Ray LaMontagne doesn’t really live in the music world. He visits it. Briefly. Reluctantly. And when he’s done making an album, he puts the guitar away like it’s a piece of seasonal decor. “Far more of my time is spent away from music than with it,” he says. “That’s just my rhythm.”
When Monovision dropped in 2020—mid-pandemic, with zero touring prospects—he did what Ray LaMontagne does: he disappeared. But now, three years later, he’s finally on the road behind the record, dragging the songs out of the studio and into the sunlight. “Playing them live is the final piece,” he explains. “It’s not closure, but… it completes it.”
It helps that the songs are still growing. “Born to Love You” recently got reimagined as a duet with rising folk star Sierra Ferrell, who joins Ray on tour. “It all just kind of happened naturally,” he says. “She’s such a natural singer. Her voice just belongs there.”
For a guy who made his name with whispery melancholy and soul-soaked folk-rock, LaMontagne doesn’t dwell too long on the past—or the future. “There’s new music,” he admits. “It’s there. But it’s locked in the back of my mind. I’ve got to finish this tour first. Then I can unlock that door.”
That’s the thing with LaMontagne—he’s methodical. Compartmentalized. Obsessive, but only when the time is right. When it’s not, the instruments get shelved. “Unless a melody comes knocking, I’m not sitting around writing. And if it does, I record it quickly and put it away. Then it’s back to normal life.”
Normal life, of course, involves motorcycles. “I’ve got a bike on this tour,” he says casually. “If the weather’s good and there’s time, I’ll get out and see things.” When asked if he’d ever do the David Byrne thing and write a travelogue, he laughs. “Who knows.” But don’t expect a blog. “99.9% of my life is outside rock & roll,” he shrugs. “That other 0.1% just happens to pay the bills.”
For Monovision, LaMontagne didn’t just play every instrument—he produced and engineered it himself. It was a full-blown one-man operation. “I really enjoyed the process,” he says. “Not that I’d do it every time. But keeping momentum is so much easier when you’re not juggling five other people’s performances and egos.”
When he’s not philosophizing about rhythm and solitude, he’s quietly dropping tales like this one: “Mickey Raphael—Willie Nelson’s harmonica player—once pulled me aside and said, ‘I’m trying to play less. Listening to you makes me want to play less.’” Ray almost blushes. “I mean, that’s Mickey. That’s insane.”
His harmonica style is vocal, melodic, minimal. “Less is always more,” he says. “Always make it feel like a vocal line.”
Then there’s Supernova, the record that let him put on his psychedelic boots and growl a little. “Those songs just came to me,” he says. “And I decided, this time, I’d actually say no to some melodies. I wanted ten songs that belonged together. So I turned some ideas away. That’s scary. You don’t know if another one’s going to show up.”
He mentions arguing with producer Dan Auerbach about a single minor chord. “I didn’t want any minor chords on that record,” he says, stone-faced. “Minor chords are sad.” Dan won. “Turns out, one minor chord can give a song lift. Just don’t tell him I said that.”
And while LaMontagne might not give a damn about image—“I don’t have the energy to care about that part of the job”—he’s still aware of how fans and critics build a mythology around artists. “I just make the records. If people show up to the shows, I’m happy. That’s the barometer. Not what ends up on a Wikipedia page.”
Somewhere in the quiet woods of New England, there’s a house where Ray LaMontagne keeps a guitar in the closet, a motorcycle in the garage, and a harmonica in his pocket—just in case.
listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
