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Ferrell is definitely one of the brightest up-and-coming country stars. Ferrell’s soft voice emphasized every line of her songs, and the blue stage lights bathed each lyric in a poetic and somber atmosphere. Even when all alone, she held the crowd in a trance. She was unaccompanied, carrying only an acoustic guitar on stage, but there was an intensity to her playing and a quiet ferocity to her singing. There wasn’t a murmur of any conversation, or the glow of phone screens in the audience the whole time Ferrell played.
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Ferrel’s crystal-clear country croon was a presence over the whole theater. Lastly, it would be criminal not to mention the opening act of the whole concert, Sierra Ferrell, a West Virginia singer whose debut record, Long Time Coming, was released late last year. LaMontagne described the song as sad but hopeful. LaMontagne encouraged the crowd to listen, and every face in the crowd leaned in to absorb the message. The band closed the concert with the song, “Highway to the Sun,” a slow ballad about finding what’s real and true before you die. Ray LaMontagne appears to be chiefly concerned with playing Ray LaMontagne’s music. This is because he finds new places to look at, new scenes to compose after the storm has passed instead of new personas to become. But, I believe this anecdote reveals in part why LaMontagne’s individuality as an artist has remained intact after so long. Over the course of the concert, LaMontagne sang tracks from a great chunk of his catalog: from 2014’s ebullient Supernova, to the lovelorn Part of the Light in 2018, to finally the high and lonesome sound of Monovision. The clouds would roll away, or the ocean would calm, and he would be reminded of his smallness in the universe from the window of his coastal residence. So, in effect, the world would change him by changing itself. Each time the thunder died he would be unscathed, but the passing storm would always leave him with a different scene to look at. He had bought a cottage on the coast of Maine where for countless evenings he had watched storms rage over the Atlantic Ocean where the rain would bring the shoreline up the beach. While introducing the third song of the evening, the lush “Misty Morning Rain,” LaMontagne recounted a story that seemed to explain this phenomenon. No matter what the subject is that LaMontagne explores, his presence within it always seems to produce a rusticity, a beauty and a deep warmth that is at the core of his music. This produces an effect of LaMontagne becoming the main character of his music, that he himself is recounting these stories to the audience instead of some persona or overarching narrator. LaMontagne’s voice hasn’t strayed far from his debut, but what he sings about has changed drastically over time. His artistry has certainly come a long way from his 2004 freshman record, Trouble, but the man has always remained true to himself and to his sound. What I mean by this is that when an artist approaches two decades in production, it is almost like a meeting of two strangers when you compare their current work to their debut. It is hard to imagine that this tour promoting LaMontagne’s eighth studio album, Monovision, comes at the head of a nearly 20-year career in music. LaMontagne’s abilities as a singer have the qualities of a redwood tree: his voice is clean and majestic, capable of carrying itself to great heights but at the same time it is undeniably rugged and earthen. The band followed with soft drum brushes and a subtle bass guitar to leave space as LaMontagne’s voice filled the theater. Then, stepping up to the microphone he began to strum the first few chords to his 2014 song “No Other Way” and the audience was hushed. But, with one raise of his hand, LaMontagne revealed himself to the cheering crowd. He and his band strolled onto the stage in no particular order, as if any one of them could be the reclusive New Hampshire singer. Ray LaMontagne appeared at the Orpheum Theater in New Orleans on May 16.