Still Playin’ After All These Years

By Joe Earle

Tom Gray first got paid to make music when he was in high school. By his 20s, he was playing keyboards and touring with a 10-piece soul band. “That was really the proving grounds,” he said. “You were working six nights a week, four sets a night.”

Although Gray’s 66 now, he’s still making his living playing music. His current band, an Atlanta-based blues band named Delta Moon, regularly performs in towns around the southeastern U.S. and even abroad. The band recently wrapped up a tour in Spain and Italy.

There was a time, Gray admits, when he thought it seemed laughable to say he’d be playing music in bars past age 40. “I thought that was old,” he said during a chat at a coffeeshop in Decatur, where he now lives. How does he feel now about taking the stage at his age? “Actually, I feel good. I enjoy it still. I have to be more careful and I have to work harder than when I was young, but it’s still