Hello once more...I just finished watching episode 13, Season Six of Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville. The special guest happened to be Lee Roy Parnell. This episode originally aired in local syndication on PBS stations the weekend of June 30th and it's since been uploaded to Ray's video site, raystevens.tv.
Ray opened this episode performing "Barbecue"...and it was the first time I'd seen him perform the song on any television appearance since 1990. He performed it on an episode of Nashville Now when the album it originally appeared on, Lend Me Your Ears, was relatively brand new. He released an official music video produced with limited animation in the mid 2000s as one of a handful of music videos he issued direct-to-DVD prior to the launch of his YouTube channel several years later. The "Barbecue" music video can be found on YouTube. If you pay close attention to the band during the performance you'll see a certain figure playing prominent guitar...and it would be the special guest, Lee Roy Parnell...
Ray calls Lee Roy over to the piano after the performance. Lee Roy had played on Ray's Lend Me Your Ears album in 1990. I knew this but during the performance of "Barbecue" and even with seeing Lee Roy standing among Ray's house band it never hit me until Ray and Lee Roy began talking. In the studio recording the main instrument is the harmonica. The first bit of conversation that Ray brings up is Lee Roy being a member of the Texas Songwriters Hall of Fame. Ray asks how he got from Texas to Nashville. Lee Roy describes his trek to Music City and how one of his first jobs came in a publishing house for Polygram. His first commercial recordings arrived in 1990 after having signed with Arista's relatively new country music imprint. The label had a lengthy history in pop music but in the early '90s the company branched out and in country music they benefited from the enormous sales and radio popularity of Lee Roy Parnell, Alan Jackson, the Brooks and Dunn duo, Pam Tillis, and Diamond Rio just to name several.
After Lee Roy spoke of his songwriting work at Polygram Ray brought up Tim Dubois and Arista Records. Lee Roy mentioned his record producer at the time, Barry Beckett. Lee Roy also mentioned that many of his own demo recordings winded up being placed on his albums. Ray brings up Merle Haggard and how inspirational, both musically and vocally, he happened to be for Lee Roy. This leads into a conversation about the mid '90s Merle Haggard tribute album; the title isn't given but it's Mama's Hungry Eyes: A Tribute to Merle Haggard; in which Lee Roy recorded "Workin' Man Blues" with Steve Wariner and Diamond Rio. The recording was credited to Jed Zeppelin (a pun on the rock band, Led Zeppelin) and in 1995 it received a CMA Award as Music Event of the Year. Ray and Lee Roy perform a really loose rendition of "Workin' Man Blues" where the music is front and center and high emphasis on the blues is in order. At various moments in the performance Lee Roy blends a number of verses but it doesn't take away from the overall performance. Ray does several piano solo's and Lee Roy counters these with his slide guitar solo's. It's such a loose interpretation with heightened music emphasis that the actual lyrics become secondary.
After the rousing duet concludes Lee Roy performs "Love Without Mercy", his sixth single release (and second Top-10), from 1992. Prior to the performance, though, he introduced an addition to the harmony singers. Lisa Stewart appeared along side Ray's trio of harmony singers for this performance as well as the next, "On the Road". After achieving considerable success in country music during the 1990s Lee Roy did an about face and traveled back to his earlier music influences and spent years outside the mainstream country music scene performing bluesy songs heavy with his famed slide guitar style. His proficiency on the guitar, especially the slide guitar, resulted in the famed Gibson guitar company manufacturing a line of Lee Roy Parnell guitars. Given the years spent performing in a bluesy fashion it impacted the way he performs the country music hits he had in the 1990s. This means that his performances of those two songs are dramatically different, vocally, in their execution compared to how they sounded in the early '90s.
After the performance from Lee Roy and the wild applause died down Ray closed the show performing "Abilene", a monster hit by the late George Hamilton, IV. Prior to the performance Ray took the time to show some pictures from the CabaRay interior which included an image of George Hamilton, IV along side several others.
And so with that Season Six comes to a close...keep in mind there are only 13 episodes in each of the CabaRay Nashville seasons. There hasn't been any information on Season Seven or when recording sessions will get underway. As soon as I find out anything about a Season Seven I'll blog about it, of course! Season Six began airing on April 7th...exactly three months ago. Since there isn't any concrete information about the future of the series I suspect Season's Six and Five will rerun on local PBS stations or air for the first time on newly added PBS stations. It's possible that the show won't be back with new episodes this calendar year. Again...if I find out anything I'll blog about it.
The last couple of blog entries I published were by design, actually. I knew the current season of Ray's television show was coming to a close and so I wanted to get back into the habit of blogging about other aspects of Ray's career since there won't be anymore episode recaps of his television program for awhile [~something that I love doing and something that's become a habit, actually~]; but anyway, it's going to be a little strange not having that rush of excitement I get each time I go to Ray's video site to see the latest episode of Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville. I'm already planning my next blog entry, though, so it isn't like I'm at a loss for things to spotlight in this fan created blog page. I make notes on paper (yes, even in the age of internet and keypads I still use pen and paper when I choose to) but I make notes about whatever aspect of Ray's career I'll be blogging about so that when I decide to get started on a blog entry all that's left for me to do is simply create the text of the blog entry and add images if I so desire.
Now, either in my next blog entry or in one that follows, I hope to have a link to audio footage of Ray's recent guest appearance at the Opry. Last week (July 3rd) Ray guest starred on the Tuesday Night Opry. WSM radio puts archive performances of each Opry broadcast onto their website. At last look (this morning) the most recent archive performance was the June 26th broadcast of the Opry which was a week before Ray's guest appearance. I'm thinking that the first Opry broadcasts for the month of July will appear on-line later this week after tonight's airing of the Grand Ole Opry but that's just my guess. Once the audio becomes available I'll provide a link.
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