Tribune-Star: Music, a lifelong passion, clearly on horizon for Rockville native Cari Ray
Posted on: 10/19
By Mark Bennett
The Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE - Same place. Different time. Same heart. New outlook.
Guitar in hand, Cari Ray stood singing beneath the soft lights of a coffeehouse on Wabash Avenue in Terre Haute last month. More than a decade earlier, she was a nervous college senior, playing her first public gig at the same venue - Coffee Grounds. In both moments, Ray was fulfilling her passion - music.
Back in the mid-1990s, though, she guarded that love. Ray considered majoring in music at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College, and participated in vocal and theatrical groups at the school. It came naturally. She's been singing since her first church solo as a 3-year-old growing up in Rockville. But instead of pursuing a music major, she earned a degree in graphic design and marketing, because “I just never wanted [music] to be like work.”
The kid gloves are off now.
Ray, an Indianapolis marketing consultant by day, is working hard at being a singer-songwriter-recording artist by night. Two and a half years ago, she started performing and writing again, for the first time since her 20s. A year ago, Ray made a plan to eventually earn a living in music.
“I just love it,” she said. “I really do feel like it's what I'm supposed to be doing.”
This weekend marks a significant step toward that destiny. A CD release party for her new album, “Always On,” was scheduled for Saturday night in Basile Auditorium at the Indianapolis Art Center. Ray wrote every track, and one of the catchiest - “Wrestling With My Angel” - got favorable reviews from listeners on WLHK-FM 97.1 (better known as Hank FM) in Indianapolis. She's assembled a band for a tour of Indiana and the region this fall.
“The clouds have opened,” Ray said of her second career.
