Noral Roy

I love making music. Whether it’s recording or performing at clubs, farmers’ markets, parties, church, restaurants, rotary clubs, corporate events, weddings, showcases – anywhere and everywhere – it’s all good!

My influences are many and varied – too many to acknowledge here. But I’ll start with Hendrix, Clapton, Johnny Winter and Mark Knopfler. Those and many others helped me to hone my electric guitar style. When I play acoustic guitar, you might hear some throwbacks to Ed Gerhard, Mike Dowling, Tommy Emanuel (…wish I could play as precisely as he does) and countless others. Orville Johnson, Jerry Douglass, Rob Ickes and Michael Witcher have all had a hand in helping me develop my lap style reso chops – such as they are.  I really enjoy performing on one of my acoustic resos or lap steel.  Finally, on mandolin there’s just one person that got me going in the right direction – Roland White – a great player and a fine teacher. (I’m also working on banjo, but I wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone by calling them an influence.)

I’ve been performing in various acts for a good long time.  So all those influences have mixed together to manifest themselves into the Noral Roy style that you’ll hear in my recorded music and when I’m playing out with the four piece band, The Towels, or with my all-original rock band, Hidden Agenda, or with my duo, The Noral Twins.

Song writing for me is a love/hate process.  There’s no simple formula when it comes to dreaming up the lyrics and music for a song.  Rarely I’ll bump into an idea that seems to grow over the period of a few days with the whole song falling into place.  But usually the process takes much longer.  For some songs it takes years before everything comes together.  Every song requires a lot of effort and a little “magic”.  

Check out my CDs -- Outlaw with no Name (Country, Americana and folk),  The Man in the Road (Rock, Alt-rock) and Light and Dark (Rock, Alt-rock).  Click on the player at the bottom of this page to hear some the tunes from the CDs and my singles.  Eventually, I'll follow up with a CD of my favorite fingerstyle hymns and original tunes. So many tunes, so little time! 

When you’re in Southern California, stop by and say, HI, at one of my shows. See you soon!

Noral Roy  

pmtnroy@aol.com

310-713-6027

www.facebook.com/noraltwins