Today’s pick for Fresh Music Friday is the latest single from Michael Ray- called Holy Water- off of his latest EP- Higher Education released in August. I love a country song that tells a good story- and this one is interesting!
According to The Boot– here is what Michael Ray says about the song:
“I was very lucky to be raised around all my family … and growing up and hearing their stories … Grandpa’s been riding the same streets I’m riding, but he did it back in the day when there wasn’t a lot of people watching him, you know?
And so, there’s this story I found out one time we were having a get-together at my dad’s house. My grandmother asked to do a shot, and so I did a shot with my grandmother, and when she set it down, she goes [to my grandfather], “Amos, this tastes like the moonshine we used to run.”
And I was like, “Well, you can’t just say that and let it go. You’ve got to tell me.” And, so, yeah, my grandparents were running moonshine through Florida and up the East Coast as a Bonnie-and-Clyde duo until, I think, they got word that they might have been noticed a little bit …
The church we grew up in was this tiny, white church on the end of this two-lane dirt road … [The nearby community center] was my great-grandmother’s elementary school, and then her dad was one of the people that built the church. So my dad preached at it for a long time; I grew up there, my dad grew up there …
I miss old story-songs, you know? And I wanted some old Jerry Reed fill, Florida swamp — just something that made me feel like I was back in the swamp of Florida when I played it live — something for the show, but also just something that was like, man, this is a stamp of where I’m from. And [“Holy Water”] is about that little white church and my grandparents …
As soon as I heard it, I was like, “Oh, this is, first off, exactly what I’ve been looking for, what I’ve been trying to nail here,” but also, like, it’s that story-song. It put my mind at Cassia Baptist Church and put my mind at my great-grandma’s little yellow house … You don’t forget your grandmother telling you that they ran moonshine.”
What a story!! Listen to the new song below!
– Kati
