Farmer hits the road

Gregory Alan Isakov is a full-time musician … part of the time. You might be familiar with the Colorado folkateer’s honeyed vocals and earnest acoustic ballads, but his music career is actually his second gig. His real full-time job is as a farmer, and touring to support his music happens during the off season. Over time, though, he’s been able to build enough of a following to sell more than 100,000 copies of his 2013 album, The Weatherman (on his own independent label, Suitcase Town Music).

“Sometimes people will say, ‘You’re a musician, right?’ And I always feel like a fraud,” Isakov said during a recent interview. “It’s crazy to me that I get to even play music as a job at all. I was always the ag kid in the ag program at school, always working. You [say], ‘I’m a full-time musician, I’m gonna do this all the way’—I tried that on for a second and was like, ‘Nope, I don’t know if that’s for me.’ I feel like part of my work with music is listening and noticing what’s going on in my life, and when you’re on tour all the time, that’s a pretty limited window of experience.”

The musician/farmer balance didn’t come overnight. In fact, the lack of it is what fueled his just-released new album, Evening Machines. After extensive touring surrounding The Weatherman, Isakov returned home and began suffering from severe anxiety.

“I’d never experienced that before in my life. It really opened me up,” Isakov said. “I have a lot more compassion than I used to about that.”

At home, Isakov’s barn is divided into living space, a washing station for produce, and a recording studio. He began diving into the studio side and sketching out new demos in the evenings, writing not about the anxiety, but rather through it. Almost 40 songs came out.

“When you’re in a place that’s really hard—which everybody goes through—music has been that place to find that sense of space,” Isakov said. “I don’t know if I’d call it a therapy, but it felt important that I play to feel that space.”

Isakov eventually whittled those songs down into an album, then went to Portland to mix with Tucker Martine (Laura Veirs, First Aid Kit). What developed with Evening Machines was a record that veered some from the soft ballads of his earlier work. Take the single “Caves,” which feels twice the sonic size of his past work, with heavy percussive steps carrying gritty metallic tones and Isakov’s voice flanked by a choir. In some ways it feels new, but for Isakov and his band, it’s more the norm.

“I love making quiet records,” Isakov said. “I think mainly because I have this one record on usually at my house, and it’s always Songs of Leonard Cohen. Sometimes I’ll flip the side—every couple months. I don’t even know if I’m listening to it, I’m just hearing it. Our shows have always been heavier, a little bit more rock ’n’ roll, but I’ve always made records that are really different from what we played live, and this record, I wanted to incorporate the stuff we’ve been doing live, but also maintain a sense of spaciousness.”

As Isakov moves into touring for a new record, his balance is more in place—with necessary overlap between his two worlds.

“I’m always on the bus reading horticultural stuff at night, I’m doing all my farm ordering on tour,” Isakov said. “I guess I’m just a hermit-y motherfucker.”