I have spent all of my life in the small town of Warracknabeal near Horsham Victoria until myself and my wife Marie made the move to Adelaide in 2003 to further my career as a kitchen designer and I now work as a designer for JAG Kitchens
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My first major exposure to Australian country music was when my wife Marie noticed the Dead Ringer Band was playing at a Country Music Festival at Wallace near Ballarat. Marie originally came from Millicent where she went to the same school as Bill Chambers.  She thought it would be nice to go for a drive to see what they were now doing.  From this point we couldn’t go to enough festivals including many Tamworth’s and every Mildura since.

We made a lot of friends in the industry and it was after our first visit to Mildura we were asked if we could find a gig in Warracknabeal for the Owen Blundell Show.  We continued to visit many festivals networking and having a hand in a number of small shows.  In 2000 the Warracknabeal Action group advertised for volunteers to assist in holding a rodeo and country music muster. I was appointed the production manager for the country music side of the event. It was a success with almost 6.000 people attending the country music and 4,500 visiting the rodeo in the first year. The event also received an Australia day award in the first year for a community event, a huge honour.

After the second year the Warracknabeal Rodeo & Country Music Muster committee wanted to scale down the country music and focus on the rodeo. One of the local hotels where artists performed during the muster approached Marie and I to see if some regular country music could be organized for their venue. We saw it as a great opportunity to follow on from where the muster left off as it created a lot of new country music fans locally. The shows at the hotel ran on a regular basis for over 7 years seeing over 50 individual shows at the venue. The time I worked with the muster and the hotel has been very rewarding and an absolute privilege to be putting shows together featuring wonderful Aussie artists like – Troy Cassar Daley, Tania Kernaghan, The Feral Swing Katz, Felicity, James Blundell, Melinda Schneider, The Wolverines, Sara Storer, Carter & Carter and many more.

I am thankful for the SACCM committee welcoming me aboard to help support and create more awareness of country music here in South Australia.

Ray can be contacted on 08 8285 8776