By the time Gretta Ray hits the road for her Begin To Look Around album tour next month, it will be close to a year since the record was released – three years since her last headline shows.
After having a taste of live shows again with appearances at Ocean Sounds and Torch Fest, Ray is excited to tour again."Playing these shows recently and hearing people sing-along to the newer songs has been like 'oh!'. It has kind of solidified the fact that people are enjoying the album," Gretta laughs.
"I mean, people have been ridiculously kind to me over the Internet, and I love being able to have the tool of social media to connect with my audience and stay in touch with them.
"But seeing them in person and being able to see how much they light up when I start playing 'Cherish' or something like that – it kind of makes me believe in it a little bit more, and be like 'that did happen!
"You did put out an album and people do listen to it still, and they like it!'"
Released in August last year, Ray's debut album 'Begin To Look Around' featured the release of three double A-sided singles called 'duologies' – songs that were thematically linked but creatively different. It was a concept that came together naturally.
"I think that oddly I'd naturally gotten into a pattern of writing about a scenario – you know, you tend to explore it a handful of times and you go on to a bunch of different sessions and you write about it again – and there were just these really clear pairings of songs that were this yin and yang," she explains.
"Like, this is a song about my relationship with creativity in a really excited, celebrating way, it's a really upbeat song – 'Bigger Than Me' obviously – and then I wrote this more ballad-like song called 'Readymade', which was about the same thing but much more about celebrating my relationship with creativity in private."
When it comes to performing darker tracks like 'The Brink' live, Ray says it will be "interesting" to sing them in front of a crowd for the first time, after a "harrowing" experience writing it.
"It happened really quickly and I was so blessed to be able to have a session that meant I could express how I was feeling, but the week that I wrote ['The Brink'] I was riddled with anxiety, like there was so much going on in my personal life at the time," she says.
"I think it was Ariana Grande that said this about 'Thank U, Next', when she was touring it for the first time, she said that writing the songs had been really therapeutic and that performing them was really, really difficult when it came to the more vulnerable ones."
That has really stayed with her, Gretta admits. "When I think of singing songs like 'The Brink' to an audience and being able to really acknowledge the act of what I'm actually doing.
"There are people in the crowd that are potentially moving through those same emotions, and I don't have the protection of the Internet to turn away from the fact that they can relate to that – I can see it in their expressions.
"I've performed 'Cherish' and that song was also quite sad to write, but it's really blown my mind how much people gravitate towards that song and how much they like it.
"I think that it's so nice to think that the album was just mine for so long, and now it's been like seven months, it's all theirs now – it's 'our' thing – and that concept is just, oh my gosh. It's awesome.
"It's almost like that's the big win out of the fact we had to cancel those shows so many times; now they've had more time with the songs and hopefully it will mean that the shows feel even more connected."
Gretta says she's also looking forward to performing songs she hasn't personally written – like her cover of the Billy Joel classic 'Vienna' which went unexpectedly viral when she performed it on social media.
"That's a scenario that just happened out of nowhere, but you know what's so great about the fact that it's that song that people have really connected with and enjoyed my cover of, is the fact that the lyrics are just so phenomenal," she laughs.
"I remember when I was learning how to play it on the piano and going over the lyrics, I was like, this song is so much more incredible than I ever realised, now that I'm going over the details of it.
"So getting to add that to my set list, as someone that just appreciates lyrics so much, is a huge win. I'm stoked. And it's so beautiful to see how much people are clinging to that song at the moment; I feel like people really need it right now."
Ray recently returned from London and the United States, where she spent time reconnecting with other creatives in writing sessions.
"I have written a lot of songs in the space of what felt like a very pandemic-associated environment; which was like in my bedroom and tracking my own vocals and working with people over Zoom and stuff like that," she says.
"[So] the main point of that trip was to get back out into the world and use the palette of life and real life and new collaborators and new experiences."
After getting COVID "literally four days into being in London," which was "not great" as it resulted in a lot of lost songwriting sessions, Gretta made the most of her time in the US, with a session almost every day.
"There are some people that I connected with over in America recently that I just had an absolute blast with," she says.
"There's this writer called Caroline Pennell who I wrote with on my last day in LA who just blew my mind with her melodies. . . I worked with a guy called Evan Klar, who's actually an Australian but he has relocated to LA and went between LA and Berlin during the pandemic.
"I worked with him and his partner Hayley and we wrote a song that was just so much fun."
Ray says she did manage to catch up with "big brothers" Gang Of Youths while in London, and is "so excited" to be part of their A More Perfect Union festival in Tasmania in a few months.
"It's going to be really special to watch them perform that record ['Angel In Realtime']," she says.
"When I was first getting to know the boys it was just when 'Go Farther In Lightness' came out, and obviously we all love that record so, so much, and I feel like everyone has really fond memories associated with the times that they've listened to that record repeatedly.
"At least I do; and with this new [GOY] album, I was hearing the stories about the songs that were getting made; I heard early demos, and I got to sing on one of the songs ['Goal Of The Century’] as well, which was incredible.
"So I have this whole other association with this new record, because I was fortunate enough to get an insight into how it was being created."
Gretta's releases her cover of Billy Joel's 'Vienna' on DSP this Friday (6 May).
Gretta Ray 2022 Tour Dates
Thu 2 Jun - The Outpost (Brisbane)* sold outWed 8 Jun - Oxford Art Factory (Sydney)
Thu 9 Jun - The Corner Hotel (Melbourne)* sold out
Thu 16 Jun - Jive (Adelaide)
Sat 18 Jun - Mojos Bar (Fremantle)* sold out
