Editor’s Note: Gregory Alan Isakov brought his Appaloosa Bones Tour to The Anthem Saturday, January 24th, and correspondent, Matt Ruppert provides his thoughts on the life-affirming performance:

The Great Sand Dunes should not exist; they are an impossibility of geology made manifest through wind’s working through Sangre de Cristo. The Sangre flows down from snowmelt, the wind whips it, and over millennia upon millennia created that which appears sudden to me as we drive through the San Luis Valley: mountains of sand that simultaneously shift and sustain shape. We stood there almost a decade ago now, lightning illuminating the dunes as sunset fell, just nights after seeing Gregory Alan Isakov play through the icy summer rain at Red Rocks. Place and time become inseparable from the music itself; do certain songs require weather to complete them?

Isakov’s music marries sound and landscape, maybe better than anyone else in this scene. His music emerges from the soil of his Colorado farm, the literal dirt under his fingernails translated into melody, and I remember the first time we saw him play when he opened for Josh Ritter in 2014 at the Lincoln Theater in DC in the leapless gap between the 28th and 1st; Jess and I, we were different people than we are now, but still the same. 

He played mostly as a duo, either with his musical partner Steve Varney or his brother Ilan, though they also took the stage as a trio in the back half of the set; they stripped the songs down to their roots, carrying these songs like brands to the campfire, and in this…reduction, I guess?…it’s almost like I hear more, not less.

Music acts as a mnemonic device for the self’s selves across the years and decades. I’ve listened to Isakov since cold-buying This Empty Northern Hemisphere in 2009 (when that-company-who-will-not-be-named mostly didn’t suck) maybe a month after I got married. As is most often the case, I listened alone until we saw him live together, but then, since then each concert exists in my memory entangled with weather, geography, and the attention we gave together that night. I cannot separate Isakov’s voice from mountain storms, from snow accumulating on windshields (Baltimore), from the cold cold rain lit against purple-painted red rocks, from the autumn torrent of light that fell across my brother’s cheeks. Nostalgia flattens time, so this isn’t nostalgia; we build our lives through the accumulation of moments we can only ever perceive in retrospection.

Check out “The Fall” by Gregory Alan Isakov:

The storm that arrived just after the show this past weekend completed a circle I didn’t know I’d begun to draw. To return again and again with my wife, my partner in life, to a musician whose work resists calcification, to build a shared vocabulary of concerts and drives and impossible landscapes – this is evergreen, the only wealth that’s real. 

He played some new songs (well, if you don’t traffic YouTube), some old songs, and plenty of he “hits”. I lit up for “Big Black Car” and Jess lit up for “Amsterdam” and then I met myself in memory the rest of the night. I will always be thankful for every time Steve and Greg lean together around a standing mic to sing “The Stable Song”.

Don’t miss Gregory Alan Isakov as he continues his World Tour.

The setlist included:

Ash of Our Elders (unreleased)
Southern Star
Miles to Go
Big Black Car
Light Year
Amsterdam
Second Chances
Words
Desdemone (Ilan Isakov cover)
Good Grief (unreleased)
San Luis
The Stable Song
Sweet Heat Lightning
Appaloosa Bones

Encore:
Before the Sun
Silver Bell

Here are more photos of Gregory Alan Isakov at The Anthem January 24, 2026. All photos are copyright Matt Ruppert: