Ray LaMontagne and Gregory Alan Isakov played at the YouTube Theater on Thursday the 12th, in Inglewood, California. The Youtube Theater is one of the many venues at the massive entertainment center which includes the Kia Forum, SoFi stadium, and the Clipper Dome.
Press – Pains and Pleasures
As press, it can be kind of a crap-shoot as to what accommodating measures you are given. The last time I was at this venue, I covered Odesza at the Kia Forum in 2022 with a different publication. I was not given a parking pass, and had to pick up my tickets at Will Call, which was a 20 minute walk from where we parked, and another 20 minute walk to the entrance. In a little snafu, our tickets got scanned at the wrong gate, and we were nearly denied entry since tickets can only be scanned once. To make matters more curious, our seats were way up and away, and we missed the opener entirely because of the logistical inefficiency.
Suffice it to say, I had very low expectations for press accommodations at the Youtube Theater. But it couldn’t have been more lovely. This time around, we were given parking, the tickets were sent directly to my phone without fuss, AND in a lovely gesture, we were given an escort to our seats. The seats actually being decent for once! So let me start this piece by giving major snaps and kudos to the team leader Vanessa and her crew of sensible ushers. Much gratitude to the folks that make that massive campus run.
The Youtube Theater
The venue is an acoustic and architectural wonder. It is set up like an indoor greek theater so every seat in the house has a great view of the stage. The facilities are sleek, modern, and clean. And the WiFi is set up to handle tens of thousands of phones connecting at once.
The Music
The opener was Erin Rae. She offered a folk feminine vocal quality to contrast the masculine vocals that would follow her. Although she is a rising star from Nashville, her largest pool of listeners come from Australia. Unfortunately we did not arrive in time to see her set.
Gregory
Next up came Gregory Alan Isakov. For those of you unfamiliar with his music, it has a gentle American folk and indie twang quality. His voice pours like warm milk over honey. His band is an ensemble of fiddle, banjo, drum, and guitar; and the group plays together, facing one another and the audience as they build their songs in a sweet circle under a spotlight. This gives the band a lively bluegrass quality which is really lovely to behold. Isakov closed out his set with my favorite song by him, “The Stable Song.”
Gregory Alan Isakov has several other notable musicians supporting him on stage and at the studio with too many different instruments and collaborative artists to mention in this article: Andrew Berlin (who coproduced and engineered his newest album Appaloosa Bones) plays the keys, tambourines, and whistles, Bonny May Paine (the lead singer of her own project, Elephant Revival) offers feminine backing vocals, and Danny Black is on the 12-string guitar, and a musical device called a lap steel.
Isakov was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and moved to Philadelphia when he was just seven years old. At 16, he began touring with a band in what must have felt very “Almost Famous.” He would later relocate to Colorado to study horticulture, and began playing music for money, in tandem with professional gardening. This path makes sense for him in the light of his music, which often touches on themes of the natural world, and the introspective state.
And his performance with his many talented musicians at the Youtube theater was nothing short of a reflection of his lifetime dedication to tending to his own proverbial garden. When he sings, he invites you to have a sit amongst the flowers of his own creation, and leave your worries at the door. You are safe now, Isakov is singing to you.
Ray
Lastly Ray LaMontagne took the stage. He had a simple production with a large tapestry behind him with the art from his new album Long Way Home. The tapestry is a beautiful contrasted image of a woman adjusting her long necked instrument in what feels like a bayou. His band lines up in a more “traditional” way, each facing the stage with some space in-between them. The lights and colors were slowly changing on the image, which looked like a new scene with every switch.
LaMontagne played some songs off this new album, opening with “Step Into Your Power.” He also played “And They Called Her California” off the same album, and “Strong Enough” from his 2020 album MONOVISION.
In general, the crowd was one of the most attentive and respectful crowds I have encountered. We were all seated so that may have played a part. But when Ray sang “Jolene”, the crowd joined in on the choral lyric “I still don’t know what love is,” which was really beautiful to be a part of. He also sang “Trouble,” which garnered national attention as a Traveler’s Insurance commercial of a dog who was concerned about the safety of his bone.
Surprisingly, he did not sing “Shelter”, a song that Kelly Clarkson covered in 2005 and helped bring him into the public zeitgeist. In fact, his set was quite short. Both Gregory Alan Isakov and Ray LaMontagne only played for 70 minutes. There were some murmurs in the crowd on the exit: they found it strange that his set felt so short, and he did not play an encore.
Tour
On the whole though, Gregory Alan Isakov and Ray LaMontagne made for a lovely evening. Their tours, which weaves in and out of each other, runs through mid-October and can be found on their websites (here for Gregory) and (here for Ray) and instagram.
The Indy Review 