Robert Cray August 12, 2011

Robert Cray’s This Time – the first studio album on singer-songwriter-guitarist Cray’s own imprint Nozzle Records, distributed by Vanguard Records – arrives at a vital juncture in the musician’s career, marked by creative renewal and a key reunion with an old performing partner.
The five-time Grammy Award winner summarized 35 years of mastery on the debut Nozzle release Live From Across the Pond (2006), an electrifying two-CD concert set drawn from a series of shows (opening for Eric Clapton) at London’s Royal Albert Hall. When the time came to follow up that widely praised collection with a studio recording, Cray viewed it as an opportunity to move his sound in other directions.
Blues is one of the foundations of our music, but it’s not all that we play,” Cray says. “When I first started playing guitar, I wanted to be George Harrison – that is, until I heard Jimi Hendrix. After that, I wanted to be Albert Collins and Buddy Guy and B.B. King. And then there are singers like O.V. Wright and Bobby Blue Bland. It’s all mixed up in there.”
He continues, “Every time somebody asks me about where my music comes from, I give them five or six different directions – a little rock, soul, jazz, blues, a little gospel feel. Then there are some other things that maybe fall in there every once in a while, like a little Caribbean flavor or something. You just never know. I always attribute it to the music we grew up listening to, and the radio back in the ‘60s. It’s pretty wide open. It’s hard to put a tag on it.”
Cray, who began 2009 with concert appearances in Brazil and Japan, will support This Time with shows around the country with his reconfigured band.