Celebrated bluesman Larry McCray releases his powerful new studio album Heartbreak City, available now on KTBA Records, the label founded by Joe Bonamassa. To mark the occasion, McCray also drops the album’s title track and latest single, “Heartbreak City”—a gut-punch of a song that puts his searing guitar work and gravel-worn vocals front and center.
Produced by Grammy-nominated duo Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith, Heartbreak City is a bold, unfiltered collection that finds McCray at the height of his powers. The ten-track album fuses raw blues with vintage soul, Southern grit, and hard-earned truth, featuring standout contributions from Reese Wynans, Kirk Fletcher, and background vocalists Jade Macrae and Dannielle De Andrea, as well as guest guitar work from Bonamassa himself. It was recorded at Sunset Sound in Hollywood and mixed by Alan Hertz.
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Written by Josh Smith, Michael “Harvey” Price, Steve Shepherd, and Dan Walsh, track “Heartbreak City” tells the story of a man lost in a city of sorrow, where heartbreak is the only currency and escape feels impossible. The song’s vivid lyrics paint a cinematic portrait of isolation and despair—“All God’s lonely souls begging, ‘Please just let me die’”—while McCray’s voice channels every ounce of that pain into a cathartic, slow-burning blues performance. His guitar howls and groans alongside him, evoking the decades he spent pouring himself into club stages night after night.
Across the board, critics agree: McCray has delivered one of the standout blues records of the year. Blues Rock Review praised his ability to stay rooted in tradition while continuing to evolve the genre, writing, “McCray dispatches the train with guitar licks played with a feel that even the late great B.B. King would have been proud of.” Rock and Blues Muse called the album “magnificent,” noting its “roaring, goose-bump raising guitar solos” and declaring that “Larry McCray is back in a big way.” Glide Magazine added, “McCray has never sounded better vocally or on guitar,” and affirmed that Heartbreak City “has all the major ingredients for a powerful blues album and then some.” And Raised by Cassettes summed it up best, calling it “not just one of the best blues albums of the year, but one of the best albums all around.”
The album was introduced through two acclaimed singles: “Bye Bye Blues,” a finger-snapping throwback co-written with Charlie Walmsley and steeped in soul tradition, and “Bright Side,” an unreleased gem originally written for Bobby “Blue” Bland that McCray reimagined with swagger and charm.
Across Heartbreak City, McCray leans into themes of loss, resilience, and redemption, drawing from a life spent living the blues as much as playing them. His voice—gritty, weathered, and full of soul—carries the weight of that experience, while his guitar burns with unrelenting purpose. With gospel-tinged harmonies, tight arrangements, and songs that cut deep, Heartbreak City is McCray’s most personal and compelling work yet.
The new album follows McCray’s acclaimed 2022 comeback, Blues Without You, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Blues Chart and was named #1 Blues Album of the Year by Blues Rock Review. In 2024, McCray was inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame, cementing his legacy as one of the Midwest’s true blues icons.
Heartbreak City by Larry McCray
1. Try To Be A Good Man
2. Heartbreak City
3. Bye Bye Blues
4. Bright Side
5. Everything Falls On Me
6. I Know What I’ve Done (feat. Joe Bonamassa)
7. Keep On Loving My Baby (feat. Kirk Fletcher & Josh Smith)
8. Hangman
9. Stop Your Crying
10. Crazy World
Tour Dates
August 24 – Marshfield, MA – North River Blues Fest
September 15-21 – Seattle, WA – Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea Alaska
Devon Allman’s Blues Summit Tour**
August 7 – Baton Rouge, LA – Raising Cane’s River Center
August 8 – Lake Charles, LA – The Rosa Hart Theatre
August 9 – Pensacola, FL – Saenger Theater
August 10 – Montgomery, AL – Montgomery Performing Arts Center
August 12 – Nashville, TN – Fogg St Lawn Club
August 13 – Union Hall, VA – The Coves
August 14 – Hopewell, VA – The Beacon Theatre
August 15 – Norfolk, CT – Infinity Music Hall
August 16 – Jordan, NY – Kegs Canalside
August 17 – Kingston, NY – Ulster Performing Arts Center
August 20 – Atlantic City, NJ – Mardi Gras AC @ Kennedy Plaza
August 21 – Cranston, RI – The Park Theatre
August 23 – Nashua, NH – Nashua Center for the Arts
September 4 – Phoenix, AZ – MIM
September 5 – Las Vegas, NV – Big Blues Bender
September 6 – San Juan Capistrano, CA – Coach House
September 9 – Santa Fe, NM – The Lensic
September 10 – Beaver Creek, CO – Vilar Performing Arts Center
September 11 – Parker, CO – The Pace Center
September 12-13 – Telluride, CO – Telluride Blues & Brews Festival
** Features Devon Allman, Jimmy Hall, Larry McCray & Sierra Green
About Larry McCray
Blues singer and guitarist Larry McCray was born in Magnolia, Arkansas, and raised in Saginaw, Michigan, where he developed a searing guitar style and emotive voice that would earn him comparisons to the genre’s greats. A pioneer of modern blues-rock, McCray helped shape the genre throughout the ’90s with albums on Virgin’s Point Blank label and through collaborations with legends like B.B. King, Albert King, and Buddy Guy. After years of grinding it out on the road and surviving personal struggles, McCray has emerged with a renewed sense of purpose—and a voice that’s deeper, richer, and more powerful than ever. With Heartbreak City, he cements his status as a timeless torchbearer of the blues.
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