随然美国正以无法想象的速度向下沉沦，时常你仍不得不赞叹这确实是一个筑梦的天堂；也许辛勤努力不见得会带你到充满蜜糖的应许之地，但小人物奋斗成功的故事确实也每天在这边上演。
Ray LaMontagne来自一个父母离异的家庭，母亲得抚养包括他在内的六个小孩。Ray高中毕业后就进入制鞋工厂做粗工，于此之前，他的生命和音乐没有任何交集。有天他上工前，听到电台里传来Stephen Stills唱着Tree Top Flyer，他呆坐在床上，他知道存在于体内的某种东西被唤醒了。那天他没有去工作，他去唱片行找到了那张唱片，而那个凌晨四点的神奇时分也永远改变了他的生命。
他辞去了工作，并开始听起Neil Young、Bob Dylan、Joni Mitchell这些伟大心灵的歌曲。于是他从一名什么乐器都不会的工厂黑手，在1999年完成了第一张自制Demo，最终被唱片公司看中，并与知名制作人Ethan Johns（Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon, the Jayhawks）于两周内录制完了首张专辑Trouble。这张专辑去年九月就发行了，由于封面的缘故，我一直以为是什么世界音乐的唱片，媒体也不见大幅报导。直至前阵子，在唱片行试听后才知道我差点忽略了一个动人的好声音。
Ray LaMontagne常被拿来和Van Morrison或Tim Buckley相较，但我第一次在试听机前听到这张唱片时，让我直接想起的却是英国的唱作人David Gray，那种舒服淡雅的urban folk，配上悠扬的提琴与迷人的嗓子，好有气度的音乐。这类使用大量弦乐的民谣歌曲，自己很喜欢的还有Willard Grant Conspiracy，不过他们的民族味又重了一点。
Ray LaMontagne的音乐格外适合有阳光的午后聆听，他让我们找到在喧嚣生命里的宁静片刻。
Ray LaMontagne was born in New Hampshire, but as he put it, his family was "just passing through." His parents split up shortly after his birth, and his mother began a pattern of moving her six children wherever she could find employment and housing, which meant LaMontagne grew up as the perennial new kid in school (when and if he went to school at all). He did graduate high school, however, and found himself working in a shoe factory in Maine when he heard Stephen Stills' "Tree Top Flyer" on the radio. The song amounted to an epiphany for LaMontagne, and he made up his mind on the spot to become a singer and musician.
By the summer of 1999 he had put together a ten-song demo tape of his songs, and that demo found its way into the hands of Jamie Ceretta at Chrysalis Music Publishing. The publishing house signed the young songwriter and teamed him with producer Ethan Johns in the studio, resulting in LaMontagne's debut album, Trouble, which was picked up by RCA Records and released in the fall of 2004. With a voice that sounds at times like a huskier, sandpaper version of Van Morrison or Tim Buckley and a tight, emotional writing style, LaMontagne impressed critics with such songs as the title tune, "Trouble," and the cinematic style of pieces like "Narrow Escape." A follow-up album on RCA, Till the Sun Turns Black, appeared in 2006.