Photo credit: Curtis Knapp
Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
I used to buy Ford Econoline extension vans for my touring van. Although since the 2000’s, I have mainly committed to renting vans when I go on the road to avoid high payments and the maintenance of the vehicle on the road.
The last touring van I bought I put 500,000 miles on it. Itss name was Nellie Bell and boy did she have a story to tell. It was all white and I drove it for about 18 years so it was well known and associated with me for a long time.
My best breakdown story was when I was touring in Milwaukee. I was right in the middle of rush hour on I-94 and the van just came to complete halt on its own. So the police had to come to rescue and remove us from traffic. The squad car gave us all a ride to the gig, the tow truck towed the van to the gig and we proceeded to unload the van and have a gig just like nothing was wrong. The guys got a big kick out of it and all took pictures of themselves in the back of the squad car and posted it on social media. I was quite upset and didn’t want anyone to know about it at all hahaha probably one of my most embarrassing moments.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
When I was a young man I thought I was bulletproof and I didn’t care much about what we ate, slept, or played. I was just out there to go to play and have a good time. Although today, in light of my age and everything else that I have been through, I try to be very health conscious and try to eat healthy and sensible on the road. It is quite hard to do sometimes, by the way.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
Nowadays, after more than 50 years of playing experience, I realize that I don’t break many strings anymore. I change strings after two gigs on the road just to feel like they’re fresh and that I can go for the bins that I want to go for and not have a concern that my strings are not fresh or might not hold up to the tension. I am a GHS string endorsee. The strings I use are GHS 10 gauge burnished nickel. I really like the elasticity of the string and the sound of nickel. They have a very pleasant and responsive tone and they last quite long so that’s why it’s my choice.
Where do you rehearse?
A lot of things have changed from the time I started until now. In my first band I worked with the same guys for over 20 years. We lived like family – always together, always rehearsing in the same place at home, usually in the garage. Nowadays, because of the way things are, sometimes you have to rotate many musicians because of schedules and nowadays most guys play with more than one band. So we schedule rehearsal according to who’s playing and the most centrally located place between where everyone lives. So it varies from time to time. These days not too much drugs and drinking anymore, just old musicians and old friends getting together to try to make music.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
One of the first songs that I wrote was entitled “Me And My Baby”. The hook line was “Me And My Baby Got A Good Thing Going On Me And My Baby Our Love Is Too Good To Be Wrong.”
Describe your first gig.
Me and my brother Steve and my brother Carl first formed the McCray Brothers somewhere around ‘75 or ‘76 and we played our first gig in 1977. We played a wedding reception for a young couple, some friends of ours that went to our church and decided to get married.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
My last non-musical day job was working for General Motors Saginaw, steering gear division. I worked there for almost 12 years and that was the only job I ever had beside being a bike mechanic at a JCPenney Warehouse in the middle and late seventies up until 1978 when I hired into GM.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
Well the way I see it, the way things are set up now means you can’t make any money on your music anymore. You give you your music away and you make your money on your live draw ticket sales for concerts. Ever since Spotify and all the streaming apps took over the music from the musicians the pay is so low they make it hard for you to earn money playing music. I think for a million streams the pay is $3,000 for 1 million streams that’s a very uneven playing field and makes it virtually impossible to earn money on your music.
But to the contrast of that I think that is why concert tickets are so outrageously priced. When I first started going to concerts in the seventies my first concerts were Chaka Khan and Rufus, Larry Graham and Graham Central Station, Prince, Rick James, Brass Construction, and Confunction and whoever else was working in the business. The concert ticket price range from $3.50 to $5 and that was to see anybody in the business. When Stevie Wonder came, he was a Saginaw native at one time, tickets went to $7.50 and people said that was so high that they were going to stop going to concerts hahaha that’s how much it have changed now. It’s nothing to pay seven or eight hundred dollars now or even more for concert tickets for some people that’s over half a month’s rent payment.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
When I started out in music I was so eager to have a chance at recording and possibly have a career in music I didn’t concern myself with a lot of the legalities. I thought that everybody was on my team and that it was a concerted effort all with one goal in mind. Well that happened to be one of my worst mistakes and took me years to unravel what it took me only a few minutes to get myself into. So I advise all young musicians that the music business is 90% business and 10% music and whatever you do, don’t commit to anything until you run it past your trusted legal advisor.