MANSFIELD — Collin Raye is bringing a lifetime of country music to north central Ohio on Saturday night.
The 63-year-old country star will take the stage at 7:30 p.m. at the Renaissance Theatre in downtown Mansfield.
Tickets for the show range from $15 to $40 and are available at the Renaissance website.
Raye, born in Arkansas and now living in Nashville, is certainly no stranger to record making and story telling through his music.
Since signing with Epic Records in 1990, Raye has placed more than 30 singles on the chart, including such No. 1 hits as “Love, Me, “In This Life,” “My Kind of Girl” and “I Can Still Feel You.”
Twenty-one of his singles have reached Top 10 on the same chart, including 14 singles reaching the top 10 consecutively between 1991 and 1996.
His debut album, “All I Can Be,” was the first of four consecutive albums released by Raye to achieve platinum certification in the United States signifying sales of one million copies each.
In 2020, Raye released his most recent album, a 14-track collection titled, “Scars.”
“I’d thought about doing an Americana record for years because, to me, Americana means no rules,” Raye said on his website.
“Americana is kind of country, kind of bluegrass, kind of folk, kind of R&B. It’s anything you want it to be. I thought how fun would that be to make a record knowing that cut number one can sound totally different than cut number two and cut number three, number four, etc. And that’s exactly what I set out to do,” he said.
On “Scars,” Raye once again wrapped his voice around a collection of tunes.
But this time, in addition to writing nearly every song on the album, Raye embarked on a new musical direction and enlisted Miranda Lambert, Vince Gill and the Black Keys Dan Auerbach to join the journey.
“Most of the stuff I wrote was new, written just for this record, and for that reason, I’m extremely proud of it because it’s very personal to me,” the 10-time Male Vocalist of the Year nominee (ACM and CMA) said.
“Instead of just being the singer of someone else’s words, I’m the singer of my own words. I’ve always liked writing, but I was never prolific. I was never one of those guys who wrote two or three times a week.
“If you look at my Sony albums, I would always have one or two cuts on there, but I never wrote half or more of an album so this was a definite turn for me. I had to really work for this, roll my sleeves up and prove to myself that I’m a good writer. I’m really happy with it. This was such a fun record to make and I’ve never felt so creative on any album,” Raye said.
In addition to music, Raye has used his platform to advance social causes.
Among the organizations he has supported are Boys Town, First Steps, Al-Anon, Special Olympics, Country Cares About AIDS, Catholic Relief Services, Parade of Pennies, Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, The Tennessee Task Force Against Domestic Violence, The Emily Harrison Foundation, Childhelp USA, Silent Witness National Initiative, Easter Seals, The Life and Hope Network, and Make a Difference Day.
