I went to Cheapo a few days ago, a new and used record store here in Austin on South Lamar, with a list of six new albums to pick up (new to me). In no particular order they were: Ray LaMontagne, Trouble...Okay, stop right there. That is the only album I should have picked up. I should have walked straight to the Ls and then straight to the cash register, but nOOOuooo. I have to ravage through the rest of the other 25 letters to see if there are any other names that ring a bell, maybe something I was looking for a few months ago but never found.

Though I do allot myself a research stipend for this sort of thing, I am just not picky enough. I throw down fifteen bucks like its crowding the space in my wallet or something. Actually it is, with all those flippin business cards. I've only called like two of those people back who've ever handed me a card. It's like I need the potential to be in contact with people. I've got people. I've got numbers. I've got this guy in Jersey right: "Heyyyyy! Mista Vaughn. How ya doin'?...No problem I'll cancel the dinnah...Yeah, I'll book the flight tommarra." I mean really, I should hang on to those those cards.

So Trouble, by LaMontagne. This guy is a miracle. He grew up in a family with one mother and six brothers, all from different dads. He said he has only talked with his birth father for a minute and a half in total over the last twenty years. While trying to take care of the family alone, Ray's mom found a roof for the kids wherever she could. This wound up being in a variety of places including but not limited to: the backyards of a friends, in cars and tents, a cinderblock shell on a Tennessee horse ranch, and a New Hampshire chicken coop.

After graduating from high school, he left home and worked the graveyard shift at a shoe factory in Lewiston, Maine. He described an experience that occurred four years after leaving his family when he awoke to Stephen Stills' "Tree Top Flyer" on his radio alarm clock:

"This was a particularly dark and weird time for me," he recounts. "I never saw the light of day for months. One morning, after I'd worked there for about a year, I had my clock set for 4 a.m., like always, and I woke up to this amazing sound coming from the clock radio. I just sat up in bed and listened. Something about that song just hit me. I did not go to work that day; I went to record stores and sought that album out. It was called Stills Alone. I listened to it, and I was transformed. It killed me…it was huge. You don't know how those things happen. I just knew: 'This is what I'm gonna do.' That morning really changed everything-my whole life."

I've listened to those songs at least once almost everyday since I bought the album and, I've been pressed to the verge of tears nearly every time. The songs about his mother are wrenching. Once while I was in the car listening to Burn, the fifth track on the album, my entire body felt like it was falling through my gut. The marrow in my bones felt as if it were lava and then ice, and then I felt as if the middle of my body were an infinite space. It's a good pain to feel, the kind that reminds you of the endless nature of the heart. The feeling of finding and then losing somebody you love can destroy you, reduce you to a pile on the floor, and then send you packing a changed man or woman in less than twenty four hours. LaMontagne shoves that emotion through 10 songs lasting fifty minutes or so.

Bravo Mister LaMontagne. Bravo.