Gregory Alan Isakov performs at a sold out Boulder Theater on Sunday Aug. 4, 2013. Photo by Josh Elioseff, heyreverb.com.
doesn’t think his music is sad.
Hopeful? Sure.
But in Isakov’s world itap more complicated than happy and sad — itap everything in between. Earlier this year, Isakov was praying for death. He was about to play with the famed Seattle Symphony, hanging around backstage, when he was reminded how easily things are taken for granted.
“I couldn’t tell anyone how I felt,” said the 35-year-old Colorado-based musician. “But sometimes what we take for granted, itap like the way a light hits out on a wall. Or going on a walk and watching how your shadow goes with you. Itap really just the simple things you wouldn’t think to write about … itap not always the huge details.”
These meticulous discoveries of the smaller details, though, had nothing to do with why it took Isakov so long to release his fifth album, “The Weatherman.” Somewhere in the middle of recording, Isakov decided to scrap it, write new lyrics, and record it all on analog. He was following his artistic vulnerabilities. The same vulnerabilities, which he believes can make anything sound sad.
“There is a lot of f up shit and beautiful shit. I see it all,” Isakov said, “But I don’t really think about songs like that. I make fun of that. I don’t really believe in sad or happy songs.”
Isakov and his bandmates will be on stage at the Ogden Theatre on March 5, where they’ll play many of the tracks from “The Weatherman” to a sold out crowd.
An album which took more than four years to write and record and now two years old, Isakov still isn’t certain whether it created a personal evolution or not. One thing he did point out, though: It felt brave. After all, his lyrics are the basis to his tunes, and Isakov didn’t have the luxury of time.
“I thought ‘The Weatherman’ was a huge left turn for me,” he said. “Itap like no matter how much you try to run from ourselves itap hard to make things. But I don’t know. To me it felt different.”
The music his fans have become accustomed too is restless and pensive. The guitar winds up in rippling draws, letting go of rhythms with lyrics conscious in themes of travel and loneliness, adhering to a life he has mostly spent on the road.
Since moving to Colorado 15 years ago – born in South Africa, raised in Philadelphia – Isakov has become a national act. His music has been featured in commercials, television shows and most recently on NPR. He’s helped put Denver on the musical map, recording under his independent label, Suitcase Town Music.
“I moved here when I was 20,” Isakov said. “And when I first moved here I played in my kitchen. And it helped me push myself to push out.”
With five albums now under his belt, Isakov has settled into a routine of farming and music. For the past few years he’s been living on a communal garden outside Boulder with several other artists, raising livestock and growing their own food. His life embodies a sense of peace that he didn’t ever expect to achieve after moving west at the ripe age of 16. Since selling out San Francisco’s Fillmore last week, Isakov has begun to check things off on his bucket list.
That way nothing is taken for granted.
“I have always wanted to grow a beard that scares people,” Isakov said, chuckling. “But I still never have.”
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Lucas Dean Fiser is a published fiction writer, poet and holds an M.F.A. He writes freelance for The Denver Post and is regular contributor to Reverb.
