SUGARAY RAYFORD - HUMAN DECENCY

Sugaray Rayford, a powerhouse of modern blues and soul, is a musician whose magnetic presence and soul-stirring vocals have captivated audiences worldwide. With a career steeped in the rich traditions of the blues, he infuses his music with a contemporary edge, creating a sound that is both timeless and fresh. As we delve into his world, we uncover the stories behind the songs and the soulful essence that defines him. Mostly we talked about his upcoming release Human Decency.

WORDS: Colin Campbell PICS: Allison Morgan

“I’m Sugar Ray Rayford just a poor kid from East Texas. I grew up both in the country and the ghetto and found a love of music from my mother. That’s my backstory. United States Marine, singer, and musician!”

What made you want to be a musician in the first place?

“My mother and seeing people sing in church, it was the emotions that it brought to other people. I used to think the most powerful thing was to watch my mother, the few times that I can remember, go somewhere, and sing and reduce her church into just unbelievable tears or unbridled joy just with the power of her voice!

That was amazing to a little kid, well, as a big kid now! you do that in your live shows.”

Your live shows are an event in themselves, you just give everything to your performance, I say, as a great fan. Suga responds with his usual quick humour:

“I try to enjoy myself and I’ve always figured that if I’m enjoying myself, then that energy is infectious and it’s become not a concert, but a party! There’s a time and places to do concerts. Usually if I’m at a festival or a theatre, people pay their money and I want to entertain them. Yes, there’s people before, right across the street from me, from the club I bounced in, which was a dance club with live bands, there was a little place called The Alley, and every Wednesday night, which is the one night that I was by myself, they would have blues bands come in. So, this one band I really liked, it was called Ronnie Lane and the Texas Twisters, and those guys would come into that little place, and it would be packed, it would be jumping, and that music sounded so much like gospel. I used to catch myself walking across the street, there’s this big pane window in the front that you can look in, like looking over the band’s shoulders, that feeling, was that same feeling that I got from gospel down in my soul. So, it was like, I can do this and get that feeling back without lying to anyone or myself, that’s what really drove me to the blues. But it took a while, because the first band back might have been a big R&B band, which might have been a corporate band, and I did that for a couple of years before I really found my way back to the blues in earnest.”

Songwriting processes always matter, what does Sugar say about it all:

“It changes depending upon people you work with, like with Eric Corne. He’s like a poet, well more than that. He’s got this way with putting words together, like I can give him an abstract thought, and he’ll come back with it. I’m like, that’s exactly what I was thinking. He’s just got that, and so with him, I’m not doing that much, because all it is just thoughts on which way do we want to go, and what do we want to talk about. When I was with Ralph Carter on my first two solo albums, Ralph, and I, realized I can just close my eyes because I see a movie in my head, and put that into lyrics. Give me the microphone, let me hear the music, let me close my eyes, and let me just cut off what’s off the top of my head, and it’s unbelievable. It’s usually very apparent, and there’s a set of little things here and there that we go back and fix. So, with that one, with the process with Ralph, it’s more creative for me, because I’m just like dream walking. With Eric Corne, it’s more industrial. It’s very ordered so it took me a while to know his processing. The first album, we got a Grammy nomination, but it took me a while to get used to his format. So each time is different, but the one thing that I constantly do is I still write in my journal at least once a week, things that have to be altered, stuff like that, because those are where all my material would come from, down the line, and where those were the songs were cut from.”

Tell us about the new release Human Decency:

“At first, I want to say a big shout out to Alex Walsh from Canada, who came up with the concept of the album cover, which I really loved. I love the colours. I love the playfulness. I love it when you open up the CD and you pull the CD out, how it looks like little kids drew the things about the songs. It really works well with the human decency idea we had, and it pops, and it gives me this warm feeling. I told him, it reminds me of the days of Funkadelic when they used to hand draw the album covers. It’s the world now, and people have lost their damn mind, that’s the theme of the album really. This is a more politically charged release. I wanted to talk about this planet, and I really wanted to talk about what the album is, Human Decency, because it seems like it’s been lost in translation. Human decency is beyond eroding. It’s sad because I grew up being taught that there’s nothing wrong with debate. That’s what always made America great was there was different debate, different sides. There’s always more than one way to go do something, and it is sad that our society, and again, not just America has lost that art. Social media has a lot to answer for. When I was a kid, even if we didn’t agree, we could have a conversation and still walk away with our own thoughts and beliefs, but we used to have the decency to at least listen to the argument on the other side. Now it’s just like, you don’t agree with me, then fuck you. Well, do you know what? Then you’re blind because it takes two eyes to understand depth and colour. I just don’t understand it, and I have a feeling that we’ll get to a point where society mentally will crush back in on decency! We have lost our human decency, and I wanted to talk about it.”

Track talk:

Failing Upwards: “That is one that came from Eric, but once I read the lyrics and we were in the studio with the guys working out how we were going to play this, I was just like, this is brilliant. Failing Upwards is corporate America. The CEOs have had a 1,200 increase in income. If you and I get fired from a job, we don’t even get serviced. We get a two-week check, and they send us on our merry way. How is it that the guy in front of me, who has done no goddamn work, who got in because he knew somebody can get fired and get a $5 million bonus ladder, golden parachute to tidy him over! What I’m saying, though, is how unproportionate the amount of work the poor does and what they’re being paid, and then what the rich does to become richer. This world, not just America, this world has been around a long time, but the amount of people there, over two billion people on this planet will implode, it cannot work. That’s what it’s about, that’s my thoughts. I got very political on this album, and I wasn’t holding any punches.”

For further information see website: sugarayrayford.com