About Bill Ray

All about me...

Bill Ray pretty much showed up on this plane of existence with sticks in his hands. Born into an hyperartistic and ubercreative family of photographers, musicians and scientists, at 15 months old would would stumble upon his father's drums. Since then, he has gone on to reside/play in over 20 countries, played on 150+ albums including Ike Turner's 2007 Grammy-Award winning "Risin' With The Blues".

Currently seeking gigs, International or Domestic

Catch Me on the Smithsonian Channel!

Check your local listings

Recently The Smithsonian Channel created a series called "Sound Revolution" detailing the birth of Soul Music as we know it, and narrated by none other than Morgan Freeman (another Mississippian).

I'm proud to have been featured so prominently in this historical piece, as they chose to use my drum solo as a highlight of Ike's diversity in music.

Ike Turner

2007 Best Traditional Blues Grammy Winner

In 2001 my longtime friend Kevin Cooper told me that Ike Turner was looking for a drummer, and I jumped on that prospect and went over an auditioned. Ike referred to me as "The Drummer of my Soul"; we were interconnected by that fine thread of unconsciousness that can't very easily be defined. When Ike was upset, I felt it like a hurricane.

We had a great run; I played on the Live At Montreux DVD and CD package, The Live At Northsea Jazz DVD/CD and also on the Grammy-Award winning album "Risin' With The Blues". What a gift it was to learn from the man.

The Odd Get Even

Smooth Jazz meets Improvisation, only backwards.

The Odd Get Even is a project with Pianist / Composer Bill Cornish. The tunes start off as improvised drum "solos" which are actually my sketching out a drum part for something I'm just clicking along to in my head. There's an organic nature to all of this that lends itself to some pretty cool arrangements.

Mike Watson

20 years in the making!

We are recording an album of songs that are extremely musically dense and challenging in the vein of The Mahavishnu Orchestra and Frank Zappa. Other offshoots of this are projected to be a drummer's minus-one track playalong + an instructional method book to accompany it.

This music was originally written for a group of musicians who ended up becoming a band called "The Greyboy All-Stars" and has lay dormant for 20 years. Until now.

Notorious Albums....

Albums that speak to me.

In 30+ years of music making there have been several albums that have always stuck fresh in my mind.

These are some of those albums.

Billy's Beats

Real Organic Drum Tracks

Whenever I record for people I always like to get my drum tones dialed in, and what a better way to do it than to simply play drums. Only when I play, there is a purpose in mind and that is to create a unique drum part that can be looped, written to, etc.

Nice World

Dangerous Music for Seditious Minds.

Being that I'm in San Diego a lot of the time I get a lot of time to work with such creative minds as Marcelo Radulovich, James Call, Joyce Rooks, Henry Wessmann and many others in a project called "Nice World".

Nice World is weird. It's all about freedom to go "blarch" and "blech" if we want; we can zig instead of zag. None of it rarely makes sense, but that's what it's supposed to not do anyway. It's unbridled, unfiltered creativity that is captured with great mics and a trained ear. It's everything and nothing all at once.

Taye Drums

Sound amazing, play awesome!

I've been playing Taye Drums since 2003 and owned kits in Maple (Studio Maple), Basswood (Tour Pro) and Birch (Studio Birch). All of them have been stellar sounding kits and they just feel good. Every engineer who has placed mics on them has great things to say about their sound.

Please check out my gear page for more information on these great drums.