After 10 years on the police force in Las Cruces, NM, Frank Ray quit his job to pursue a career in country music. It was a bold move in 2017 that is now paying off: Ray’s debut single, “Country’d Look Good On You,” goes for adds Monday. “I am forever grateful for country radio,” the BBR Music Group/Stoney Creek Records recording artist tells Country Insider.
Ray grew up singing in church, school choir and in bands throughout his childhood. It wasn’t until several years on the police force that he began actively writing songs. With a few “primetime days off” he put together a band and performed in dive bars throughout Las Cruces Thursday-Saturday.
“That little band actually gained some notoriety and we had an opportunity to open up for Keith Urban,” Ray says.
Ray and his group performed to 8,000 fans at Las Cruces’ Pan American Center. It was a defining moment for Ray, who realized he wanted to pursue music full-time. He began performing at more writers rounds and hired manager Oscar Chavira. Once his tour schedule began conflicting with his law enforcement schedule, Ray made the decision to switch careers. His emotional last day was captured on camera in 2017, as his colleagues wished him luck in his next endeavor.
An early champion of Ray’s was musician, producer and Songwriters Hall of Famer Steve Dorff, who shared his late son’s songs with the singer. Dorff produced Ray’s song “Tequila Mockingbird,” and the singer released the track independently in 2018. Former Spotify Global head of Country John Marks added it to Spotify’s New Boots playlist, and soon, Nashville was calling.
“That's actually how we got on everyone's radar in Nashville because an independent artist on such a prominent playlist was unprecedented,” Ray says.
BBR Music Group VP A&R Sara Knabe was one of those early calls as was Frank Rogers, who pitched debut single “Country’d Look Good On You” to the singer.
Written by Monty Criswell, Cole Taylor, Derek George and Taylor Phillips, “Country’d Look Good On You” is a song Ray says fits his lane as a country artist. Ray loves the romanticized country imagery and says he knew immediately he needed to record it.
Country radio knew it needed to be released, too. After Ray’s performance at the Country Radio Broadcasters Board Dinner on Friday, June 2, several programmers urged label head Jon Loba to send it early.
“The beauty of this business is that magic sometimes falls out of the sky and that definitely was the case at the CRB Board Dinner,” BMG President Jon Loba said in a statement. “Frank Ray pulled off one of the very best new artist introductions I have ever seen. It was a truly special night I will never forget and one I think everyone in that room will for decades say, ‘I was there.’”
CRB Executive Director RJ Curtis was there and agrees.
“He was a smashing success, and I would agree with the term ‘showstopper,’” he tells Country Insider. “He was funny, engaging, comfortable, relatable, real – a genuine personality. And of course, the music was there to support all of that – energetic, upbeat, infectious.
“We had board members wanting to get up and dance, and I heard more than one radio programmer there say that seeing Frank that night convinced them to support him right away.”
The label fast-tracked the single’s add date and Ray embarked on a radio tour where he performs several songs for PDs and radio staff on his bus.
“There's really nothing like making that sort of connection with someone personally, with that face-to-face interaction,” Ray says.
Hometown station iHeartMedia KHEY El Paso, TX (96.3) was one of those radio visits. KHEY first played “Country’d Look Good On You” July 23, with Ray hearing the song on the radio July 27. The station continues to play it across three dayparts. Patti Diaz, iHeartMedia VP of Programming at the El Paso cluster, says the station has followed the singer’s journey over the past four years and is seeing positive listener reaction.
“Listener response has been 100 percent positive,” she says. “Every time the song plays on KHEY-FM I will see Instagram [and] Snapchat stories tagging the station and Frank Ray. We are all rooting for someone from our region to make it big!”
Ray, who relocated to Nashville from New Mexico last year, also recently heard the song on his adopted hometown station, iHeartMedia “The Big 98” WSIX-FM Nashville. He calls hearing “Country’d Look Good On You” before embarking on his radio tour “an incredibly good omen.”
“Country radio [has] always been, for me, the gatekeeper and how people discover new music,” he says. “It's a dream come true to actually hear one of my songs on country radio. I'm excited that everyone else is fired up for it.”