The BellRays

Vocalist Lisa Kekaula and guitarist Bob Vennum established the BellRays near 1990 in Riverside, California. At the outset the pair emphasized vintage R&B laced with smoky jazz accents. Guitarist Tony Fate’s arrival, paired with Vennum’s shift to bass, fused Kekaula’s alley cat soul vocals to a sharp punk-rock drive. The In the Light of the Sun cassette surfaced in 1993, and the “Wall of Soul” 7" followed two years later. Let It Blast, the band’s first full-length, appeared in 1998 and received support from an extensive tour highlighted by a blistering set at Austin’s South by Southwest. Drummer Ray Chin had joined by this point, and the BellRays began attracting notice for their fiercely emotional approach. Grand Fury arrived in 2001 on the Los Angeles indie Upper Cut; a European pressing later combined it with Let It Blast. Tours alongside Rocket from the Crypt and Nashville Pussy helped spread awareness, while In Music We Trust reissued In the Light of the Sun. Upper Cut issued Raw Collection in 2003, an odds-and-sods compilation of B-sides, rarities, and vinyl-only material recorded between 1995 and 2002. Red White and Black also emerged that year. The group sustained its soulful garage-punk output with 2006’s Have a Little Faith and 2008’s Hard, Sweet and Sticky. Crowd-funding financed the next album, Black Lightning, released in 2011. The December 2017 EP Punk Funk Rock Soul 1 distilled the band’s core ingredients, and the companion full-length Punk Funk Rock Soul, Vol. 2 followed in February 2018.