Michael Ray‘s latest single, “Holy Water,” might have never happened if not for his family’s rich musical heritage. The Florida native recently appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show, where he shared how his music was inspired largely by his lineage, and those who, perhaps unintentionally, helped pave the way for his own successful career.

“My grandfather got out of the army, [and] met my grandmother,” Ray explains. “He was one of six or seven kids. She was one of eight girls. So they met. They had my dad and my uncle. Of course, then there was a slew of cousins around the same age that would later on end up being my family’s band that my grandpa started. It just kind of grew from there. I started playing every week with my grandpa.”

When Ray began creating what became his latest EP, Higher Education, Ray knew he wanted to return to the story songs that he grew up loving, and still loves today.

“I fell in love with country music because of the stories,” Ray shares. “When I was a kid, growing up listening to Porter Wagoner and Earl Thomas Conley and Merle Haggard and Loretta Lynn and Dolly [Parton] — all these story songs, even if I didn’t know what they were or what they meant, I still felt like I could close my eyes and it was like this movie. I could just see it. So as I grew, I started learning how to write songs, and I’d always go back to those story songs.

“When we were making this record during COVID, I was like, ‘Man, I’m really missing some of those storylike songs,'” he continues. “And this song is like that. It’s this movie about this little southern preacher that was just selling some moonshine in the back, and trying to make extra cash, and gets busted by some deacons in the church.”

Ray didn’t write “Holy Water,” which was instead written by Ashley Gorley, Hunter Phelps, Ben Johnson and Michael Hardy. But even though it wasn’t written by him, it still feels like one of the most personal songs he has ever released.

“I felt like this whole song from day one, from the first time I heard it, I envisioned everything that’s happening right now,” Ray tells Everything Nash. “I feel like those story songs, that’s what I fell in love with about country music, even as a kid. One of my favorite songs as a kid was “Green Green Grass of Home,” which I didn’t understand it at the time, what it was about. But it’s a story song about a guy dreaming in a prison cell and wakes up to the guards. He’s on death row, and he is about to be executed.

“And so these story songs, when you listen to them, you can close your eyes, and you can see a movie,” he adds. “I felt like I played all of this in my mind, hearing the song for the first time.”

Ray just recently dropped an acoustic version of “Holy Water” for his The Bootlegger Sessions EP, which also includes covers of songs by Randy Travis,  Tracy Lawrence, Trisha Yearwood and George Strait.

Find music and tour dates at MichaelRayMusic.com.

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