A not so 'Bad Influence.' Robert Cray plays the Rio Saturday, May 5.
When Robert Cray plays a wailing blues guitar solo onstage, he steps away from the mic, closes his eyes and moves his lips. Then he just gets lost in the sound.
“I’m trying to play what comes to my head,” Cray tells Santa Cruz Weekly, “and I’m talking. It’s really physical too—shouting, and singing the lines that I’m playing and trying to make it make sense.”
In addition to his emotive guitar playing, Cray, a five-time Grammy winner, has a knack for singing R&B melodies so smooth they could bring Mr. T to tears. It’s Cray’s ability to focus on more than one musical element at once that has, in many ways, defined his career.
“I’m big into the R&B singers, and I love the blues guitar players,” he says. Cray plays the Rio on Saturday, May 5, ahead of the September release of his 21st album. Some songs on the as-yet-unnamed collection will combine Cray’s nascent interest in Latin rhythms with his tender voice and trademark blues licks.
Since their inception, Cray and his band have pulled from influences like Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King (a lifelong idol) and the Beatles, who inspired Cray to buy his first guitar when he was 12. Various jazz and gospel groups also shaped the Robert Cray Band sound since the beginning in the 1970s.
“We just played whatever we wanted to play,” Cray says, laughing. “Nowadays when you write songs, you don’t tell yourself what songs you’re going to write. You just write songs and let it come out as it may. It becomes your sound.”
It’s a one-of-a-kind sound too, filled with interesting dualities that haven’t gone unnoticed. In 2003 the New York Times called his voice “alternately smooth and craggy.” Guitar Player Magazine has lauded his ability to appeal to both blues and mainstream music fans. “Cray, who obviously is respected in blues circles, is a press darling and crossover smash,” writer Dan Forte wrote.
But if there’s one thing that sets Cray apart, it’s his ability to fuse sweet, bedroom-friendly R&B music with electric blues rock & roll. Cray can sing like Marvin Gaye or Al Greene and still shred the guitar like Eric Clapton without starting a new tune. Younger music fans may be familiar with rocker Ben Harper’s talent for delving into folk, reggae, gospel and blues in each album. Cray covers all that within one chorus.
He knows how to give a standard 12-bar blues song a soulful pop feel like he did in “Phone Booth,” off his 1983 album Bad Influence. Or he can bring blues elements to a soulful pop ballad as he did in 2003’s “Time Makes Two.” Cray has even brought all those elements together to create new sound inventions, like in 1990’s funk-infused “Consequences.”
The 58-year-old, who’s pleased to have a strong following, hasn’t exactly slipped under the radar. Last year, Cray joined the Blues Hall of Fame, and he regularly jams with legends like B.B. King as well as legendary contemporaries like Buddy Guy and Clapton, for whom he often opened in the ’80s.
It may seem strange, then, that the prolific artist isn’t even more well-known (where’s the nod from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?) or that he hasn’t altered the music scene in a more dramatic way. Why isn’t everyone crooning like Greene and simultaneously jamming like Clapton—or somehow else ripping off Clay’s style? Perhaps that’s because no one has figured out how.
Cray hasn’t forgotten to keep an eye on his forefathers. In 2004 and 2007, he played at Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, a benefit for addicts undergoing rehabilitation. There, he played alongside King, whose solos come across in brief spurts of emotional licks followed by musical rests. For Cray, there is always something to learn from following along with the master of vibratos and impeccable syncopation.
“B.B. King can speak to you and not have to say a whole lot,” Cray says. “He can say it just a few notes if he wants. It’s not always [about] the riff. It’s the space. It’s just getting your point across, and some people get their point across with a lot of words, and some people use just a few.”
So… which are you?
“I’m both,” Cray says with a quiet laugh. “It all depends on the song.”
Robert Cray Band
Saturday at 8pm
Rio Theatre
Tickets $35 /$47.50 at riotheatre.com
