Robert Cray
For thirty-plus years Robert Cray has laid down track after track of good-time, uptown, low-down blues. He’s won five Grammys and been nominated an astounding 13 times. What he hasn’t done is work this magic on a full-length concert CD, where the fires that drive him onstage burn on disc as well.
Not, that is, until now.
On this year’s Grammy nominated The Robert Cray Band: Live From Across The Pond, the first release on Cray’s own Nozzle Records imprint, the celebrated triple-threat singer, guitar slinger, and songwriter presents the best moments from his week-long run at London’s Royal Albert Hall in May 2006, opening for friend and mutual admirer Eric Clapton.
From classic titles (Phone Booth) to highlights from his latest releases (Poor Johnny), whether addressing timeless themes of heartache and romance (The Things You Do To Me) or this morning’s headlines (Twenty), Cray delivers on a promise he’s been making since his first trip into the studio. That promise - to record himself and his band when inspired by their fans at the instant of performance - pays off on Live.
And it pays double, by the way, on two CDs, each packed with about as much intense, emotional playing as a listener can handle in one sitting — all of it a pristine reproduction of what transpired under the spotlights, without a single edit or punch-in.
Once the rush of Live begins to settle down, though, it’s natural to wonder why Cray took this long to document his stage chops. Ask him, and his answer is disarmingly candid. "In the past, whenever we’ve known that we were going to record ourselves onstage, we’ve just gotten too psyched up to sound as strong as we normally do," he says. "You go into it feeling like you’ve got this one shot, and that can be challenging. I’ve actually lost my voice from the anticipation."
Live was different in that it draws from seven consecutive shows at the Royal Albert Hall, which allowed Cray and his road-seasoned band - keyboardist Jim Pugh, bassist Karl Sevareid, and drummer Kevin Hayes - to feel more at home from one night to the next. "After just a short while we weren’t even thinking about the recording," he explains. "We were only thinking about the music and about playing at this particular venue."
Cray and his crew were in fact familiar with the Royal Albert Hall, having played there more than a few times with Clapton over the years. That, plus Cray’s affection for London in general, contributed to the vibe. It’s a paradox, perhaps, that as musicians relax, they lock tighter with each other and play with deeper feeling - yet the evidence is there, on each track of Live.
When the London dates were done, Cray returned to the States and began going over the results. What he heard was, he admits, an eye-opener in some ways. "When I’m playing up there, I don’t really catch everything that’s going on. But when I sat back and listened to the tapes, it was like, 'Wow, these guys are great!'"
Aside from their musicianship, the key to Cray and his band is their history. Through more than a thousand gigs played around the world, they’ve locked in a sound that’s elegant and direct, searing and smooth.