Jason Isbell: Classic Or Dud?

Russian government officials requested that a former colonel from the country’s domestic spy agency who was convicted of murder in Germany last year be added to the US’ proposed swap of a notorious arms dealer for Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, multiple sources familiar with the discussions told CNN.

...The request was seen as problematic for several reasons, the sources told CNN, among them that Krasikov remains in German custody. As such, and because the request was not communicated formally but rather through the FSB backchannel, the US government did not view it as a legitimate counter to the US’ offer which was first revealed by CNN on Wednesday.
But underscoring how determined the Biden administration has been to get Griner and Whelan back to the US, US officials did make quiet inquiries to the Germans about whether they might be willing to include Krasikov in the trade, a senior German government source told CNN. A US official characterized the outreach as a status check on Krasikov.

The conversations were never elevated to the top levels of the German government and including Krasikov in a potential trade has not been seriously considered, the German source said. But the previously unreported discussions reveal that Russian officials have at least somewhat engaged with the US’ proposal.

...Asked for comment, a State Department official told CNN that “In order to preserve the best opportunity for a successful outcome, we’re not going to comment publicly on any speculation.”

...Multiple sources told CNN that even if it is not Krasikov, the Russians will likely demand two prisoners be released in exchange for Griner and Whelan. Russian government officials have indicated publicly in recent weeks that they want to see the release of Bout and Roman Seleznev, a convicted hacker currently serving a 27-year sentence in the US.

Shit, wrong thread, sorry!

is it?

"Russia Also Demands 'Jason Isbell & His 500K Les Paul'"

"In Russia, BLUES DRESS YOU!"

The only Amanda Shires thread we have is pretty sparse and dedicated to her prior album, so I'll just drop in here to say the new one out today is pretty fire—best thing she's made yet as a solo artist.

I was bummed to have missed the Highwomen (with Isbell on hand) as one of the awesome opening acts (along with Mavis Staples and the Dirty Knobs) for Chris Stapleton last week.

The Shires album is terrific.

"Russia Also Demands 'Jason Isbell & His 500K Les Paul'"

xpost You're not kidding, it's really good. I have no idea what her profile is, but the idea that Kacey Musgraves (who I like) filled arenas partly behind an album as boring as her last makes me hopeful this one will find its audience.

Marvelous album.

Did someone say “boring?”

who?

The idea that Kacey Musgraves (who I like) filled arenas partly behind an album as boring as her last Liked some of each of Musgraves' offerings until The Golden Hour, which is where I sleptwalked off the bus. Liked some of all of Shires' previous albums, without listening very closely---her thin voice tends to vague me out---though noted that she was rocking more, even kinda acid-rocking, on most recent previous. Will check this one out for sure, and try to pay more attention.

She and Natalie Hemby are the only two Highwomen who came away from that 2019 album still riding the same kind of energy with their next releases. Brandi and Maren went other directions.

boo on you. i love the most recent Maren album!

I actually do too! More than Brandi's newest, even. But it's still squarely in the Maren universe and not so much the Highwomen one.

Also, holy heck, the vinyl is mad cheap at Walmart right now ($8.86): https://www.walmart.com/ip/Morris-Maren-Humble-Quest-Vinyl/171108998?athbdg=L1100

I dont think Maren has ever really been in Highwomen ouevre aside from being in the irl Highwomen tho - she’s always been much more pop leaning

Yeah, I still don't like either of her first two albums, but then a couple her songs became consistent favorites of mine on the Highwomen album, and I think liking those made me more open to what's going on with Humble Quest. It's legit great.

it really is!

I loved the debut, aside from the track about "the church of country music," also enjoy several tracks on the second album and her contributions to the Highwomen album (although that one seemed like it might be a case of too many cooks spoil the broth). When she's on it, she's the or a leading dynamo of today's youngblood country pop, also personal about it, pushing back against anti-vax/mask flak when she feels so inclined. Still need to check Humble Quest.

The Shires album is her best.

Really good Shires interview (w music); she's up front about how much of the new one came from marital trouble, also some family history, incl. what she found out a couple years ago---might be more writing coming from how that fits and is still speculative, to a degree (suitable for story-song): https://www.npr.org/2022/09/07/1121465481/amanda-shires-highwomen-fiddle-jason-isbell-take-it-like-a-man

Iirc Isbell talked a bit about possibly the same problems, maybe from a different perspective, when he was promoting his most recent record, too. Like this one:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/arts/music/jason-isbell-reunions.html
(Headline "Jason Isbell, Self-Doubt and the Album That Tested His Marriage.")

He pushed everyone away — including his wife.

“He was impossible,” Shires said. “It was like he wanted help but didn’t want help.” Tension between the two simmered. At one point, recording at the legendary RCA Studio A in Nashville with his longtime producer, Dave Cobb, Isbell complained that Shires’s fiddle was too loud. “I was like, ‘Holy Christ! It’s acoustic. I can’t make it any quieter,’” she said.

The situation escalated, and Shires felt belittled. “I want him to make the best art he can but not at the expense of making me feel less,” she said. She decided to move into a hotel. “I needed space because lines were getting crossed,” she said.

“There is a constant progression for me to try to take my own experience out of the work,” Isbell said. “It’s what separates pros from beginners.”

Isbell recognized his marriage was in trouble but remained single-mindedly focused on the album. After 10 days at Nashville’s Thompson Hotel, Shires returned home, but hostilities lingered. “At one point, I said, ‘It’d be easier if somebody had cheated,’” said Isbell. “Then we could say, ‘You did this,’ or ‘I did this, and ‘Somebody needs to be real sorry.’ But it was more like, ‘We don’t know each other right now. We’re not able to speak the same language.’”

These weren’t splashy tabloid problems, they were the kinds of nebulous frustrations and quiet indignities that chip away at many marriages. “I just had faith that eventually he’d come to the realization that as good of a father and a person as he is, even not drinking, you can still inflict harm onto people,” said Shires. As Isbell acknowledged, “It took a couple months until I wrapped my head all the way around it.”

I appreciate it stressing that they were "the kinds of nebulous frustrations and quiet indignities that chip away at many marriages," which is appropriately enough to Isbell a pretty literary way to put it. He seems like a pretty compulsively honest guy, but the article notes that he can also be hard to read. It also notes that none of the domestic stuff made it into his record, though clearly that wasn't the case for Shires.

Yeah, reading that reminded me of her use of "nebulous" on Fresh Air---sounds like they were compatibly incompatible, as married writers up in the air, desperadoes under the eaves etc.:

SHIRES: So I thought if I could write a song with my feelings in it, that it might bring him around to the walls that aren't really walls that we put ourselves behind sometimes. And in this certain period of time, there was a lot. And then coupled with the pandemic and all that, he was on self-preservation mode, and I was too. But anyway - so I went and I sat down in my barn of internal wandering. And this is after some kind of nebulous argument. And I wrote "Fault Lines" and then I texted it to him, just like you'd imagine. I said, I just wrote this song. And then in my mind I thought, well, if he couldn't hear the frequency of my voice before, maybe he could hear it through music, you know? And one day, we wound up in the studio, and we cut the song. And after we recorded it, he said, that's a really good song. And I said, that's all you have to say?

(LAUGHTER)

Which relates to:

“There is a constant progression for me to try to take my own experience out of the work,” Isbell said. “It’s what separates pros from beginners.”

Just saw both of his shows here. He's a great singer-songwriter, of course, and a great guitar player, but boy is his band good, too. They ended with a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Oh, Well" that more than did it justice. Also did a couple of his Truckers song, and their version of "Never Gonna Change" was absolutely on fire. Made me miss the presence of his songs in Truckers sets, but ... oh, well.

yeah otm his band is so awesome

I remember when this all came together on twitter, Paula mentioning in an interview that she was really into Isbell and John Paul White, Isbell reading and then retweeting it and roping JPW into the mix. Can't find the original series of tweets now, but it was sometime early in the pandemic. Anyway, here's the finished product and it's pretty nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sgCPuY1bik

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op-EEnArgqc

(New album imminent, too.)

Is he wearing a Fever Ray t-shirt? If so, respect

I dreaded reading this, but couldn't look away

Past Drinking and Near Divorce: 8 Revelations in Jason Isbell’s New HBO Documentary
Jason Isbell: Running with Our Eyes Closed offers an unflinching look at the intersection of the songwriter's personal and creative lives

Yeah.

My marriage left me with plenty of heavy trauma that I’m still working through after all these years and I’ll not be watching the doc anytime soon. I’m sure it’s truly great and poignant and inspiring and I genuinely wish everyone well

— Shonna Tucker (@ShonnaTucker) April 7, 2023

For the record, I knew nothing of this movie until I saw the trailer for it last week here on Twitter. I know it’s not about me, but a heads up would’ve been nice. I appreciate all of your love and support so much ♥️ Now back to donkey tweets! https://t.co/W2PjkoukGs

— Shonna Tucker (@ShonnaTucker) April 8, 2023

I haven't had a chance to see the doc yet, does it address him and her? It's a bit surprising she wasn't told it was on its way, because I thought they were still friends. Also maybe surprised that Sam Jones didn't reach out to her for an interview at all, she's part of the story and thematically relevant, as I understand it.

it does address their marriage, but not for v long and not in-depth

they don’t talk in depth about the marriage but what they do say makes it clear they went through some dark shit & i think it does an ok job of admitting that it happened without speaking for her too much if that makes sense

but the stuff about his & amanda’s early relationship gets v dark. i was kinda surprised they went there

the doc includes interviews w both of his parents, patterson hood, 400 unit (his band) and his manager, and that’s it. the circle is pretty smallish

I've known his manager for a long time, but haven't been in contact. I should shoot her a line!

Jason I love you but mounting a 4038 ribbon mic sideways like that means the ribbon is under lateral stress, likely to distend in the magnetic gap, potentially rubbing against the armature but certainly not operating in its linear range. Please keep ribbons in the vertical plane. https://t.co/LJDseAkwXF

— steve albini (@electricalWSOP) April 8, 2023

lool

lol someone in that thread asks rhetorically, "aren't we fans of using equipment wrong to get interesting results?" And Albini's one word response is "no."

we watched the documentary last night

i like that the documentary does ultimately seem to represent Isbell & Shires as they are, which is unpretentious & frank

can’t fathom what it must be like for married musicians to record together & share a life. the tense moments in the studio shown in the documentary just made me think of how mr veg & i get with each other but multiplying it out with fame livelihood creativity expectation etc like i would last maybe 4 hours at best

i have always been a fan of Shires, seen her solo a couple of times, think the world of her music as an artist is her own right - i already had an inkling of her strength but damn the documentary really underscores her strength & emotional intelligence.

in conversation she distinguishes between Jason and addiction as two separate forces. that made me love her a lot because obviously that is a level of understanding that is not acquired easily & in her case obviously painfully

they don’t discuss him at all but for me i couldn’t shake the spectre Justin Townes Earle sort of hanging in the background of both of them during the doc when they spoke about the early days of their relationship & the band before Southeastern.

Shires' album last year was fantastic, loved it.

yes! it is fantastic

and i don’t think i will hear “Cover Me Up” the same way again after she talks about it in the doc

they don’t discuss him at all but for me i couldn’t shake the spectre Justin Townes Earle sort of hanging in the background of both of them during the doc when they spoke about the early days of their relationship & the band before Southeastern.

Justin's albums eventually became so weary, so fragile, though still valid/listenable in their own scary terms--but penultimate releases pushed pathos, abjection past that, 'til I was like, "I can't review this, I'm not his shrink!" (This has happened with other artists.) Then he rallied, and the finale was as strong as anything from his first decade, even stronger, building in part on the best bits, the things he'd learned while making even the seemingly weakest albums: The Saint of Lost Causes shines on.

It's tough, they clearly have a lot of love and respect for each other but they also seem to put a whole lot of burden on each other as well. Jason's big realization in the documentary is that he's been forcing Amanda to carry around all the baggage of having "saved" him and robbing her of the ability to have her own story because she's already so tied up with his. At the same time, I had a hard time figuring out exactly WHAT they were fighting so much about. For something that purported to show a very warts-and-all picture of their lives, I guess they must have wanted to keep some things behind closed doors because otherwise I don't recall the friction being about more than Jason getting grumpy and anxious and withdrawn when he was making an album?