| I met Ray Riggs in Missoula, Montana in the summer of 1983. I had been doing some road gigs, drums & vocals, based out of Missoula for the last year or so, and hooked-up with some players who were putting a house band together. Ray was playing in East Missoula, and with the offer of higher pay agreed to the new gig. We were riding the "Urban Cowboy" wave, in full-swing, and wasn't long before the biggest club in Missoula switched from Rock & Roll to Country. Ray was the mentor of every jazz / country guitar player for miles around and had a huge following. Ray's virtuoso guitar work was the centerpiece of our rockin' country band. We won a local country music contest and placed 2nd in the state. We caught the attention of a broadcast executive, and, with Ray's already extensive background in the industry, booked a week to record an album in Nashville at Cinderella Studios, with Ray on guitar and co-producing. The executive producer was unable to get distribution for the album, and that adventure ended up back in Missoula. I left the band and returned to the university to finish a teaching degree, then moved to Arizona. Ray spent a little while longer in Missoula and Great Falls, then headed to Tampa Bay, in his home state of Florida. Ray picked up gigs for a while, but soon turned to sound engineering for various venues, recording in his studio and working in his woodshop, building custom electric guitars & even a custom piano!
I dropped out of the music scene after Missoula. As fate would have it, me & my family moved to Orlando in 2001. I often wondered, over the years, what Ray Riggs was doing. I did a Web search for Ray Riggs one day, and kiss my grits if it wasn't a picture of Ray at a mixing console at a club in The Villages, Florida, just about an hour northwest of Orlando! I made a few phone calls, and wasn't long before I got in touch with Ray. Ray sent me a CD of his Guitar Only album. The guitar playing was spectacular. I've had the domain name singingwires.com for some years, and a host site for homemade Web stuff. Ray had been working on scanning old photos, and he emailed me a few pictures of his early days. The stories behind the pictures were fascinating! I asked Ray if he wanted me to put together a Web site to share his music, pictures, and stories. Ray spent months recalling events, dates, and getting everything written down. The final part of the project has been to edit and publish Ray's autobiography. There are countless other stories, people and events that aren't included here, as the scope of this project was to span a lot of highlights over a lot of years and keep it fairly short.
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