He has been hailed as a rust belt blues shouter and guitar slinger. Joe Bonamassa calls him a good friend. Blues Rock Review compared his “Blues Without You” to “The Thrill Is Gone” and other blues classics. The album Blues Without You was named one of the Top 25 albums of 2022 by Rock & Blues Muse.
His name is Larry McCray and he has a new album out on June 13, 2025. In Heartbreak City Larry draws heavily on a lifetime of experience. “I survived a lot of hardships in my lifetime,” he told me. “I’ve been dealing with health issues and just bad karma my whole career.”
Now when someone tells you they’ve been dealing with bad karma their whole career you might expect them to go on and tell you a tale of woe that has left them bitter and angry. Larry may have his tales of woe but he sounds far from angry. And if there is bitterness, he has used it to his musical advantage.
“Loneliness finds me in the midnight hour,” he sings in the title track. “Heartbreak City” is where he is headed, a place where “every loser in love can hide.” But if he is a loser in love he has learned one has to “Try To Be A Good Man.” And he won’t live in the shadows forever because he will do the best that he can on the “Bright Side.”
Larry’s album has plenty of blues gems on it including “I Know What I’ve Done,” “Keep On Loving My Baby,” and “Stop Your Crying.” Meanwhile, “Bye Bye Blues” sounds like a man who is ready to leave Heartbreak City behind.
Larry McCray was born in 1959 in the tiny city of Smackover, AR, an oil boomtown that saw its heyday in the 1920s. The region today is noted for its vast lithium deposits. The family later moved to McNeil, AR.
Larry was one of 10 children, 9 boys and 1 girl, spanning 33 years starting with Clara, the oldest. It was his sister Clara who introduced him to the guitar. Larry went to Saginaw, MI, with his sister for what he thought would be a summer visit. It turned out to be a permanent move.
His sister had her own group called Clara and the Rockets. She would play guitar when visiting home in Arkansas. That was when, as Larry put it, “she lit the fire.” But it wasn’t until he was living with his sister and her family in Saginaw that he had the opportunity to let that flame grow.
“I started sneaking, getting the guitar,” Larry said. He tried to keep his playing the instrument secret. But then Clara’s kids, his niece and nephew, “messed with it” and got it out of tune. He had no choice but to tell his sister what happened.
“Once she saw I had respect for the instrument,” Larry recalled, “she started to teach me.”
Larry began to work at General Motors when he was 18, a job he held until just before his 30th birthday. At nights he would gig with a group called The McCray Brothers, which also included his niece Judy and nephew Tony as singers. There were groups like Graham Central Station and War that were popular with the young kids. “Anything that was groovin’ and poppin’ – whatever was popular with the young kids that is what we were playing,” Larry said.
Some bad karma in his career came in the guise of his manager of 30 years, Paul Koch. Larry was reluctant to say too much about Paul other than to say his career survived but didn’t thrive. “He passed on,” he told me. “Sometimes it’s hard to say something when someone is no longer present to defend themselves.”
Certainly no grudges were held on Larry’s part. He wrote and recorded the song “Blues Without You (For Paul)” as an homage to Paul Koch. Despite everything, despite his abrasiveness, Paul “… managed to get on my good side.”
Larry is grateful to Joe Bonamassa who, along with Josh Smith, produced Heartbreak City. It is their second collaboration after the aforementioned, critically acclaimed Blues Without You album. The respect goes back even further to when he first met Joe some twenty or so years ago. “You know, I got a little bit grease, you know what I’m saying?” Larry says. “But I’m untrained… So I always had a lot of respect for Joe (because of his guitar skills).”
As for Joe he shares that, “Larry McCray is a legend. We have known that for 30 years. He is the last of the great blues shouters from the Rust Belt. In the spirit of BB King, Luther Allison, and Little Milton, Larry is among the greats. It’s now up to the world to rediscover him. He has been here all along.”
Heartbreak City will be available June 13, 2025 from Joe Bonamassa’s KTBA Records. Larry expertly fuses raw blues with vintage soul, Southern grit, and a hard-won sense of joy. The ten-track album features standout contributions from Reese Wynans, Kirk Fletcher, and background vocalists Jade Macrae and Dannielle De Andrea, as well as guest guitar work from Bonamassa himself. The record was recorded at the iconic Sunset Sound in Hollywood and mixed by Alan Hertz.