BEN LAMAR GAY on tour w/ BIG THIEF // twelve shows across US & Canada August 2nd-19th
(photo Alejandro Ayala)
BEN LAMAR GAY
US & CA shows with
BIG THIEF
This Sunday August 2nd, Chicago favorite son Ben LaMar Gay begins a two-week run of twelve North American shows supporting indie folk headliners Big Thief, as part of the band's Somersault Slide 360 international tour.
Big Thief drummer James Krivchenia says: "We’re so stoked to be touring with Ben LaMar Gay. There is such a generous spirit to the music. So many different sounds, ideas, slices of beauty all coexist and effortlessly amplify each other into magical nonlinear equations that spit out effortless, wonderful music. Yeehaw!
Sunday, August 2 - Burlington, VT - Waterfront Park Concert Series - sold out
Tuesday, August 4 - Montreal, QC - Olympia - sold out
Wednesday, August 5 - Montreal, QC - Olympia - sold out
Thursday, August 6 - Toronto, ON - Meridian Hall - sold out
Saturday, August 8 - North Adams, MA - Mass Moca - tickets
Monday, August 10 - Detroit, MI - Masonic Temple Theatre - tickets
Tuesday, August 11 - Indianapolis, IN - Rock the Ruins - tickets
Thursday, August 13 - Chicago, IL - Salt Shed - tickets
Friday, August 14 - Madison, WI - Sylvee - sold out
Saturday, August 15 - Minneapolis, MN - Surly Brewing Festival Field - tickets
Monday, August 17, 2026 - Des Moines, IA - Val Air Ballroom - tickets
Wednesday, August 19, 2026 - Bentonville, AR - The Momentary - tickets
Ben LaMar Gay
"I am (bells)"
ICYMI... please enjoy this certified viral video of "I am (bells)," filmed by Enid Valu at the Zig Zag Club in Berlin in 2023, vividly capturing the physicality of Gay's performances in person. In what has become somewhat of a signature of his live show, Gay and his quartet stand and improvise with hand bells (the kind you may have seen/heard in church) in between acapella call and response vocals, then lock into a cascading, canonized melody played in formation on the hand bells by three of the four musicians, just moments before drummer Tommaso Moretti catches the audience by surprise with a heavy backbeat under the looping bell line. Still on the bells, Gay leads his musicians in a few more lines of call and response, before tuba from Matthew Davis jumps in with Moretti on a fat brass bassline, fit for the club.
“Achingly beautiful.” - The Observer
"A gift of an album, Yowzers is Gay's most cohesive work to date, while losing none of its predecessors' spirit of adventure." -Wire Magazine
"Gay’s primary influence is folklore, and his main task is to see that traditional tales and songs survive from the "ancient to the future," in the formulation of AACM’s hallmark group the Art Ensemble of Chicago." - Pitchfork
“His solo work is much stranger and more intimate than almost anything else he’s involved in.” - Stereogum
“The cuts on Yowzers feel as if they truly belong together, connected by an intangible thread – a sensibility which eclipses pure aesthetics and bridges concepts, worlds, and compositions across boundaries.” - The Quietus
In the growing tradition of Ben LaMar Gay’s recorded output – including his 2018 greatest-hits-meets-debut album Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun and 2021’s critically-acclaimed Open Arms to Open Us, which have both become legendary for enveloping myriad sounds, stories, and dimensions of music into potent bodies of work – Yowzers is an utterly unique, joyfully irreverent psychedelic fantasia of folklore, free jazz, and avant-garde Blues.
At the heart of the album is Gay’s working quartet with Tommaso Moretti (drums, percussion, voice), Matthew Davis (tuba, piano, bells, voice), and Will Faber (guitar, ngoni, bells, voice). The group’s chemistry is palpable, cultivated over years of touring and performing together.
“A big part of the language this quartet has developed is spatial,” says Gay. “It’s seeing and hearing it live. You’re dealing with a thing that is older than the industry that sells it, and if you’ve never experienced those bodies in the room, there can be a disconnect.”
Striving to capture that raw, unfiltered energy on Yowzers, Gay tracked his quartet live at Palisade Studios in Chicago, with all four musicians sitting in a small circle, channeling and documenting their collective vibrations in real-time.
To expand the sonic spectrum of the album, Gay also composed and recorded a series of pieces in-studio at International Anthem HQ in Chicago. Working alongside engineer Dave Vettraino, Gay augmented his studio constructions with contributions from his bandmates, woodwind player Rob Frye, and a mini-choir comprising vocalists Ayanna Woods, Tramaine Parker, and Ugochi Nwaogwugwu.
As a whole, Yowzers recalls the high-minded freedom of Liberation Music Orchestra, the abstract boom-bap balladry of Georgia Anne Muldrow, the unbridled rhythms and sandpaper bellows of Bukka White, the harmolodic cartoon glory of Arthur Blythe’s Illusions, or the oft-copped but rarely distilled patterns of Naná Vasconcelos. It’s a fresh thought made up of old ideas, filtered through an improvisational approach and a lifetime of stories and secrets embodied.
“for Breezy"
“for Breezy,” a staggering album standout from Yowzers, is a gorgeously poignant tribute to an old comrade, the late trumpeter jaimie branch. It calls to mind a New Orleans dirge, straddling the deep sigh of a heavy sadness and the sweet lift of a fond look back, echoing the most contemplative moments of Duke Ellington’s small group arrangements.
Today, Gay shares a new "homemade analogue visualizer" he created for the track using light, glass, and the slow twirl of a hand. About the work, he says: "The original idea for this video was to be sort of a "variation" or a moment for a solo dancer in an imaginary ballet of mine, the dancer being the light. With time, the dancing light began to represent loved ones here and gone."
Deluxe Vinyl Package
Yowzers comes on a 140g color LP in heavyweight reverse-board jacket, with insert sheet, IARC 2025 obi strip & poly-lined inner sleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany, with lacquers cut by Daniel K @ SST.
Available on Limited Edition *Ipomoea Jalapa* color vinyl for $29 USD.
Also available on Classic Black vinyl for $24 USD.
...about Ben LaMar Gay…
Ben LaMar Gay is a genuine original. An imbued composer, conjurer, channeler of cosmopolitan Blues and patently eclectic artist who Jeff Parker calls "hands down, one of my favorite musicians on the planet today." Gay is a Southside Chicago native who was raised in the tutelage of the legendary AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians). With his first instrument, the cornet, and an intuitive sense of self-production, in youth he traversed the diversity of the city's music scenes (jazz, hip hop, house, electronic, rock, avant garde, salsa, latin jazz, et al) before embarking on a several-year residential relocation to Brazil. Beloved by listeners and collaborators alike for his ability to absorb and poetically refract the sound of any context he's immersed in, Gay's return home to Chicago in the early 2010s marked the beginning of a compositional output that has since been referred to by WIRE Magazine as "Pan-Americana." As elusive as he is prolific, across seven under-the-radar years of work Gay diligently composed, produced and recorded seven collections of original music before compiling and issuing his unreleased 'greatest hits' as a debut album – Downtown Castles Can Never Block The Sun – for International Anthem in 2018. Also in 2018 Gay composed an original score for the Tribeca award-winning short doc The Good Fight. In 2019, he composed an original score for the Brazilian underground carnival profile This Is Bate Bola, and debuted new music commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Also in 2019, he composed and performed a duet with the DuSable Bridge while it was raised over the Chicago River. For Time:Spans Festival 2021, at DiMenna Center for Classical Music in New York City, Gay debuted a new composition – "Known Better. Still Lit" – that was commissioned and performed by Wet Ink Ensemble. Later in 2021, Gay released the critically-acclaimed album Open Arms to Open Us via International Anthem & Nonesuch Records. In 2022 he released Certain Reveries, an album of duo compositions on International Anthem, and an accompanying film – “Balogun,” in tribute to the late Eddie Harris - which he staged, directed, filmed, and scored entirely himself. In 2023, Gay was a Mellon Foundation Archives Innovation Fellow with Theaster Gates’s Rebuild Foundation in Chicago. As composer in residence with The National Theater of France in 2024, Gay wrote original music for Dorothee Munyaneza’s “Inconditionelles.” In June 2025, Gay released his album Yowzers via International Anthem, to wide critical acclaim, including Wire Magazine who called it “Gay’s most cohesive work to date” and included it in their “Best Albums of 2025.” In January 2026, Gay was a recipient of the illustrious United States Artists Fellowship Award.
