Michael Ray didn’t have a choice. Not really. Raised in the heart of Central Florida, where horses and gators cluster, country music was always in the air. Even now, whether you’re in truck flying down a backroad, sitting on a porch, a boat out in the swamp, someone’s kitchen or just doing 60 hours in a 40-hour week, country’s the sound floating on the breeze.
That sound pulled the always-listening kid into songs, tumbling Telecaster guitar licks and a no-big-deal blue-collar heroism that didn’t exist in any other genre. Sure, Ray liked Southern rock, pop and what his peers were listening to on the radio. But when you factor in a grandfather who worked hard, but lived to get cleaned up and go out where the music was, as well as a father who put together a band who played anywhere people came to dance, drink, celebrate or forget, it was only a matter of time. Sunshine Opry. Local bars. Picking parties. It was all right there in and around Eustis, population just under 24,000.
