Hi, I'm Bill Ray.

BillRayDrums

Gold Member
Hello,
I've been a drummer for my entire life. Grew up in Jackson, MS in the 1970's and 80's and moved to California when I was 20. My upbringing was surrounded by musicians due to the fact my parents were the photography studio that Malaco Records employed for a lot of their album art. A lot of scary good drummers came out of Jackson! George Lawrence used to have a drum shop on Northview Drive and it was a hub of amazingness.

Anyhow, in my many years of playing I've had some interesting experiences in the drumming world.

I was Ike Turner's drummer from 2001-2007 and was there until the end. Even was present when he died in his house. Saw him take his final breath. We had a good run. Several memorable tours, met some hugely famous (and cool) people, played on a significant CD (2006 "Best Traditional Blues" Grammy) and got my mug in a Smithsonian TV special. (ep.1 Risin' With The Blues)

I decided in 2008 that I was going to try to "fly close to home" because I have a son (who seems to have a better concept at groove that I ever did at his age) and wanted to be part of his life.

For a time I was the webmaster for Supernatural Cymbals (2009-2012) then I moved on to run Not So Modern Drummer for about 3 years with George Lawrence.

So now I'm the web guy / graphic artist for http://stonecustomdrum.com and the story behind those drums is pretty awesome.

But while web development is something that I love and runs concurrent in so many ways to playing drums (the logic behind a lot of it) my first and primary function is to hit things with sticks and that's always gonna win out.

My band http://rdgrocks.com have been doing some pretty amazing gigs. Also, my website http://billraydrums.com has got a pretty large collection of the stuff I've done over the years. It's not a complete list of the albums I've done but a sort of "what can I remember?" list of projects.

Other things I do online for drumming- I'm in charge of the Facebook group "DRUM CHAT" (which I inherited, up to 3600 members now and growing) as well as I'm a moderator of http://reddit.com/r/drumming which is a "small but mighty" group of expats from the more popular /r/drums sub.

I'm always down to answer any questions.

I look forward to interacting with you guys here.
 
Bill forgot to mention that he's also a great guy!

Welcome!

Bermuda
 
Glad you are here Bill, look forward to learning from you
 
Welcome to the forum, Bill.

I've really enjoyed your contributions lately. I'm looking forward to more of your input.
 
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