Gregory Alan Isakov

indie folk · contemporary folk · country folk

Gregory Alan Isakov is a South African-born singer-songwriter based in Boulder County, Colorado, whose indie folk arrangements center on guitar and banjo. He was born in Johannesburg on October 19, 1979, into a family whose Lithuanian-Jewish forebears had fled to South Africa during the Second World War, and immigrated to the United States in 1986 when his father set up an electronic engineering business in Philadelphia. Isakov began touring with a band at sixteen, then moved to Colorado to study horticulture at Naropa University, working as a gardener and playing music part-time; touring with blues musician Kelly Joe Phelps helped push performing to the foreground. He self-released his first album, Rust Colored Stones, in 2003, following it with Songs for October (2005) and That Sea, the Gambler (2007). This Empty Northern Hemisphere (2009), which includes The Stable Song and Big Black Car, features Brandi Carlile on several tracks. The Weatherman arrived in 2013, and in 2016 he reworked a set of his songs with an orchestra as Gregory Alan Isakov with the Colorado Symphony. Evening Machines (2018) was nominated for Best Folk Album at the 62nd Grammy Awards, and Appaloosa Bones (2023) entered the Billboard 200 at number 81. Westword named him Best Male Songwriter in 2007. Since 2014 Isakov has owned and worked Starling Farm, a six-acre market garden outside Boulder; his recording studio sits on the property, and his most recent album was made there. He cites Leonard Cohen, Gillian Welch and Bruce Springsteen among his influences, and his writing returns steadily to landscape, distance and memory. He performs both solo and with a full band, and has headlined Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

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