Listening to any one of the Ray Mason Band's four CD releases, you might expect Mason lives somewhere between Motown and Nashville, somewhere where soul and twang live happily side by side. Swing the compass a little wider, to Northampton, Massachusettes, just a stone's throw from Beantown, and you'll find a lively music scene. Thirty years of touring and recording has earned Mason a legendary reputation as the godfather of that scene.

Not that you could ever get the easygoing Mason to admit to that. When Tar Hut records recently released a tribute album to Mason, featuring area favorites and regional heavy hitters like New York's Eric Ambel and the Ass Ponys from Cincinatti, he was surprised it got off the ground. He'd been hearing about it for years, as different bands recorded his stuff, and didn't think much of it until the album actually came out. "Eventually people started approaching me in the street, saying, 'So and so is recording one of your tunes.' And I'm going, 'Well, what would he want to do that for?'"

Mason was too busy playing his own music to worry about a tribute album. He was recording the Ray Mason Band's latest, "Castanets," and playing with his two other bands, the Lonesome Brothers and the Ware River Club. That's in addition to holding down an average of fifteen gigs a month, and recording with other area musicians like Cheri Knight and Wolf Krakowski.

Jeff Copetas of Tar Hut records attributes Mason's popularity to his tireless touring and recording. "Ray's been around forever," Copetas says. "The people who recorded his music grew up listening to Ray. Most of the artists on the record are a generation younger than Ray. There's the guy from Claudia Malibu -- this is a 21 year old kid. He just adored Ray. He snuck into the clubs when he was 15 and 16 years old so he could hear Ray play."

Mason's respect for rock and roll tradition extends to his Silvertone. The picture on the cover of Castanets shows Ray holding his first guitar -- a Silvertone -- in 1964. That guitar is long gone, but he's got two more he uses almost exclusively live and in the studio. Buying those two guitar seems like the best $70 Mason has ever spent. "It means something to me, too, that I started on a Silvertone, as you can see in that picture. It's so neat to me to be 48 and still playing one."

When Frank Marsh found himself between bands five years ago, he considered it a stroke of luck that Mason was looking for other musicians. "Ray needed a drummer, he called me up, and I jumped at the chance because I respect his writing so much," Marsh said.

Castanets is the band's most cohesive effort. While the other three albums featured a revolving cast, Castanets stays with Mason, Marsh, and ex-Scud Mountain Boys Tom Shea on bass and Steve Desalniers on guitar, with occasional help on keys and other instruments from producer Jim Weeks. "The newest one, Castanets, is definitely 'the band.' The four guys that are playing, and we recorded that way. It's more the way you would here the band live, at this point," Mason says of the new record.

Mason has already written most of the music for the Ray Mason Band's next album, which they will begin recording once they are finished promoting "Castanets." With a new Lonesome Brothers CD also in the works, Mason is right where he wants to be.

"A lot of people around are working jobs they don't want to be at," Mason says. "As far as I know, you only go around once, so it's kind of nice to be doing something you really like to do."