By ALANA MITCHELSON
Country rocker Bill Gray has just released his first CD of original material and has a suitcase of hundreds of songs he’s been writing since his teens up his sleeve.
After contesting in the competitive Champion of Champions 2013 in South Australia, Gray was awarded the Rocky Page Memorial Scholarship.
He spent two weeks at the Academy of Country Music in Tamworth, NSW, being mentored by some of the biggest names in Australian country music. He even got the chance to meet one of his greatest role models in music, Kasey Chambers.
“I’ll always remember the advice Kasey gave me over lunch one day,“ Gray recalled.
“She said ‘the squeaky wheel gets the most oil’. You have to pester people to play shows and the ones that do well are the ones who don’t take no for an answer and don’t give up.”
Another piece of advice he has always valued was that “success in the music industry is about 30 per cent singing and the rest is how hard you try”.
“In the music industry you see a lot of people plateau and bail out of the circuit. You might drive a long way and not sell any CDs and it would be much easier to stay home and get a job at the local supermarket,” he said.
“A lot of people will try to talk you out of it and you just have to block out everything that’s negative and hold onto the idea in your head of what you want to achieve.”
Gray’s dedication to music is such that he played more than 250 shows in 2013 alone. Now with a compilation of original releases under his belt, Gray hopes to tour larger festivals over the next two years to build wider recognition for his unique material.
At the Motor City Music Festival, he will play a mixture of originals and covers to test the waters.
“When I chose the songs to put on my first CD, I picked what I believed were the best,” he said.
“I’m confident that my originals will be really well received in amongst the Johnny Cash and Alan Jackson covers. I think I’ve got some really good material.”
In the months ahead, Gray will release his first single and later the music video to his song The Car.
While his focus in 2016 will be largely on festival tours, Gray hopes to begin writing songs for other musicians or approach them with material from his song archives.
Motor City Music Festival is at the Geelong Showgrounds between 11 to 13 March.
Click below to listen to a showreel of Bill Gray’s originals.
