Jeff Ray Discusses His Pandemic Album, In the Fire

Over the summer, local jam band Jeff Ray and the Stakes released In the Fire, an album that was developed during the pandemic. I spoke with Jeff Ray about the group, their inspiration, and the Twin Cities music scene.

Jeff Ray and the Stakes at the Hook and Ladder Theater and Lounge in South Minneapolis, where they celebrated the release of In the Fire. Jeff Ray

T. A. Wardrope (TCG): Can you tell us a little bit about the history of writing In the Fire?

Jeff Ray: The album is a pandemic album in the truest sense. Most of the songs were written in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic. I’m a health care worker by day and a musician by night, and the geographical area [where] I work was also affected by the civil unrest after the murder of George Floyd, meaning we had more patients and fewer providers of services. We were in full survival mode. My wife is also a teacher and we have school-age children in a different district who for quite a while were learning at home while both of us had to go to work. So, I never experienced the “shut down” or “work at home” period of the pandemic. Instead, I was stressed like I never could have imagined and leaned on songwriting as a means to cope.

Normally I would perform the songs live to flesh out the changes and to get the band comfortable with the songs. But without live shows, we resorted to playing front yard concerts whenever possible, and went into the studio in 2021 with very little rehearsal. It led to a more open session with song changes added during the recording sessions and actually made the songs more fluid from a production standpoint. I think the result was actually pretty amazing.

TCG: Your band has deep roots in several local music scenes. How does Jeff Ray and the Stakes connect with the local music culture? I would imagine the West Bank connection is pretty strong!

Jeff: We are particularly connected to the Twin Cities roots music scene, which is historically connected to the West Bank and is nowadays carried on by radio stations like KFAI and venues like the 331 Club and the Hook and Ladder that have stayed connected to that scene. Around that historic West Bank scene, there is a strong undercurrent of blues music, which has helped us branch out into other venues in Minnesota beyond Minneapolis and St. Paul, and we have received a lot of support from the Minnesota Blues Society.

Beyond that, we have started to connect a lot more with the jam band scene and rock venues. We straddle a lot of different styles with our music, which can be challenging when trying to describe our style or scene, but that also allows us to play a folk fest, a blues fest, or a rock fest and feel equally comfortable. I would say this connection happens because we focus on playing original music in a completely homegrown Minnesota way, while paying homage to the traditions of folk, blues, and rock.

TCG: What are some differences between your solo work and your work with the Stakes?

Jeff: I actually haven’t recorded any new solo work for over 10 years now because I enjoy playing with others so much. I would say that my solo work has historically been much more focused on complex guitar compositions in many alternate guitar tunings. When playing solo you have a lot of freedom to take sharp left and right turns in the music, and you can write a song without regard to how someone else may follow the song.

However, playing with a band like the Stakes, I think a little more about “How will the song work in a live setting?” and “Where are the windows and doors that allow us to stretch out during a jam?” So, the songs with the Stakes tend to be a little more traditional in their chord structure and have more recurring themes that the band can latch onto. I think that pressure of having to play with others and compose for other musicians is a good challenge to have and sort of keeps me from getting too “out there” with my compositions.

TCG: Your press release for In the Fire talked about reviving the “album experience.” What does that mean to you?

Jeff: I really believe in the importance of the album in a musician’s overall work. Just like a song is a composition with a unique feel and meaning to it, albums represent a snapshot of the artist’s current “feel” of the music and can convey an overall vibe or impression to the listener. I worry that with a new focus by musicians to release more frequent singles, rather than full-length albums, we are losing that superstructure of the album experience. It is likely that the current nature of how people consume music—things like subscription streaming and YouTube videos, etc.—is compelling musicians to move toward single releases.

I think In the Fire is a really good snapshot of where we are as a band, shows our overall feel and approach to how we perform, and takes the listener on a journey through what we’ve experienced in the past few years. I think that when someone throws on In the Fire a decade or two from now, they will get a good picture of what it felt like as a musician in 2020–2021 during a global pandemic. It’s kind of like you know when you hear an album from the ’70s or ’60s; that’s the album experience.

TCG: So, there’s a bit of a “supernatural” aspect to playing the blues in America. Any thoughts on that? Do the crossroads have a specific GPS location, or are there a certain set of criteria for finding the perfect crossroads? Asking for a friend.

Jeff: Funny you mention the crossroads. I have a memory of when I was a really young kid watching the movie Crossroads with one of my older brothers. When the scene came up with Ralph Macchio standing at the crossroads playing his guitar and the devil shows up, my brother turned to me and told me that I had to play the blues. I kind of laughed because it’s obviously folklore, but there is a spiritual component to the blues.

My favorite Calcutta slide guitarist, Debashish Bhattacharya, told me that every culture has their own “blues.” The blues to me represent a connection to the real world. Some historic styles of music have a purpose of trying to connect to God or the sublime, or to act as a tool for social cohesion, but not necessarily an expression of an individual’s drive, motivation, or spirit. The blues is simply an individual describing their own experience in connection to the real world. It’s a very individual style of music. By that definition, the great British songwriters are their own culture’s blues musicians, and the great D’Gary is Madagascar’s blues musician, and the list goes on and on.

The deal with the devil is the decision to give in to the dark side for short-term gain. Some musicians have done that. So, all that aside, I’m a blues musician for two reasons: I am influenced by the cultural blues music of America, but probably more importantly I play music that expresses my own soul and my own experience as it relates to the real world around me. I guess that means that blues musicians are also folk musicians. Maybe that’s why Chess Records released the Real Folk Blues series of records in the 1960s—they understood the connection between blues and folk music.

You can find In the Fire and learn more about Jeff Ray and the band at JeffRayMusic.com.