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Earth-bound balladeer
The lush meditations of Gregory Alan Isakov
By Ryan Heinsius
Published on 11/26/2009
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Heavy Thinker: Colorado-based singer-songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov. Photo courtesy of Madison House Publicity.
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The real trick to creating meaningful music often lies in one’s ability to translate extremely personal moments into a universally understood language. Solitude, quiet, peacefulness, empty houses and early mornings—this is the stuff that provides some of the most potent building blocks for the music of South African-born singer-songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov.
“I live alone, so that makes it really work well for me,” says Isakov of his writing process. “I’ll play a lot in my kitchen, and that’s kind of my time to wake up, and that’s kind of when a lot of songs come from.”
Isakov’s newest album, This Empty Northern Hemisphere, propelled him into the national spotlight after its release earlier this year. The recording has been heralded by national publications like Paste as well as his esteemed hometown alt-weekly, the Denver-based Westword, as one of the finest collections of new songcraft in recent memory. And, after a slew of opening slots for Ani DiFranco, Calexico, the Indigo Girls (he opened for the duo last summer in Flag at Pine Mountain Amphitheater), Brandi Carlile (one of Isakov’s earliest and biggest supporters), Fiona Apple and Richie Havens, and appearances at festivals like South By Southwest, the Rocky Mountain Folks Fest, and the Monolith Festival at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater in September, his musical reach has been expanding at a phenomenal rate.
After traveling the country for several years solo and with various incarnations of his band, the Freight, Isakov’s music reflects a lifetime of travel and a constantly rotating expanse of settings and scenery.
His family emigrated to the U.S. when he was 7 and underwent the process of blending with their newfound culture.
“We definitely all felt like aliens,” says Isakov. “I think it was hard for everyone for a while. And I think my brothers and I still are kind of aliens in a lot of ways because we got really close. And that’s one of the great things about it, because I’m really close with my family.”
Isakov’s family initially settled in Pennsylvania but regularly moved, and with often-changing schools he and his brothers developed a sense of otherness that can often build a foundation for artistry. Eventually, Isakov moved to Colorado to study horticulture and began devoting more and more time to developing his songwriting style. A guitar player throughout his teens, his musical experience had largely been as a member of a jazz band, but after moving to the Mountain West, he spent increasing time as a devotee to melancholic song masters like Leonard Cohen and Mark Kozelek. Further inspiration came to Isakov in the form of Bruce Springsteen’s sober 1995 classic The Ghost of Tom Joad as well as modern blues-folk troubadour Kelly Joe Phelps, with whom Isakov eventually toured.
This Empty Northern Hemisphere is Isakov’s fourth album, and his most evolved—from both an instrumental standpoint as well as lyrically. With heavy meditations on solitude, nature and intensely interpersonal moments, Isakov’s songs create a mysterious atmosphere that calms listeners into full immersion in his world. “That full bellied moon she’s a shinin’ on me/She pulls on this heart like she pulls on the sea,” he sings in “That Moon Song,” a hypnotizing waltz-time tune with luscious backing vocals courtesy of Brandi Carlile (she appears on several songs on Empty Northern). The whole album is littered with these moments and tastefully layered with plenty of acoustic guitar, piano, violin and cello creating a perfect woodsy bed for Isakov’s rustic-but-in-touch wordplay and smooth tenor.
“With recording I think it’s so much clearer. Because the way I listen to records is in my truck a lot and I feel like that person has made a recording to me, when I’m alone,” says Isakov. “And I feel like when I make records I think about that. I think this is being made for one person. And with a show you’re playing to all these other people at once so it’s a different vibe—you can go a little deeper in a record. You’re playing to the insides of this individual recording.”
The 13 gentle, delicate songs that make up This Empty Northern Hemisphere spring out of time Isakov spent living in the pastoral, mountainous environment near Boulder, Colo. “All the songs were written in a block of time when I was living on this farm for a long time outside of Boulder,” he says. “And I ended up leaving this place, so it was kind of being 28 and all this Saturn stuff people talk about, and then kind of the universe; things happening in it. And it felt really expansive and pretty lonely—but not with a super down theme.
“You know, the writing to me is sort of just a mystery. I’ll know if I got it or not. The songs just work themselves out. But a lot of times, I don’t even—I’m not like, ‘I’m going to write a song about that’ or ‘Man, this is a hard time in my life, I’ve got to write a song about that.’ It’s never really like that. These things come out and I don’t really know where they come from. It’s why I think I’m still doing it—‘cause I’m so curious about it. I know I can’t get away from the way I sound, but every time it happens it feels new to me. I think that’s what I’m kind of after.”
For Isakov, his music is a reflection of the miles he’s logged both as a sedentary thinker tied to the earth, as well as a road-worn minstrel chasing the universe’s mysteries down that fabled lost highway. Regardless of venue though, he’s on his own path, writing music that goes deep, providing a little substance to the sometimes vacuous latitudes of the American musical landscape.
“If you love playing, you’re going to play, and you’re going to always play no matter what.”
Catch Gregory Alan Isakov live Sun, Nov. 29 at the Green Room, 15 N. Agassiz. The show will start at 7 p.m. with an opening set from Flag singer-songwriter Dave McGraw and bassist Thom Lord. Tickets are $8 in advance, $10 at the door and can be purchased at Arizona Music Pro. For more info, see www.gregoryalanisakov.com or www.davemcgraw.net, or call 226-8669.
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