BIG THIEF Tour to Welcome Ben LaMar Gay for Twelve-Show Run

Ben LaMar Gay is set to join BIG THIEF for a twelve-show run, according to an announcement from the band.

This Sunday August 2, Chicago's 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!'

Tour Dates

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

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.

About Yowzers

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.

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,' 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.

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.'

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. 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.'

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.

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