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"Tom Gray and Mark Johnson are the rusty, banged up Cadillacs of the slide guitar, side by side coughing up smoke and spitting backwoods dirt, but unswerving in their precision and singular style." - Hittin' the Note

Tom Gray and Mark Johnson first met in an Atlanta music store. When Tom tried to sell Mark a Dobro guitar out of the trunk of his car, the girl with Mark kept whispering, “Let’s get out of here.” Mark didn’t buy the guitar, but he and Tom exchanged phone numbers. Soon the two were playing together regularly, Tom on lap steel and Mark on bottleneck slide guitar.

Tom Gray was born in Washington D.C. and grew up in Virginia and in Georgia, but home was always the North Carolina mountains, where he and his siblings still own 100 acres of what was once his grandfather’s farm. He started writing songs and playing keyboards with bands in high school and in the 1980s led The Brains, a group that recorded two albums on Mercury and an EP on Landslide. His songs have been recorded by Cyndi Lauper, Manfred Mann, Carlene Carter, Bonnie Bramlett and many others. In the late 1980s Tom picked up a lap steel and could not put it down. Soon it became his main instrument.

While not born in the South, Mark Johnson did grow up in a trailer park in Ravenna, Ohio. His uncle owned a record store, and there was always music in the Johnson home. Mark played guitar in bands all through high school. In the early 1990s he moved to Atlanta, where he formed a band called the Rude Northerners. About that time he abandoned standard tuning and began to specialize in bottleneck slide.

At first, neither Tom nor Mark gave a thought to the idea of forming a double slide guitar band, but just kept swapping licks in the living room. Then Mark saw Ry Cooder and David Lindley perform together at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. He immediately thought, “That’s what Tom and I do.” The two, along with singer Gina Leigh and a rotating cast of drummers and bassists, formed Delta Moon. Their idea was to weave the two slide guitars into one big sound, in the tradition of great two-guitar bands like the Rolling Stones, the Allman Brothers, and early Fleetwood Mac.

Playing clubs and festivals around Atlanta and the South, Delta Moon quickly gathered a wall full of local “best” awards. After winning the International Blues Challenge in Memphis in 2003, the band widened its travel to include the US, Canada, and Europe. Gina Leigh left the band in 2004, and Kristin Markiton sang with the band for the next year and half. After her departure, Delta Moon became a quartet. With Tom Gray writing and singing all the lyrics, the band’s persona came into a sharp, new focus. Relix magazine said in a review of 2007’s Clear Blue Flame, “Delta Moon has found its true voice.”

In late 2007, after years of revolving-door rhythm sections, Delta Moon settled on a permanent line-up with Darren Stanley, from Stone Mountain, Georgia, on drums and Franher Joseph, from Haiti by way of Jonesboro, Georgia, on bass. The two had played together in several groups since they first met in the University of Georgia marching band, when Darren played snare and Franher played Sousaphone.

In 2008 Delta Moon signed with the European label Blues Boulevard, a division of Music Avenue. The first CD, Howlin’ Under the Southern Moon, released in early 2009, was a compilation of Delta Moon songs previously released in the United States. A new Delta Moon CD is due out by summer 2009.

In 2008 the American Roots Music Association named Tom Gray Blues Songwriter of the Year.