Dropping a needle on Kayla Ray’s music can feel a bit like driving down a sunbaked two-lane highway. You roll the windows down, feel a sticky-warm breeze circling your hair and you let the soundtrack of real-life stories fuel every mile of the drive.

And for Ray, a rising country artist and songwriter, that’s no accident. A native of Waco, Texas, Ray was baptized to the tune of Bob Wills and Tanya Tucker. She can recite Merle Haggard deep cuts without missing a beat and, as a kid, Ray often tuned into the Grand Ole Opry with her grandfather, (by whom she was raised) who built a makeshift antenna to ensure the family picked up a long-distance AM signal from faraway Nashville, Tennessee.

She’s spent her early years cutting her teeth in the industry, studying the rules of the road with country music’s Gimble family (Dick and Emily, the son and granddaughter of Country Music Hall of Famer Johnny Gimble) before tour managing for honky-tonk staple Jason Eady. In 2014, she graduated from backstage to centerstage, releasing her first all original album and touring the national independent circuit singing her songs – sprinkled with appreciation for the artists who helped raise her – Hank Williams, Tom T. Hall and, of course, Loretta Lynn.

Since then, she’s released three independent albums and has since built a fan base and a hard-earned ten-year touring history. This, in addition to her 2024 label debut The World’s Weight. A collection of songs doused in days of fall-too-hard love and nights of brown-liquored therapy, it debuted June 7^th via Average Joes Entertainment.

“This album is a long time coming,” Ray said. “The songs span a big chapter of my life. The character falls in love, gets her heart broken, rolls around in fits of ravaged independence and falls in and back out of love again. In many ways, through it all, she finds herself and becomes unafraid to express her views of the world just exactly as she sees them.”

Ray decamped to Oklahoma City to cut much of The World’s Weight with producer Giovanni Carnuccio III at Castle Row Studios. The album pulls listeners into Ray’s take on tried-and-true country, with songs like opening number “The Place I Fell In Love With You” – a twangy, freewheelin’ jam that takes listeners on a love-tinged road trip – and standout cut “Carolina Pines,” a thoughtful country-folk stomper delivered straight from the soul.

Her sound isn’t the country-rock throwback of some of today’s top Americana acts, nor is overly stripped-back folk storytelling or old-time roots music. It’s a unique and fearless take on the human condition.

In addition to her own project, in the time since relocating to Nashville, Kayla is writing with some of country music’s more esteemed songwriters. Mark Irwin, Erin Enderlin (who has recorded multiple of their cowrites, one as a duet with Terri Clark!) Liz Hengber, and Keesy Timmer are just a few names in which Kayla is currently sharing credits.

Kayla’s down to earth yet poignant life perspective is a noted asset. Fueled by vulnerability, life experience, ambition, and an unafraid melodic ear, Kayla Ray is a force to be reckoned with.