Monday 31st July 2006
‘You would cross continents to hear him roar a high note.’ Independent
‘When he opened his mouth, out flew his soul – and beautifully rasping roars of love, life and loss. Breathtaking.’ Time Out
14th Floor Records released ‘Trouble’, the debut album from Ray LaMontagne, on June 19 2006. The album, originally available through The Echo Label, was produced by Ethan Johns (Ryan Adams, Kings Of Leon) and has already sold almost 40,000 copies in the UK and 350,000 in the US. The title-track, described by the Guardian as ‘a rousing hymn to the redemptive powers of love’, will be released as a single on 17 July.
To coincide with the album’s release, LaMontagne has recently supported David Gray on his UK arena tour, as well as playing the Wireless Festival in London’s Hyde Park. He will also play an intimate headline show at London’s Dingwalls on 26 June; a show that sold out almost as soon as it was announced. In 2005, LaMontagne performed four sold-out shows in London; twice at the Scala and twice at Shepherds Bush Empire. A nationwide headline tour is planned for October/November 2006.
One of six siblings born to various fathers, LaMontagne spent his childhood being moved around by his resourceful mother to wherever she could put a roof over their heads; from friends’ backyards to the backs of cars, and even once to a chicken coop. “I was a misfit, an oddball…trouble found me” says LaMontagne of his schooldays. Four years after scraping through high school he drifted into a job at a shoe factory in Maine, a particularly bleak time when he went without seeing daylight for months. His epiphany came when, woken as usual at 4am by his clock radio, he heard Stephen Stills’ ‘Tree Top Flyer’, and was immediately shaken from his deep ennui. “I knew I wanted to sing, which was really crazy, because I never even talked to anybody,” Ray remembers, “I just had this feeling inside me, and I had to find it and let it out”.
LaMontagne never went back to work. Spending his days listening to Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Otis Redding, he taught himself to sing, and recorded his first demo in the summer of 1999. After several gigs at a local theatre supporting touring folk acts, LaMontagne struck up an e-mail friendship with a fan who asked if he could send a demo to a friend in the music business: the friend was Jamie Cerreta of Chrysalis Music Publishing, who quickly signed LaMontagne and took the unusual gamble of making the album themselves and finding a label to release it later.
The album was recorded in just two weeks at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles and produced by Johns, the son of legendary Rolling Stones and Eagles producer Glyn Johns. Most of the songs were recorded live, with LaMontagne playing guitar and singing and Johns later laying down the drum, bass and piano parts; delivering perfectly the natural, intense immediacy of the songs that is so striking when LaMontagne performs live.
David Jensen Photography:
https://www.davidjensen.co.uk/
