Lost and found
Acclaimed Colorado musician Gregory Alan Isakov lost everything, then found it again on a farm outside Boulder
Gregory Alan Isakov is crouched in a field on a sweaty September morning, a clump of wet soil oozing between his fingers.
“See how full of clay it is?” he says, kneeling next to a justseeded plot on his 3½acre farm in rural Boulder. “But that’s OK. We’ll make it work.”
The cover crops — in this case rye, oats and vetch — won’t produce organic vegetables he can sell at farmers markets or to highend restaurants, which is how he makes his living when not touring internationally as a singersongwriter. But it will keep the soil protected and germinating during the winter, never fully exposed to Colorado’s unforgiving weather.
Isakov knows that feeling.
“I lost everything in the big
flood,” Isakov, 38, said, remembering how he and roommate/ producer Jamie Mefford woke up one morning five years ago (to the day of this interview, in fact) to find their downtown Boulder apartment filled with a halffoot of water, their hands dangling off their beds in the murky pool.
“I had a small garden there, maybe an eighth of an acre, that I was working a lot,” Isakov said. “We had just come back from tour so everything was safe in the van, which was a blessing. But I was also lucky that I lost everything else.”
Despite his critical and commercial success, Isakov needed to start over. And as he prepares to release his new album, “Evening Machines,” on the Dualtone label on Oct. 5, he remains grateful for those lessons of loss.
He owes his current career to them. His farm. His feeling of independence. The fact that he’s quit drinking and gotten a handle on his anxiety, which used to send him to hospitals in strange cities with panic attacks.
“It was a blessing when I look back,” says the South African native, who emigrated to and grew up in Philadelphia before moving to Colorado to earn a degree in horticulture from Boulder’s Naropa University. “All I had left was a pair of pants, my amp and my guitar. That was pretty much it. I had been touring with Josh Ritter and then I’d come home in between dates and stay with friends. I was looking for land in the Northwest and Southwest. I didn’t really know if I’d be staying in Colorado — until I found this place in 2014.” Now, Isakov lives and works on his tidy farm, which is something
of a commune in that he rents space to a friendly couple with young kids, as well as a few artistfriends who figure in his musical life. He’s built up an impressive recording studio on the property, which shares a roof with his own modest dwelling (essentially, a large studio apartment).
The recording studio is where the new “Evening Machines” was captured, and the onsite barn is where his most recent record, 2016’s “Gregory Alan Isakov with the Colorado Symphony,” was mixed. The latter contained reworked songs from Isakov’s previously released albums, which date back to 2003’s “Rust Colored Stones.”
Most of those were issued on Suitcase Town Records, which Isakov runs with longtime manager and friend Sarah Levin, who also lives just down the road in this idyllic swath of Front Range between Boulder and Erie.
“Knowing that my work helps connect his music to people is very fulfilling,” Levin said via email last week. “It’s not just his talent as a musician that inspires me; it’s his kindness, intellect and wit.”
The Dualtone label, which Isakov is working with for the first time for “Evening Machines,” is home to records from Colorado’s Lumineers, but also Chuck Berry, Robert Earl Keen and Shakey Graves. It’s a good fit for the Diyminded Isakov, who sold more than 380,000 copies of his music with Suitcase Town’s Levin while touring with Iron & Wine, Ani Difranco, Brandi Carlile and friend/fellow Colorado songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff.
Thanks to these past sales, tours and writeups in The New York Times and Rolling Stone, “Evening Machines” is poised to push Isakov even higher. The first single, “Chemicals,” was nearing 4 million total streams last week as Isakov eyed a tour that will spirit him around the U.S. and Europe through December, with more dates planned for early next year.
Several stops on the tour, which began Sept. 21, are already sold out — including Isakov’s Sept. 30 Red Rocks Amphitheatre concert and an Oct. 1 set at Boulder’s intimate Fox Theatre. After that, he heads to Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., and, eventually, to London, Dublin, Paris and Berlin.
“My hunch is that any musician can do any version of this thing that they want,” said Isakov, who is softspoken even when barreling down the road in his ’87 Volkswagen Vanagon, which has often doubled as a touring partner, home and money pit (now on its second engine).
“I’m kind of an alien in that I don’t like to do a lot of video or photo shoots. I just like to play and write. And Sarah (Levin) has really supported me and my style of doing things, because sometimes it’s probably hard. Like, ‘What? You’re not going to do that latenight show? Are you crazy?!’ ”
Maybe, but hardworking, too. Spring and summer are devoted to the farm, but once fall settles in, Isakov is balancing harvest season with rehearsals, promotion and other music business. On the day of this interview, he was delivered a palette of boxes packed with vinyl copies of his new album. His friend, bandmate, tenant and fellow musician Steve Varney (also of Kid Reverie) helped him load the boxes into a covered area so the gathering rain didn’t reach them.
Rain, it should be noted, follows Isakov’s music. His songs are lush, delicate and considered, as fans know. But also melancholy and spare, often taking listeners to the same bittersweet places that first inspired the melodies. “Moody” and “dusky” are two words that Isakov’s reviews can’t seem to shake.
The new record may or may not help. Mixed in Portland, Ore., with producer Tucker Martine (Neko Case, The Avett Brothers), “Evening Machines” recalls twilight at every turn, from the vulnerable, ruminative “Chemicals” to new singles “Dark Dark Dark” and “Caves.”
“Wings in All Black,” a mischievous sideeye of a closing track, hints at Isakov’s Front Range pedigree. The stopstart beat and feathertouched performance brings to mind some of the names Isakov ostensibly started out with, including Denver’s Rateliff and the nowdefunct Paper Bird. Isakov’s delicate, knowing croak hearkens to that midtolate 2000s indiefolk scene — now crystallized into something more like an amber orb, which Isakov plays with
gently and skillfully.
“I was touring most of the time,” Isakov said of the period that inspired the writing of “Evening Machines.” “I was in Europe for six months combined, back and forth the whole time. It was a period of anxiety that I had never experienced before, one of the hardest of my life. I couldn’t sleep. I went to the ER like three times. I couldn’t swallow. These were the songs I needed to write to get me through the darkness.”
“Evening Machines” is more than just a mental cover crop for Isakov, following a butterfly’s path through haunting arrangements and wistful tones. In significant ways, it’s his most mature and singularsounding record to date. That’s saying something, given that he’s recorded and played extensively with the Colorado Symphony, plus the Seattle Symphony, Oregon Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, and Vermont Symphony Orchestra, among others.
It’s an unusual tool shed for any songwriter to be allowed into, but encouragingly, “Evening Machines” finds Isakov letting go of the sturdy implements that delivered results on previous albums, or found his songs licensed to TV shows, films and even a Mcdonald’s commercial. (That was for “Big Black Car.” As a vegetarian, Isakov donated proceeds from it to nonprofit sustainable farming organizations.)
It’s the kind of music that seems to alternately dictate and require a certain Americanaminded person to appreciate. But the beauty of Isakov’s work is that it sneaks up on listeners, even when they deliberately put in on. Here in Colorado, it pairs nicely with the landscape, which also frequently dictates Isakov’s mood.
“There’s a lot of Colorado references on this new record because I wrote a lot of it down in the (Great) Sand Dunes (National Park), off highway 285. I would go camping there because the farm is really busy sometimes, with people stopping by and it being so close to everything,” he said. “However isolated I am out here, I needed to get out of town.”
The distance breathed new life into Isakov’s songwriting methods. He took scissors to old books for lyrical inspiration, as well as writing poetry. But as is typical of his process, he penned and recorded more than two dozen songs for it (Isakov has entire unreleased albums floating around) before whittling it down to a tight 12.
“The final result has to feel easy. It has to sound easy,” he said of “Evening Machines,” his fourth fulllength. “My only navigation tool is how it makes you feel. I don’t want to be able to hear how much work went into every line and every arrangement. I mean, my trash can is giant, and full.”
Critics have responded well to the new album, and Isakov’s touring will keep him busy right up until it’s time to plant seeds again on his farm.
“I’m not shy about working hard. But when it comes to where I’m at in the music world, and in my career, I don’t really think about it too much,” he said. “The way you’re perceived kind of has a mind of its own. I’ve never wanted to be bigger than people think I am. I just keep hustling.”
One plant in front of the other.