On November 18th, RAY TORO, formerly of My Chemical Romance, will release his outstanding, debut solo album ‘Remember The Laughter’ .
A brief bio for Ray could be, he grew up in a small town, learned to play guitar listening to his brother’s records. After playing in local bands, he joined up with Gerard Way to start My Chemical Romance. They got big, toured the world. He had a kid. MCR broke up a few weeks later. He then started writing what would become “Remember The Laughter”
3 and a half years in the making, ‘Remember The Laughter’ is a light concept record, one where Ray played on almost all of the instruments on it, engineered and mixed it, and even had his wife and son (then aged 2 and a half) play on it.
Ray explains: “The story is this…A middle aged man returns to his childhood home. Hearing a familiar melody, he goes to the attic to find a memory box he never knew was there. As he goes through it, each of the items in the box sparks a memory, and each song represents one of those memories. He explores his loves, his losses, his pains, & his regrets, and recalls the words of hope that his father left him with when he passed. Thematically, the record is about hope. That there is always a glimmer of light in the darkness.”
“The main page of my website www.raytoro.com has some of these items featured as photos (wedding ring, raffle tickets, necklace) for the song lyric they are connected to, as well as the interior artwork of the vinyl and CD”
‘Because the record was written over the course of 3 1/2 years, it feels very much like the memory box the character finds on the record. Lyrically, I tried to communicate the lessons that I have learned from my parents, and explore what I would want to teach my son. In a way, it is my memory box to him.’
