Ray Bonneville is a poet of the demimonde who didn’t write his first song until his early 40s, some 20 years after he started performing. But with a style that sometimes draws comparisons to JJ Cale and Daniel Lanois, this blues-influenced, New Orleans-inspired “song and groove man,” as he’s been so aptly described, luckily found his rightful calling. Born in Quebec, he moved to Boston with his family when he was 12. He served a year in Vietnam as a Marine, struggled with and overcame drug addiction, earned a pilot’s license in Colorado, then moved to Alaska, then Seattle, and Paris and New Orleans. But it took a close call while piloting a seaplane across the Canadian wilderness to make him decide it was time to get busy writing songs–gritty narratives inspired by a lifetime of hard-won knowledge set against his soulful guitar and harmonica playing. "Easy Gone," Ray’s fourth album for Red House Records, takes listeners to some of the dark spaces and exotic places Bonneville has gone on his own travels. An Austin resident since 2006, Ray still puts the rhythms and soul of New Orleans into much of his music. His songs carry a groove and momentum that’s uniquely his–and will always be a part of him, no matter where he roams.