STILL rockin’YOUR SOCKS OFF
Members of the legendary band still excited about doing music for a living
Believe it or not — Doug Gray does get some time off.
It wouldn’t seem that way as the 69-year-old musician has been touring the world for 46 years as a member of the legendary The Marshall Tucker Band.
And he wouldn’t want it any other way.
“Touring is such a big part of my life,” he says. “I love to look out a different window each day. And the fact that I’m still alive. It’s a wonderful feeling and we’ve built up this family over the course of the years. Not to mention that we perform each night for audiences that include a number of generations. It’s really exciting to be able to continue to do music for a living.”
The music industry landscape has also changed since the band started in 1972.
Gray is the first to admit that. Today, The Marshall Tucker Band records on its own Ramblin’ Records, and continues to release new and previously unreleased material.
“We still create music, but we don’t know what format to release it in,” he says. “Nobody is buying CDs and it seems like music is going towards just streaming. I think in the next year and a half, we’ll release something. One of the things we’ve always wanted is to have is an album cover.”
Gray and crew have carved out a niche for themselves as Southern rockers in the music industry.
A lot of it is in part to hit singles such as “Heard It In a Love Song,” “Fire On The Mountain,” “Can’t You See” and “Take The Highway.”
The Marshall Tucker Band has earned seven gold and three platinum albums while they were on the Capricorn Records label.
During the ’90s, the band scored four hit singles on Billboard’s country chart and one on Billboard’s gospel chart.
The band has crossed over into films, with songs being featured in “Smokey and the Bandit,” “Blow,” “The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper,” “Shipwrecked,” “Don’t Mess with Zohan,” “Stop Loss” and “Swing Vote.”
“The buying public never really cared whether we were country or rock & roll,” Gray says. “They called us a Southern rock band, but we have always played everything from country, jazz, blues, rock & roll and all things in between. As we’ve become older, our Southern heritage seems to come out even more. But, no matter how old we get, we can still rock your socks off.”