Watershed 2017: Country singer Michael Ray continues to make his small Florida hometown proud

If you live in Romania, Oct. 25 is Armed Forces Day. In Lithuania, it’s Constitution Day, and in Grenada, it’s Thanksgiving Day.

In Eustis, Florida (population 20,768), Oct. 25 is Michael Ray Day, celebrating the country singer who, in recent years, has put the city on the map.

The city is only 30 to 40 minutes from Orlando and about an hour from the beach, but Eustis is far from many people’s idea of Florida.

“Everybody goes ‘There’s country in Florida?’ ” Ray said. “I go ‘Yeah. I lived right in it.’ ”

Hunting, fishing and bonfires filled Ray’s time growing up. He was also surrounded by music, as his dad, grandpa and cousins were in a band.

The band would bring Ray on stage when he was a child, but it wasn’t until he was about 9 years old that he showed an interest in learning to play guitar.

After learning a few chords, Ray was hooked.

“That’s all I did,” he said. “As soon as I started learning and figured out how to make good noises come out of the guitar, not what I was doing before.”

Ray and his grandfather bonded over music, and soon Ray was spending his weekends playing with him, which tipped his family off to Ray’s future goals.

“The fact that I was a kid and I didn’t want to go to my friends’ house, I wanted to go and play music with my grandpa’s band, I think that gave them a little heads up that this is what I wanted to do,” Ray said. “I think they’ve always assumed that this is where I’d be, or at least be trying to be.”

And where is Ray? At the top of the charts.

Two of the singles from his self-titled debut, the upbeat “Kiss You In the Morning” and the cheeky “Think a Little Less,” reached the top spot on the Billboard Country Airplay chart, and “Get To You,” the first single from his upcoming sophomore album, recently premiered on the chart and looks to be heading toward the number one position too.

Ray chose “Get to You” as the lead single because, vocally and musically, it was where he wanted to take his sound.

He was also drawn to the message of the song, which he said he hadn’t heard put in that way before.

“The fact that it’s someone telling the person that they love ‘Hey, listen. I don’t know what it is that has stopped you from loving full-heartedly or giving it all you got, but I’m trying to get to you and figure this out and hopefully you figure it out and hopefully it’s me you still want to be with at the end, but if not, I hope I’m around to see you shine and see you loved the way you’re supposed to,’ ” he said.

Ray has been slowly piecing together his next album in between his nearly nonstop run of recent tour dates.

Case in point: After performing at Watershed’s Next from Nashville stage in 2015, Ray will perform on the main stage at Watershed Festival, which runs Friday-Sunday at the Gorge Amphitheatre, on Friday. He’ll then play a show in Nevada on Saturday and a gig in Minnesota on Aug. 3.

He hopes to return to the studio in late August to record a few more tunes. His time on the road has benefited recording sessions as it has taught him how to recognize songs that can work for both an album and a live show.

Ray said the new album won’t be a complete departure from his self-titled debut, but it will show how far he’s come since the album’s 2015 release.

“The is a solid step forward for a sophomore album,” he said. “It’s not completely left of what I normally do, but I believe it does show growth over the last two-and-a-half years that we’ve been out and touring and growing not only as an artist but as a person.”