PRESS RELEASE:
Headlining Sideshow for Bluesfest NZ 2008 Announced!
Featuring: Ray Davies
31 JANUARY, 2008 – With a number of Bluesfest artists appearing around New Zealand over the next month the final
sideshow for the The Coromandel Peninsula Blues And Roots Music Festival clearly illustrates the best was saved for
last! The sideshow provides fans that are unable to make it to the NZ Bluesfest a chance to catch Ray Davies, one of the
greatest singer songwriters of his generation on tour.
Ray Davies: former lead singer and songwriter of the well-known British Invasion band, The Kinks. As a member of “The
Big Four” (The Beatles, The Who, and The Rolling Stones), The Kinks have influenced and inspired rock musicians
throughout time. The ‘60s rock band provided Davies with an outlet to grow into the inspirational solo artist he is
today. Although The Kinks played their last show in 1996, Ray Davies has continued on to become one of today’s most
accredited British solo artists. In 2006, Davies released his first solo album, Other People’s Lives, which reached the
top 30 charts in the UK.
AUCKLAND The CIVIC Mon 24 March 8.00pm
Tickets on sale Wed 6 Feb from Ticketek and Real Groovy
RAY DAVIES AND HIS BAND
Ray Davies is the lead singer, chief songwriter, and rhythm guitarist in the Kinks, one of the most long-lived of the
British Invasion rock groups of the 1960s. In effect, the Kinks have always been merely a backup group for Davies, who
writes and sings nearly all their songs with only the occasional contribution from his brother, Dave, who plays lead
guitar in the group. At various times, Ray Davies made noises about dissolving the group and going solo, but for years
the closest he came to it was taking solo credit for the soundtrack to his 1985 film Return to Waterloo (which he wrote
and directed), even though the music sounds as much like the Kinks as that on any regular Kinks record.
During the '90s, the Kinks gradually became inactive and Davies pursued other projects, starting with his semi-fictional
1995 memoir, X-Ray. He supported the book with a series of concerts subtitled "Storyteller", where he played classic
Kinks songs, read from the book, told stories, and showcased new songs. The Storyteller concerts sowed the seeds of a
number of projects, including the music cable network VH1's recurring series, Storyteller. Davies himself released a
book of the same name, filled with short stories, and a similarly titled album that captured one of his solo acoustic
concerts. That record was his first solo effort since Return to Waterloo and was released in the spring of 1998. –
William Ruhlmann & Stephen Thomas Erlewine www.ray-davies.com
ENDS