In January of 2022 – in my 60th year – I was looking for a new art project, and decided to record some songs I wrote back when I was in high school and college. At the time I was an aspiring Gonzo journalist and budding Rock Star, or at least I thought I was. I found these songs in the daily journals I wrote back then, journals which provided incredible insights and often painful details about my life at that tender age. (For more background on these journals, take a journey into “The Box“). I thought this would last just a few weeks, but after six months of exhilarating research and work, I ended up with 33 songs – like a 33 rpm record, get it? – that I divided into two collections – those largely written when I was younger (“The Early Stuff“, or “Conversations With My Teenage Self“) and those largely written in 2022 but inspired by those early songs (“The Later Stuff“, or “Still Looking for Jesus After All These Years“). For you history buffs, you can also navigate all 33 songs across albums in the order in which they were created. And for those TLDR folks, you can zero in on the my five favorite songs and ignore the rest…
EDITOR’S NOTE: The final count of songs is 35. I wrote and recorded two more original songs in December of 2022 – “The Year I Turned 60” (a musical recap of our annual Christmas letter) and “Crazy Shirtless Finn” (a sea shanty that takes place on a river).
We are a full service musical deli. For each song I created high quality audio versions with and without vocals, and created a companion video version, usually with the lyrics embedded. The audio versions of the songs are hosted on Soundcloud and the videos are hosted on Vimeo. There’s also a podcast available on Apple, Spotify, and Google which tells you the backstory of each song before playing a high quality version it.
The Songs of Peter Ray is crowdfunded. You can donate via PayPal or Venmo. More details on our Support page.
This was a fun project, and really taught me so much – both about my younger self, and who I am today. Pop in those earbuds, strap into that recliner/car seat, and click on an album cover below to start your journey…
