We’ve been a big fan of Michigan-raised blues guitarist Larry McCray ever since we first heard him play the Pittsburgh Blues Festival a decade and a half back — and then discovered that McCray was the first artist to record the Warren Haynes-penned anthem “Soulshine” that, a year following McCray’s version, would also show up on the Allman Brothers Band’s Where It All Begins album.
McCray has a new album coming out in mid-June, and recently released the second single from the project, a grooving, soulful track called “Bright Side” with an interesting history to go along with its smoking guitar, terrific backing vocals, and rich horns. The song was originally written by the album’s co-producer (alongside Joe Bonamassa) and fellow guitarist Josh Smith and two others for Bobby “Blue” Bland (one of those two others was Michael Price, who also co-wrote such gems for Bland as “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” and “I Wouldn’t Treat a Dog (The Way You Treated Me)”).
Chances are that Bland never had the opportunity to put the song to tape (as, listening to it, you can certainly envision Bland singing it), and so it was never released, at least until now, when Smith brought it to McCray knowing that McCray was the one who could do the track justice, with McCray’s husky, sometimes growling vocals even occasionally resembling those of Bland’s as McCray delivers such lyrics as “…cleaned out my strongbox, but I still got some ones/ took all the sweet rolls, and left me the crumbs/ well, that woman, she dragged me deep underground/ but the world is still turning and the sun’s beating down/ I’m just doing the best that I can (sometimes the world just don’t understand)/ I’m just doing the best that I can/ oh Lord, out here on the bright side”.
Give it a listen and you’ll understand why Smith says on social media that “It might be my favorite song I’ve ever written and my favorite song my brother @joebonamassa and I have produced”!