Ray LaMontagne

Tonight I saw Ray LaMontagne at the Marquee Theatre in Tempe, Arizona. It was one of the strangest shows I can recall going to in quite a while, both for the performance and for the crowd. First, a bit of history. I first saw Ray last October 14th as the opener for Badly Drawn Boy at the same venue. I'd never even heard of him before that night, but was instantly impressed with him. His band was a three-piece: him on acoustic guitar, an upright bassist, and Ethan Johns on drums (!!!!). He played a great upbeat folky acoustic set. He chatted with the crowd, seemed pleased that people knew who he was and took lots of song requests from the crowd. I was convinced and got his cd Trouble soon after, and have been loving it ever since. When I heard he was coming to the Marquee again so soon, and as the opener this time, I was looking forward to checking it out.

Rachael Yamagata opened. I'm familiar with her name, but not her music. It was pretty decent. She has a great voice, but the music was just average and not too polished. Not that folk-ish music needs to be polished, but there was something lacking. She was a decent opener though, and the crowd was really into her.

Ray came out around 9 to a pretty big audience. There were definitely more people in attendance than were at Badly Drawn Boy, which was a big surprise to me. But, the crowd totally had me confused. Being folk music I was expecting a low-key emo crowd, but instead it was packed with loud obnoxious people. People that talked through the first five songs when he was playing with no drummer and really required a quiet audience. People that sang words loudly in my ear, made out with each other practically on top of me, talked to me incessantly about how they were going to put me on their shoulders, bought me bottled water, and danced to the beat of some music that wasn't coming from the stage. In summation, they were annoying as hell. But nevermind, it was the music I was there to see, not the crowd.

Having seen Ray already, I was expecting (read: hoping for) a longer version of the show I'd seen him put on a mere nine months prior. However, this isn't the show I got. In this show he seemed like he was on the brink of insanity or suicide. He was quiet, withdrawn, hardly spoke to the crowd at all and when he did he muttered so that we could hardly hear him. He played an odd collection of songs with tons of new songs mixed in. Even the most upbeat song on Trouble, How Come, was super mellow and stripped down. There were two highlights of the night. One was a new song which he played the electric guitar on and totally rocked. It was the opposite of his folk stuff, but his voice could easily command the rockiness of the song. The second highlight was when he appeared to totally be losing his mind during the encore. I've never seen anything like it. He came out for the encore and mumbled to the crowd about how he felt weird. And how he'd had a weird day. He said weird about 10 times. Then he played a song. Then the band left and he started mumbling again. He said something about forgetting words and forgetting chords. More incoherent mumbling. Then he thanked Rachael. Someone in the crowd yelled out for her to come out, and so he motioned her out. They conferred on the stage for a while and I swear he looked like he was going to cry. Then he gave her his guitar and left the stage. She fumbled around with it for a few minutes and tried talking to the crowd a bit and then the audience started yelling for Ray. He came back and strapped on the guitar he'd given her. A few more minutes of conferring and they decided to 'try an experiment'. He played a new song that was super soft and rather depressing and she sang a bit of back-up vocals with her back to the audience facing him and sharing a mic. When the song was over he looked relieved to be getting the hell off the stage.

I have no idea what was going on tonight. It was still a good show, but such a stark contrast to the show I'd seen less than a year ago. It can also be really tough to get into a show when there is so much material you are unfamiliar with. But, with that much new stuff in the set I imagine there is a new album around the corner.

Geeking out with the set list:
1. Burn
2. New song
3. New song
4. Narrow Escape (sung with Jennifer Stills)
5. Jolene
6. Hold You in my Arms
7. Shelter
8. New song- You Got What I Want
9. Hannah
10. New song- So Empty
11. New song- You Should Belong to Me
12. Trouble
13. How Come
-encore-
14. New song
15. New song- Can I Stay

With an all around entertaining night, I cross off #174: see Ray LaMontagne again, in a totally different way.