McCartney Times

Raynes on TeaFlix today!

British-American trio Raynes, formed in 2017, have wasted no time making themselves heard. Signing with Sony Music Publishing less than a year after their inception, the group has since released six singles and two EPs and performed at sold-out venues across the US and the UK. Now, their singular blend of pop, folk, and world music is being featured on television shows, commercials, and tastemakers’ playlists, earning them hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners and millions of streams across platforms.

Watch the TeaFlix epsiode here:

Mat Charley and Joe Berger, both born and raised in North Dakota, met in college, where Mat––the band’s producer and multi-instrumentalist––was usually skipping class to write songs.

“Joe introduced himself to me because I ‘looked cool,’ as he put it, and off-handedly mentioned that he played guitar. Within a week or so we were spending most nights in my room working on songs,” recalls Mat. Before long, the two had recorded a handful of demos and realized that the songs were good enough to build a band around.

Knowing that they would need a strong vocalist, they took to the internet to find the missing piece of their project. “We were looking for a needle in an enormous haystack,” says Mat. “To be honest, we didn’t think our chances were very good at all.”

After months of searching, they finally struck gold when they came across a video of Mark Race, a native of Durham, UK. “We loved everything about him––his look, his voice, his guitar playing, he was the whole package. We didn’t think there was any way he would actually be willing to drop everything and fly across the ocean to be in a band with us,” reveals Joe.

But just ten days later, after a Facebook message and a few phone calls, Mark was on a flight to LA to meet Mat and Joe.

“It was a big risk for me, for sure, but it was really a risk for all of us,” admits Mark. “We all come from pretty different musical backgrounds, and none of us were sure at the beginning if we would even be on the same page creatively.”

More on their website…