Get ready for new music, Michael Ray fans. A forthcoming EP from Michael, titled Dive Bars & Broken Hearts, is arriving on June 23.

Michael shared the big news on Instagram on Wednesday, April 5, after teasing an announcement earlier in the week.

“I’m a kid from central Florida, raised singing at the Sunshine Opry, playing Froggers, turning it up when Jones, Hank Jr. and later Montgomery Gentry hit the dial. I like the ones who hit their country straight up and hard. I knew one guy who makes that kind of country, my new producer Michael Knox. The more we talked, the more I knew he understood where I came from,” Michael wrote. “My kind of country doesn’t come from TikTok or a TV show, it’s all those straight up country singers who knew life doesn’t always turn out like you think, but you keep going.”

He continues, “I’m from a family of EMTs, cable-splicers, first responders; they had to get up and go to work, no matter what was happening… and when they got home, they reached for the music, whether they were going out with my grandpa Amos to watch him play, or some band they were playin’ in. That’s a whole different way to do this, and Knox got it. Just like he knows how dive bars and broken hearts are a lot like George Jones songs and steel guitars… they go together.”

Michael’s latest studio project is his Higher Education EP, which dropped in 2021 and featured the hit single “Whiskey And Rain.” In 2022, Michael released two live EPs, The Warehouse Sessions and The Bootlegger Sessions EP.

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