See the Country Music Hall of Fame member, Ray Stevens, kick off the final season of concerts at the CabaRay showroom. The final season kicks off on March 16th and there will be a total of five concerts from Ray during the month of March. Ray will appear in concert on March 16th, 21st, 23rd, 28th, and 30th. The concert season will run through December 2024 at which time the showroom will close. As far as I know there hasn't been any plans for what will occupy the showroom in the years to come. It'll more than likely remain under Ray's ownership as a place that he'll perform occasional concerts at and more than likely he'll have the showroom a destination for recording artists to perform at while they're on tour. The news of the final season of concerts broke last month. In case it's all new to you I'd suggest you read a news announcement HERE. That link will take you to the CabaRay webpage. Once there you'll be able to read the announcement as well as browse the site and perhaps decide to purchase concert tickets for an upcoming show in 2024.
The photo of Ray that you see in the upper right is from induction night at the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2019. In addition to the plaque that is placed inside the Hall of Fame building each member also receives a gold medallion. In each successive year following the creation of the gold medallion ceremony it's encouraged that Hall of Fame members return each year, wearing their medallions, to witness the induction of new members into the Hall of Fame. See the previous paragraph for a link to the CabaRay webpage.
Hello Ray Stevens fans!! I felt like doing a visual promo for one of the four CD's in Ray's 2021 box set, Iconic Songs of the 20th Century. As you can see it's the bluegrass CD titled Melancholy Fescue. It had been awhile since I had given some attention to that particular 2021 release. The main focal point of this blog entry, however, centers around a radio appearance from Ray Stevens on February 12 last week. It was the day after the Super Bowl as you'll hear when you listen to the interview. Bill Cody hosts a morning radio program on 650 WSM radio and it has a simulcast on television. There wasn't any sort of alert that Ray would be a guest on Bill's radio program and so I wasn't able to write any kind of blog entry promoting the appearance. I found out yesterday and I shared the YouTube link to several people that I know of who are as much a fan of Ray Stevens as I happen to be. As is the case with almost every interview that features Ray it's an up-tempo, light conversation filled with jokes or whimsical phrases. When you listen to the interview you'll discover that there will be some major activity taking place in Ray's career come the summer of 2024. There are actually two breaking news releases in the interview. The first is the completed production of a music video with the resident pianist at Ray's CabaRay showroom, John Jonethis. Ray didn't reveal when the video would be released. He says he'll be in the video but he didn't say whether he'd be a vocalist for John's performance or if he'd simply appear in the video in a non-singing role.
The second breaking news announcement during the interview was the upcoming production of all-new episodes of CabaRay Nashville!! Ray revealed starting July of this year he'll be taping all kinds of footage for 26 new episodes of the half hour television series. The program had been on hiatus/out of production since 2018. There were 78 half hour episodes produced, initially, of Ray's half hour television series. The series first aired in the latter half of 2015 on RFD-TV and then in first-run syndication on local PBS stations. The first 26 half hour episodes aired on RFD-TV, titled Ray Stevens' Nashville, and then 52 half hour episodes aired in PBS syndication often on Saturday or Sunday afternoon or, in some markets, evening time-slots week, as Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville.
The PBS airings were scattered all over the local landscape and it was difficult for a lot of fans to see the program due to it not airing in national syndication. The show would air in local television markets on PBS meaning that fans in one State were able to see the program whereas fans in another State might've not had any PBS affiliate airing the show. The final handful of episodes were taped early in 2018 at the CabaRay showroom. Ray eventually brought all of the episodes to his YouTube channel and he premiered an episode every week on the channel. These YouTube airings were, for many fans, the first time they'd seen the PBS episodes given how scattered the airings/availability had been. Since the episodes of his TV show are part of his YouTube channel there's no reason why any fan with internet access hasn't watched all the episodes by now.
Now, with the announcement that there will be 26 additional episodes produced, that'll bring the overall total number of episodes to 104. It wasn't revealed if these additional episodes will air on television or if they'll air on his YouTube channel once a week. There's a lot of information we still don't know but isn't it fun knowing that Ray will be producing episodes of the TV show again?
In the interview with Bill Cody you'll want to start the video clip at the 37 minute, 11 second mark which is where Ray's portion of the show begins. Now, of course, you can listen to the entire video upload with Bill's other guests, too, but if you're just wanting to hear Ray's portion of the show it begins at 37 minutes, 11 seconds.
Hello fans of Ray Stevens!! Over the course of the last several days there had been several new articles posted online focusing on the upcoming final concert season at the CabaRay showroom. The 2024 season gets underway next month...exactly one month from today. The first concert of the season is scheduled to happen on March 16, 2024. Now, in case you've been following his social media, then you're aware that Ray opened the CabaRay for a special Valentine's Day concert a couple of days ago. It was a one night event and, as previously mentioned, the full 2024 concert season gets underway on March 16th. Ray will perform at the CabaRay on Thursday and Saturday nights. The Thursday concerts are scattered throughout the season but the Saturday concerts will be an every week thing. There are some Thursday events at the CabaRay that center around The Indie Country Showdown. So, once you visit Ray's main CabaRay webpage and search for concert dates make sure the selection is for the Ray Stevens concert. I say that because I figure most of you are going to want to show up for a concert from Ray...but, if you prefer to show up for one of the Thursday nights that The Indie Country Showdown will be taking place you're perfectly free to make the choice. You can read all about the 2024 season of concerts by clicking HERE.
In case you're wondering there isn't a CD single of "If Jesus Is a Stranger". This song and a couple of other releases have been appearing on various digital music sites with an accompanying photo. The photo's are used for publicity/promotional purposes only...there isn't a physical copy of a CD single.
The CabaRay final season was the subject of a story on local Nashville television station, WTVF, Channel 5. Well, at first, a transcript/printed copy of the report appeared online and then the televised report shown up on YouTube. I'm not going to provide a link to the TV station's webpage. I realize that with so many fans out there having various operating systems bringing them their online content that the TV station's webpage may react differently depending on what device a fan uses. So, then, I'm going to provide a link to the YouTube video. I'm including a link due to the fact that a lot of us like to see Ray on camera talking, or, listening to his voice on a radio program as he's being interviewed. The video is three minutes in length. The TV station doesn't allow embedded video content to be shared and so I'm going to provide a link.. click HERE. The link should take you to the YouTube video but just in case it doesn't you can always Google the phrase 'Ray Stevens + WTVF' and among the search results will be the recent video clip, as of this writing.
Hello fans of Ray Stevens!! We welcome in the month of February with some exciting news. Ray's current music video, "Since Bubba Changed His Name to Charlene", has officially reached the half a million unique views plateau. As of this writing the unique views are sitting at 502,346. Although I hadn't been writing any blog entries displaying the progress of the music video's unique views I would often check in and take note of whatever the latest numbers shown. A couple of months ago on November 16, 2023 to be specific the music video had reached 369,028 unique views. The video was uploaded onto YouTube on October 5, 2023 and so more than a month after it had made it's debut it was already well over 300,000. I checked the numbers during early December 2023 and it was sitting at 455,431 unique views on December 9th. Several days ago on January 22, 2024 the unique views count was sitting at 491,691 and so I had a feeling that the music video would reach half a million at some point and it officially reached that plateau late last night. I took note of it and it was sitting at 501,601 unique views right around this time Wednesday night. As pointed out at the top of this blog entry it's now sitting at 502,346.
As of this writing this song only exists as a music video and as a digital download. An image of Ray with his hand covering his mouth, to convey a shocked expression, is being used as a promo picture for the digital download. There isn't a CD hardcopy available for those of you out there that might be curious/wondering. In fact, as of this writing, there hasn't been any information on any future comedy albums...and if any would be released I'm sure that this song will be among the track list.
