Ray LaMontagne—the celebrated Grammy Award winner—shares a new single today, “I Wouldn’t Change A Thing”—listen/share here. The track, released via the highly independent artist’s newly created label, Liula Records, is the third single from LaMontagne’s forthcoming, highly anticipated studio album, Long Way Home, out August 16—presave/preorder here.
Additionally, last week LaMontagne shared a new video for “Long Way Home,” the previous single and the album’s title track—watch here. A somber, bittersweet rumination on times past, the video features visuals from his son Tobias and collage art by his daughter-in-law Bella.
“I Wouldn’t Change A Thing” sees LaMontagne reflect on his journey, accepting the downs with the ups. “If I had the chance to turn back time // I could tell you this my friend // I’d do it all over again // I’d get right back in the ring,” he sings. The track’s jangly guitar strums are complemented by the sorrowful wail of a slide guitar and an easy drumbeat.
The first single, “Step Into Your Power,” released in early June, is LaMontagne’s fastest-moving track in the last ten years. Accompanied by a stop-motion music video animated by his son Tobias, the foot-tapping, nostalgia-laden track features choral backing vocals from The Secret Sisters and was praised by Atwood as “a gosh darned groove […] easygoing and uplifting, yet smooth and relaxing.”
The core of Long Way Home reverberates deep into LaMontagne’s youth—at 21-years-old, in a small club in Minneapolis, he recalls seeing Townes Van Zandt perform live. A line from “To Live Is To Fly” has stuck with him ever since; Van Zandt sang, “When here you been is good and gone, all you keep is the getting there.”
LaMontagne reflects, “Thirty years later it occurs to me that every song on Long Way Home is in one way or another honoring the journey. The languorous days of youth and innocence. The countless battles of adulthood, some won, more often lost. It's been a long hard road, and I wouldn’t change a minute. It took me nine songs to express what Townes managed to say in one line. I guess I still got a lot to learn.”
LaMontagne has announced a new series of solo headlining U.S. tour dates with support from The Secret Sisters, including stops in Austin, New Orleans, and Orlando. Tickets are on sale now—see below for dates; full show details can be found here. The nine new shows, beginning September 17, will run midway through the previously announced tour with Gregory Alan Isakov.
LaMontagne has spent the past two decades carving a singular space for himself in modern music. In a career that has seen overflowing critical acclaim, he’s opted out of the spotlight and its accompanying celebrity in the remote hills of Western Massachusetts. The New York Times accounts, “Visiting Ray LaMontagne is like going back to another century.” His distinctive voice, described by Rolling Stone as an “impeccably weathered tenor croon,” continues to serve as a conduit for era-defining melodies and songwriting. Across eight studio albums, LaMontagne has let his songs and story speak for themselves, ringing a deep chord in the American subconscious. As has come to be expected through his extensive and awarded discography, LaMontagne delivers yet again on record nine with a cohesive, impressive effort.
Produced in tandem with Seth Kauffman (Floating Action, Angel Olsen, Lana Del Rey), Long Way Home’s nine moving tracks recall the folk-rock explosion of the early seventies, while aptly sitting among the modern Americana revival that LaMontagne was integral in fueling. Recorded over the course of a few weeks in his home studio, LaMontagne tapped both long-time and new collaborators across the record—The Secret Sisters provide backing vocals on the first three tracks, while the album was engineered and mixed by the team of LaMontagne, Kauffman, and Ariel Bernstein.
The album artwork furthers the sense that LaMontagne is cracking the window open to his audience: the piece, a woodblock print by artist Barbara S. Beck, hangs above LaMontagne’s desk where he’s written most of his albums. Long Way Home is LaMontagne’s first full-length effort since 2020’s MONOVISION, a stripped-back solo recording heralded by American Songwriter as “soothing, but never clichéd warmth in retro-style.”
Acclaimed folk singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne has released eight studio albums since his 2004 debut, Trouble, which is certified RIAA Platinum. 2006’s Till the Sun Turns Black and 2008’s Gossip in the Grain saw RIAA Gold certifications. LaMontagne received two Grammy nominations and won the award for Best Contemporary Folk Album for God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise. In 2010, he began recording as Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs. For his debut album, LaMontagne won four awards, including three Boston Music Awards (Best Male Singer/Songwriter, Album of the Year, and Song of the Year) and an XM Nation Music Award for Acoustic Rock Artist of the Year. LaMontagne has received nominations from the Pollstar Concert Industry Awards for Best New Touring Artist, the BRIT Awards for International Breakthrough Act, and the MOJO Awards for Best New Act, and was given the title of Best Voice in 2006 by Esquire.
