You don’t expect much self-mythologizing from a guy who refers to his own transatlantic presence as “the big pain when it comes to the American tours.” But that’s Mr. Ray (a.k.a. Ray Neal) of Miracle Legion, the cult-beloved college rock band who spent the 80s and early 90s in a van playing shows that made a deep enough dent for some of us out here to still care.
“I was really concerned when we decided to do this,” he tells me, calling in from across the pond. “I thought it was going to feel like a nostalgia thing, or the audience would just be full of guys that saw us in 1982 in some obscure place. Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he adds, politely.
The band’s second reunion run wasn’t some elaborate master plan—just a long-delayed West Coast leg built around a couple anchor cities. But apparently it sparked something deeper. “It was very weird for me,” Ray says. “It almost felt like a time slip. Like this might have been the next night of a tour in ’93 or something.”
Despite his self-effacing take on his knees and rehearsal time, he sounds genuinely moved by the whole thing. “It really blew me away,” he says. “There’s something there, you know, that can’t be denied.”
And while there aren’t any new Miracle Legion songs (“No, not at the moment”), he bristles at the suggestion they’re just cashing in on old feelings. “I don’t really like the nostalgia thing,” Ray says. “I’ve gone to see a few bands who I feel like are just feeding off of that—and I didn’t want to do that. We don’t have to do that.”
Maybe that’s the advantage of not having a monster hit weighing down your setlist. “We had every song requested that we ever recorded,” Ray says with a laugh. “There wasn’t anything we had to go to.” Which means every night can feel like something real—not a rerun. “If it was gonna be real and it was gonna be as important as it was in the past,” he shrugs, “then we’d do it. And it was amazing.”
So what about the future? Another record? A documentary? A Broadway jukebox musical?
“We’ll wait and see,” Ray says. “Certainly, I’d love it. I think we, as a group, have something to offer.”
Just maybe not in any city with a lot of stairs.
Listen to the full interview above and then check out the video below.
