David Gray

Genres:	Music Videos & Concerts • Mystery / Thriller • Pop / Rock
Descriptive "tags":	singer-songwriter • acoustic • indie • alternative • rock • british • pop • folk
Decades Active:	1990s • 2000s

Biography

13 June 1968, Sale, England but raised in the Welsh fishing village of Solva. Gray first aspired to being a rock performer after watching 2-Tone bands on television. He formed a punkish outfit at school, cranking out rock classics at double speed, then began writing songs when he was 17. Polydor Records A&R man Rob Holden heard a demo while recuperating from a motorcycle crash and was sufficiently convinced to quit his job and become Gray’s manager. Pegged as a ‘crop-headed Welsh troubadour’ with ‘a chip on both shoulders’, Gray’s early material was in fact as sensitive as it was angry, and the manic energy communicated with his acoustic guitar thrash set him apart from the folkies. He enjoyed an initial breakthrough in Ireland with ‘Shine’, taken from 1993’s debut A Century Ends. A number of tours as support to singer-songwriters (Maria McKee, Kirsty MacColl, Shawn Colvin) brought him early exposure in America, and...

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