Ray Bonneville Monday July 16, 7:00 PM Ramsdell Theatre, Manistee Tickets: $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Ticket Outlets: City Hall, Goodys, TJ's Pub, Hokansons, Port City Organics and Manistee Visitors The Ramsdell Theater's ' A Little Night Music' concert series kicks off on Monday July 16th, 2012 with a show by Ray Bonneville. This 7 p.m. performance features singer/songwriter, Ray Bonneville, fresh off his performance at 2012's Blissfest. Ray Bonneville is a Canadian born, Austin based singer, songwriter, guitarist and harmonica player, who is known for his “loose, darkly funky vibe” (All Music Guide). Ray Bonneville calls himself a North American. Born in Canada, he moved to the Boston area in his early teens where he started playing guitar and harmonica. His last 30 or so years have seen him seeking adventure and playing music throughout the world. Being a dual citizen allows him the freedom to live between Montreal Canada, and Austin Texas. Bonneville is a distinctive artist, a man who cooks up a deep groove, blending a unique percussive electric guitar style, a weathered voice, and soulful rack harmonica into image provoking songs that can be believed. His thumb pulses and thumps, his index finger hooks and brushes out a melody, and his hand slaps the guitar for a snare-like effect. He sometimes uses a slide, always plays through a Fender tube amp, and brings his foot down on an amplified piece of plywood on the floor for added percussion. It is a powerful and visceral sound with a lot of forward momentum. "When I first heard good blues and country music I was very young, but I felt a deep stirring excitement within, which told me right then what to do with my life," says Bonneville, remembering his introduction to roots music in the Boston area during the early to mid 1960s. Over the next decade, Bonneville honed his sound up in the Northeast, Colorado and Alaska, and then moved around between Seattle, New Orleans, and Paris, France in the 1980s. He recorded his first album, On The Mai, in 1993, and now has six albums out. In the streets and clubs of New Orleans during the eighties, is where Bonneville soaked up the prevalent back-side of the beat attitude that ran through a lot of the music being played down there. "There were so many great drummers to learn groove and time from, great piano and guitar players to be influenced by, and man, the singers and horn players just made your heart go wild with excitement! This was the place that influenced me the most," he says. "It was infectious. I learned that solid, but laid back rhythm is like a tightrope on which the notes and words can do their dance." Ray won a prestigious Juno Award, the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy, in 1999, for his third album, Gust of Wind. His next release, Rough Luck, and his fifth album, Roll It Down, were also nominated for the coveted award. Ray continues to tour and write. His Red House release Goin’ By Feel was named one of the best CD’s of 2008 by DownBeat Magazine and featured the Americana hit “I Am the Big Easy,” which was #1 most played song on folk radio that year and won the Folk Alliance Award for Song of the Year. The tune was a powerful tribute to the resilience of New Orleans, where Ray lived for half a decade and picked up his take your time attitude toward music. Noted for having one of “the sexiest guitar styles around” (Acoustic Guitar), Ray is a unique player and has performed with such blues luminaries as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, and Robert Cray. He has quickly become a fixture in the Americana scene since moving to Texas, becoming one of the go-to session players for artists like Ray Wylie Hubbard, Mary Gauthier and Eliza Gilkyson. Says Bonneville: "I'm deeply in love with playing live music. It's the time and place where I really live, where I feel the most alive. When a show is over, I can’t wait to get down the road to the next one, always looking to get back onto another stage and seek out another groove." Manistee's Ramsdell Theater is delighted to be hosting this concert by Ray Bonneville. The show is set for Monday evening July 16th, 2012 at 7 p.m. As part of this 'A Little Night Music' concert series, and as an added feature of this show, TJ's Pub will be hosting an 'afterglow' that will provide a chance for the audience to meet/mingle with the the performer. These evenings of music on the main stage of the Ramsdell Theater have been graciously underwritten by Ramsdell Inn and TJ's Pub, Northway Orthodontics and Manistee Inn and Marina. .