Audrey Ray is a local country music singer-songwriter who has found a community in a somewhat unexpected place — metro Detroit’s alternative rock scene.
She has been recording new music at Saline’s Loft Recording Studio with producer Tim Patalan, who also plays bass in the band Sponge. Her first collaboration with Patalan, a single about heartbreak called “Temporary Fix,” is out now, with another due in late spring or early summer. And thanks to Patalan’s connection, she’s set to appear on the upcoming album by alternative rock band Taproot, due in late September.
On Friday, Ray will perform at Flint’s Machine Shop opening for Garth Brooks’s daughter Allie Colleen, with a live band rounded out by Paul Tiseo from the metal band Theandric and Dale King of the Japanese-American rock band October Babies.
“It’s a very, very awesome dynamic,” Ray says of her “little bit country, little bit rock ’n’ roll” collaborations. “Growing up, my dad was in a southern rock band, and so I’ve always gravitated to all kinds of genres.”
Ray says that she felt an immediate connection with Patalan and his brother Andy, who both co-own the Loft, which was built in a converted barn on their family farm and where hundreds of bands have cut records since the 1980s.
“In the first meeting I had with them, they got me. They understood me,” she says. “You know, musicians are crazy creatures. And Tim and I just really understood each other, like, on a level — musically, and as an artist, and just as a person.”
Patalan is also producing Taproot’s new record SC\SSRS (pronounced “scissors”), which is expected in September. That led to a collaboration with Ray called “LOVE W\THOUT YOU,” which Taproot frontman Stephen Richards recently told WRIF dates back to 2007 and as a country-tinged ballad is a departure of the band’s nü-metal sound.
“I was so honored,” Ray says of the collaboration. It’s the band’s first record in more than a decade.
Ray and Patalan played some shows together last summer including Royal Oak’s Arts, Beats & Eats festival, and she says she’s looking forward to playing more together this year, as well as writing and recording more songs.
“I’ve always been a songwriter, writing songs about things that happened to my life or things that my family went through, or a friend,” she says. “And that’s a lot of what Tim is about — just the honest, playing music for the music’s sake, rather than writing for the Billboard charts ... at the end of the day, if it’s something that doesn't mean something to me, I wouldn’t even record it.”
She adds, “Music is so universal, when we’re in the room together, we’re playing the music for music’s sake, and it just works so well.”
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