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Nashville artist Boo Ray will be releasing the third installment in his ‘BooCoo Amigos’ 7inch duet series, with celebrity chef Sean Brock via Soundly Music. The digital release will be arriving July 27th followed by the physical vinyl release on August 24th. The 7inch features featuring two original songs “Saint Misbehavin’” and “Soul Food Cookin.” The vinyl is currently available for pre-order HERE.
Prior releases in the ‘BooCoo Amigos’ series include duets with Lilly Winwood (Americana singer and daughter of Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Steve Winwood) and Elizabeth Cook. Cowboys & Indians called the Lilly Winwood duet “Hard to Tell,” “a fun, whimsical track that utilizes its steel guitar, organ, and bluesy guitar licks to emphasize Winwood’s unique voice and Ray’s signature eccentric style.” The Holiday duet with Elizabeth Cook “All Strung Out With Christmas Lights” was praised by Rolling Stone County, who called “a boozy bedrock of electric guitar, pedal steel and barroom piano.” The Country Note called the song “fun” and “flirty,” and No Depression recommended for readers to “Spin this tune while you’re stringing the lights on the tree with someone you want to be with and see what happens.” Additional praise for the series has come from Wide Open Country, Battered and Brewed, Glide Magazine, Nashville Music Guide, The Alternate Root and more.
Ray and Brock struck up a fast friendship over their mutual love of food and tattoos, both of which served as inspiration for the 7inch. The relationship started as most modern friendships do, on the internet. Brock had spotted a photo Ray posted to Instagram of a tattoo from Athens, GA artist Mitchell Atkinson (Twins of Pain), via the hashtag #MitchellAtkins. Brock was so impressed to find a like-minded admirer of Atkins’ work the photo left a lasting impression him, and he started to follow Ray on social media. As luck would have it Brock spotted Boo, recognizing him from Instagram, at the East Nashville coffee shop Barista Parlor. The two struck up a conversation and became fast friends.
When they started to write and make music together, they back to the source of how the first met for “Saint Misbehavin’.“ “Sean and I discovered that we had an Athens Georgia tattooist in common, “ says Ray, “a wild rebel soul named Mitchell Atkinson that was one half of Twins of Pain Tattooing. After talking guitars, Jerry Reed, Billy Gibbons and Southern Culture On The Skids we figured we ought to write a number about Mitch, bemoaning ‘the foolish ways that take our friend before they’re old,’ and since it’s Chef Sean Brock I’m working with here, the obligatory ‘Soul Food Cookin’ song was natural as a hiccup.”
The first verse of “Saint MisBehavin’” references Atkins’ violent and fiery death in a hot rod accident with the verse “curse the foolish ways that take my friends before they’re old.” The second verse the lyric “friends taken away by the foolish ways” eludes the coal mining industry in the Appalachian Mountains where both Brock and Ray grew up. “Watching Boo Ray magically turn our ideas into something you can play on a turntable was the songwriting equivalent of ‘farm to table’ cooking,” say Brock. “These songs were made to crank up with the windows down and the throttle wide open.“
The titled “Saint Misbehavin’” is cleverly named after the Patron Saint of Body Art, “Saint Theresa the Tatted,” a mystical character who lived in war torn state of Kosovo in the early 90s. Legend has it that she kept an entire convent on nuns alive during the war by smuggling them food under her clothes, hanging the items on her body piercings.