Birmingham SlossFest profile: Ray LaMontagne
Ray LaMontgane, second from left, with his band. LaMontagne will close out this year's SlossFest. (Contributed)
Performer: Ray LaMontagne
Type of music: Singer-songwriter, Folk/Americana/Groovy Rock
About: Ray LaMontagne’s voice, a blend of breathy, raspy emotions, can mesmerize, evoking the ‘60s sensibilities of Stephen Stills, Neil Young or Joni Mitchell on one song, Joan Armatrading on another, Van Morrison on another. His music can take you down quiet roads when he’s performing alone on acoustic guitar, singer-songwriter style. Or it can send you soaring over flowered fields when his band helps him serve up doses of neo-psychedelia from his 2014 record, “Supernova.” LaMontagne’s 2010 record, “God Willin’ & the Creek Don’t Rise,” debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, with the song “Beg, Steal or Borrow” nominated for Song of the Year. The tune summons the dusty sweep of west Texas, or the wheat belt of Alberta, Canada – pick your preferred, lonely high plain. You can almost hear the distant train whistle, carrying you away from your troubles. A New Hampshire native who once worked in a shoe factory in Maine, LaMontagne now makes his home in a restored 1830 farmhouse in Massachusetts with his wife, poet Sarah Sousa, and their two children. LaMontagne rarely grants interviews, but that’s OK; his music does the talking for him.
Follow LaMontagne on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Discography: “Trouble,” “Till the Sun Turns Black,” “Gossip in the Grain,” “God Willin’ & the Creek Don’t Rise,” “Supernova” and “Ouroboros.”
You might have heard: “Ouroboros,” LaMontagne’s latest record, which he views as a single 40-minute piece of music. It was written by LaMontagne and produced by Jim James of My Morning Jacket. “To really enjoy it, or to really feel the emotional impact of it, I think you really need to sit down and listen to it as a whole,” Lamontagne recently told grammypro.com.
Playing at SlossFest: Ray LaMontagne will close out SlossFest 2016 on the Blast stage Sunday, July 17, from 10 to 11:30 p.m.
Sloss Music and Arts Festival takes place at the historic Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham July 16-17 and features 40 performers on four stages. Tickets can be purchased here.
