The El Ray story (well…some very very tiny bit of it!)

Year 2001 - 2003
El Ray started as a band in 2001. Jesper/El Firetone and Lars/El Twang used to play guitars together in a local 90s indie band and wanted to start a type of band, that could go and play everywhere without a PA system. A band that did not have long lyrics about life and death. Jørgen/El Fuerte knew El Firetone from another band and joined at the same time for the first rehearsals. El Fuerte knew a cool bassist, Mads/El Doc´torro - and El Ray was born!

Before we started El Ray, we were all more or less newcomers to the surf music and garage scene. Actually, what got the band started was covering a few Calexico and The Ventures instrumentals. Then a guy called Frank gave us a compilation cd with wild surf tunes. We figured out how to play those songs and got a huge kick out of it. From there we started to do our own stuff. We entitled our first demo “El Frank Francesco D´angelo EP” as a tribute to Frank for getting us started.

We played our first real public show on August 24, 2001 in Cafe Funke in Copenhagen. The day after El Firetone and El Twang met a guy called Jan Povlsen at a Man- or Astroman gig in Loppen, Copenhagen. We spotted Jan, as he was at our gig the day before. Jan was totally into surf and instro music. From there Jan became our friend, taught us a lot about the style and scene and he gave us the opportunity to open for Nokie Edwards from The Ventures, when Nokie played in Copenhagen, as Jan booked and arranged the show. Wow, what a honour that was!

Different events led us to be a part of Marc Alexander’s Alternate Records which was a very small, but cool Copenhagen based label. Marc Alexander recorded and mixed our first demo and later our debut album, ’Shoot From The Hip’. More gigs followed and we had a ton of fun playing this style of music. Highlights was getting our first gigs outside Denmark in 2003 and meeting so many great people (thanks to Barney and Rhine, shout out to you guys!) and doing some crazy afterparty’ing.

On August 17, 2002 we had the ’Shoot From The Hip' release party in the center of Copenhagen in a record shop called Baden Baden. It was a warm sunny day and we had a lot of fun that turned into a long drunken Copenhagen summer night. Below is the release party flyer and two short video clips from that day. As well as a video for ‘Circus Monkey’ which was a track on the new album (click on the playing band).

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El Ray - Circus Monkey.mp4


Year 2004 - 2008
In February 2004 we had a some new songs ready and a new contact with a Swedish label called Heptown Records. Heptown Records wanted to bring our music out further and helped us find a bloody great studio in the southern part of Sweden. We tried our luck and contacted Jesper ‘Yebo’ Reginal and asked him to produce and mix the new record. He said yes, which was quite a scoop for us as we loved the things he was doing as a drummer and songwriter in The Tremolo Beer Gut as well as running the uber cool label, Crunchy Frog, here in Copenhagen. He did a few fantastic dubs/parts too which you can see below.

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The recording session went very well and El Ray + Yebo’s ideas and input plus a bunch of other stuff ended up being the 'Tick…Tick…Tick…' record. The day we got the final mixes, we met at El Doc’torro’s place. After listening to the record, El Doc’torro, announced that he had to leave the band to go further with his studies and ambition to become a doctor. What a bummer and we hated to see him leave with all new fun things going on with the band.

With El Doc’torro leaving the band we needed a new bass player in a hurry as the 'Tick…Tick…Tick…’ album was ready for release. After auditioning a few people there was absoluty no doubt in our minds that Rasmus/El Kid'o should take the spot. Rasmus was younger than us and it was easy from here to call him El Kid’o. And what a Kid’o he was! He had superb ear for grooves and melodies, loved to party and to play live music. So it was really a no-brainer that he should join and help take El Ray into the next adventures.

On August 30th, 2004 we had the ’Tick…Tick…Tick..’ release party in Ideal Bar in Copenhagen’s Vega venue. The place was packed with good people and the album came of to a great start right before playing a bunch of gigs in the Benelux a couple of weeks after.

Here are some pics of the new band playing at the release party as well as a picture of the former crew with El Doc’torro who is playing on ’Tick…Tick…Tick..’.


On January 20-22th, 2006 we recorded our third album, ‘Holiday on Ice’, during days of very heavy snow for a Copenhagen winter time. This time we went to the Black Tornado studio with Ralph Rjeily producing and Troels Bech mixing and mastering. It was quite a session and we ended up making a pretty garage’y sounding record. The release party was on September 30th, 2006. Another fun party and no one really knows where the pictures from that night have gone.

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During 2004 - 2007 we played a lot live shows all over the place. Highlights was doing shows at the Wild at Heart club in Berlin, Radiohuset Rocker 2006, the 2007 HWCH festival in Dublin, Ireland, DePalma Hot Rod Mayhem in Stockholm, Sweden, we got two songs in Tor Fruergaard's ‘It Came From The West’ zombie-puppet movie, signed a publishing deal with EMI Scandinavia and a lot more. Here’s a live clip from our SPOT Festival 2007 show in Aarhus plus various pics from that period.

El Ray @ Spot Festival


In May 2008 El Kid’o told the band, that he was very ill. He passed 3 months later and there’s probably no need to mention here what horrible time this was. We played as a trio at the funeral and had absolutely no idea where to go as a band after this. Forever in our hearts, El Kid'o!!!

Year 2009 - now
After 6 months we decided that we should and would move on and continue with the band. So we had yet another audition for a new bass player. And there she was! A young woman with a totally strong indie groove ready to take on the surf and be with us now. Sent right from the stars. It was an easy decision to make Tine/TC/La Chiquilla a new member of the band and she has been with us ever since. What a score. There’s a whole new chapter to tell and write about from here. The rest of this webpage pretty much is all about this period, where the band found itself moving more and more towards the surf community circles, festivals and people within this beautiful scene and subculture. To be continued!