thrust into and through the mainstream country machine without the psychological and social tools to survive.

"The country music industry hasn't slowed down for two decades," Ray notes.

"They say that if everything goes to crap, the three things that country music is all about -- bars, music and religion -- will get us through. In every way, during COVID, all of those things slammed to a stop. Positively, for an artist like myself, all of that stopping let me get clear-headed about what my career was all about."

For Ray, it's all about the songs.

Not his, though.

Instead, the songs of Southern rockers like his fellow Florida natives, the Allman Brothers and country music's outlaws from Merle Haggard to Keith Whitley are prominently mentioned.

To wit, EP track "Don't Give A Truck" was written in a cabin in the woods 45 minutes Northwest of Atlanta in a three-day songwriting session that involved Ray, along with seasoned Nashville writers Rian Ball, Josh Phillips and Michael Tyler, listening to Waylon and Willie's 1978 classic "Mama's Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys."

In the song that emerged, Ray modernizes parents stoking their children's wanderlust for frontier life by mentioning how his grandparents always warned his family members, "don't give a truck to a boy."

"Of course, kids always are wild and irresponsible for awhile, but they turn out good in the end," says Ray, acknowledging that he's currently a "better man" than he was a few years ago.

His future honestly respects but no longer reflects his past.

"The new EP reflects artistic growth and my old-school country mentality of living through building a career and life on dive bar gigs and broken hearts. I can look back and see chaos behind me, but I have a new landscape ahead where I can strategically build my legacy."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Michael Ray's 'Dive Bars & Broken Hearts' EP reflects mature, timeless pop-country appeal