Michael Ray‘s “Higher Education” video is out! The video for the song, the title track of his latest EP, features Tim Montana, Lee Brice, ZZ Top‘s Billy F. Gibbons, and Kid Rock.

Montana wrote “Higher Education” with Derek George, Jeremy Bussey, Monty Criswell and Frank Rogers. It was Ray who had the idea to make the song and video a collaboration, starting with Montana.

“I’ve been friends with those guys for a while now, but through Tim,” Ray tells Everything Nash. “Tim’s like, ‘Dude, we can get Billy on it for sure.’ I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? It’s ZZ Top. That’s my dad’s favorite band, one of my favorite bands of all time. It’s one of the biggest, most iconic bands in music.’ Billy agreed to do it immediately.  We sent it to Kid Rock, and Kid fell in love with it, and he agreed to do it, and did it at his place. We were headed to Arkansas on Lee Brice’s bus going duck hunting, and me and Tim played that song for him, and we were like, ‘You gotta be on it too.’ He agreed to be on it and threw his vocals on it.”

Ray is rightfully proud of how both the song and the video turned out, especially since it all took place during the pandemic.

“Even though it was under weird times,  we were still able to cut music and make music. but it was in different areas,” Ray boasts to Fox & Friends. “Everybody was in their own personal studios, so we weren’t making music the way we were used to making music. But when you hear a song that is written like ‘Higher Education’ was written like the guys wrote it, there was really nothing that anybody needed to change.”

Ray might not have written “Higher Education,” but the song has a message that resonates with both him and his collaborators.

“It’s about that underdog life that’s about that hard work, that grind — those moments that really make [you],” Ray reflects, “I come from a family of middle-class first responders, linemen, and so I come from the middle-class family like Kid Rock, Lee Brice, Billy Gibbons and Tim Montana. So for us to make sense who we are and it wasn’t much to change.”

Purchase Higher Education by visiting Ray’s website.

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