Michael Ray Can't Wait to Play Boots & Brews with Tim McGraw: 'I'm Like a Giddy 13-Year-Old Kid'

Michael Ray has never seen a Tim McGraw show.

Granted, the hitmaker of songs such as "Think a Little Less" and "Whiskey and Rain" has long been a fan of the hitmaker of songs such as "Live Like You Were Dying" and "Humble and Kind." He remembers hearing "I Like It, I Love It" for the first time while sitting in the back seat of his dad's truck and he remembers meeting McGraw at a No. 1 party in Nashville and he remembers the lyrics to a myriad of McGraw's deepest cuts.

But never has Ray shared a stage with McGraw — until now.

"I'm a little bit like a giddy 13-year-old kid about this right now," Ray, 34, says with a laugh mere days before his opportunity to share the stage on Oct. 14 with his music idol at the Boots & Brews Country Music Festival in Ventura, California. "I'm trying to stay cool about it, but yeah. We're not the same."

He adds, "When you think country music, Tim McGraw is one of the first people you think of."

Yet, perhaps if one digs a little deeper, these two just might have more similarities than one might expect, especially as both have gone through their share of ups and downs both personally and professionally in the country music industry.

"I mean, before [Tim released] 'Don't Take the Girl' and 'Indian Outlaw,' the guy couldn't catch a break," Ray, 34, reflects on McGraw's early career. "He went through some ebbs and flows."

And in that way, Ray feels a connection with him as he now sits at a point in his own career where he too is trying to put his finger on the impression he wants to leave on the genre.

"I try to make records like McGraw does," explains Ray. "I mean you can put on a McGraw record, and you are going to turn that whole dang thing."

Creating these sorts of records is something Ray says he always strives to do, while also admitting that there was a time he often failed to creatively follow his own intuition.

"I was never that confident, you know?" Ray asks aloud. "Growing up riding roads and being a country kid from Florida and then getting to where I am in my career… there were just times when I was like, 'I don't want to mess up or lose any of this' by going in another direction. I think as an artist I've grown so much over the years."

One example of that different direction can be heard loud and clear in Ray's current single "Holy Water," a country song with a rock edge that has been kicking off his live set as of late.

"What made me love it was that you fall in love with those characters that I'm singing about," Ray explains. "The preacher is not a bad guy. He just got caught up doing country s—. So, you still root for the guy, you know?"

The song also touches on Ray's personal history.

"This song really brings me back," he says of "Holy Water," the second single from Higher Education and a banger of a song written by Ashley Gorley, Hunter Phelps, Ben Johnson and Michael Hardy. "There was this little white church that we grew up going to and my grandpa grew up going to. At night, it's creepy. So I knew that if we shot a video, this was where we were going to go."

And now, as Ray continues to prep new music, he warns that he might continue to take a bit of a different road sonically.

"Both with Higher Education and what's going to be coming next is going to be different than what anybody's heard. It's not going to be some shocker out of nowhere though, you know what I mean?" he tells PEOPLE with a grin. "I'm not doing a jazz album!"

Nevertheless, Ray says he knows he's doing the right thing simply by growing as an artist, and come Oct. 14, he looks forward to showing that growth on stage. But when he walks off, he won't go far.

"I'll definitely stay to watch McGraw play," he concludes. "I never thought I would have a side stage pass to see McGraw, so I might just take advantage of it."