Northern Ontario country artist Reney Ray is keeping busy with a new album, podcast and book on the way
CBC
Country artist Reney Ray has won her third consecutive Country Music Association of Ontario Award for francophone artist of the year.
On the heels of her latest album, L'album temporaire, she's busier than ever.
Ray will be touring the album, which translates to "the temporary album" in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick.
The musician from the northern Ontario town of Kapuskasing, also has a new podcast in the works, where she has conversations with other musicians, and an autobiography on the way, called A to Z.
"It's about like my whole life, pursuing music and having a baby and trying to balance everything out. And being a single mom," she said.
She says both the album and book are an honest look at her life and cover some difficult periods as well, including her reasons for cutting ties with her music label.
"It's just like real talk," Ray said.
"My fails and how I learned and get back up and how I accepted that I'm imperfect and I'm going to keep being imperfect. I'm just going to try to get better as I go."
She says the album's title comes from telling herself that that difficult period in her life would just be temporary.
With the album, Ray also explores new musical territory. It even includes a rap song called Backstab.
She was on a show with Quebec musician David Jalbert, and they joked they should record a rap song together.
"We don't do rap at all. Neither one of us," Ray said.
"It became like a running gag of like, 'Yeah, we're going to do a rap song someday together.'"
But when Ray asked if her daughter could write something for her on the piano, it turned out to work perfectly for a rap song.
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