Jason Isbell: Classic Or Dud?

Don't really know why this is a video of a TV screen, and this clip could have been posted on a number of different threads, but I guess last night he sat in with Dinosaur Jr. for a cover of "Cortez the Killer:"

pic.twitter.com/x30d4xYsCG

— kyle (@kyle_matteson) December 7, 2023

His DBT songs are some of the best DBT songs, but his solo career leaves me cold. What exactly is a 'brand new kind of actress?'

I 100% agree with that assessment

I've only recently come around to him as a solo artist, tbh, despite being an OG DBT fan. But I've really grown to appreciate his taste, in terms of his songwriting (subject matter, attention to detail, lyrics) but also in terms of his playing/arranging, etc.

Proper YouTube of that "Cortez"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYDQtSD8XIw

Most of my neighborhood friends think this guy is the greatest living songwriter. I dunno. I heard "Volunteer" without knowing who it was, thought it was really, really good, listened to the rest of the album and . . . hmm. Too much of it sounds like a guy putting on a Southern suit. Maybe I need to give it more time.

I just wish he he sounded more like skynyrd but maybe that’s not fair

This guy played the Grand Ole Opry when he was 16. I think the Southern suit fits well.

He's never topped "Goddamn Lonely Love" and a couple other DBT tracks, but I recognize him as a force for good, particularly when he plays guitar on Amanda Shires' and her associates' songs.

Not necessarily saying it applies here, but there a number of southerners with deep bonafides who still come off like they're wearing the "Southern Suit"--it's just the beats they hit.

Southeastern is still great but I’ve never really gone back to the later solo albums after a listen or two. They just don’t sound that great, kind of midtempo and safe.

y’all are a bunch of grinches lol

personally i love his songwriting
& i think he’s only gotten better over the years, something like “Cast Iron Skillet” or “White Beretta” to me is proof of that.

Jason was a great addition to DBT back in the day but his solo career mostly feels like Music Your Boss Likes

yeah, Goddamn Lonely Love is great, but he has, imo, topped or equaled it several times now, which is just proof of how great he is.

Outfit (I guess this was before GLL, but it's still my favorite of his)
Dress Blues
Alabama Pines
Elephant
24 Frames
Speed Trap Town
Cumberland Gap
If We Were Vampires
Cast Iron Skillet
When We Were Close

I mean, I'm a bit bored with Jason, too, and I am a truly staunch believer that art isn't objectively good or bad, but a bunch of those are about as close to objectively great as it gets. I don't know how you can listen to those and not believe this dude isn't firmly at the very top songwriting tier.

With that said, his albums *have* been a bit too midtempo and Music Your Boss Likes for a decade, though I really like The Nashville Sound and Weathervanes is better than I expected it to be. Something More Than Free and Reunions are snoozers, though. Again, imo.

"Relatively Easy" and "It Gets Easier" also work.

does this guy hold the distinction of being the only artist liked by both your boss and ilm?

I listened to Alpines list and it was good ! Thanks

I just love how thoughtful he is, as a person and as a writer. He's one of those songwriters that worships but doesn't really romanticize the craft. He doesn't boast of songs coming to him out of the blue, he talks about how much work it takes to write a good song, how many drafts, how many revisions, how many tweaks and changes to get them where they need to be. I think, possibly, that can lead to a deceptively subdued outcome, since everything has been so worked out and worked over, but the lyrics are always on point and they tear it up live, which implies he understands his records are their own thing. Unlike the Truckers, who are functionally the same live as they are on record, and are about as unfussy as it gets in both situations. (Seeing Hood down the street solo tonight and tomorrow!)

Anyway, a good way to sum up Isbell is that he's said his favorite album is the Cure's "Disintegration," and per that Dino Jr. performance, he boasted that he also sat in with the Punch Brothers earlier that night. I don't hear most of the music he's praised over the years in his own music, but I think he's just very comfortable in his lane and knows not to go over the line. Again, that can give the illusion of playing it safe, but then you look at the subject matter he's writing about and there's really nothing safe about that.

great post josh - otm

I would add that I respect the hell out of him and am secretly jealous as well. We're about the same age, lived in Athens at the same time, even had a friend or two in common, but he's the one jamming with my childhood guitar hero and making music. meanwhile no one wants to listen to my sad country songs :/

we do, Heez! are they online somewhere?

ha, sure but i should say they never get out of draft form which may be my reason for lagging behind Isbell. here's one.

that doesn't help either. here

back to isbell, it's not surprising at all that a guy in his early 20s who joined the most notorious hard partying band alive had issues with drinking. in fact i hope patterson and cooley are living much healthier lives. i haven't seen them in a bit, are they still passing a bottle of whiskey around the stage every show?

no they haven’t done that in a good while, i think once Shonna left the band they calmed down somewhat in that regard at least

I know Shonna's predecessor Earl Hicks left due to too much partying. And I know Cooley cut down (out?) the drinking when it got to be a problem, and/or when he became a dad. It's maybe no coincidence that the band lineup has remained stable since everyone more or less got cleaned up.

Isbell ... it's amazing how young the guy was when he joined. It's not quite Tommy Stinson, but iirc he was 22 when he joined the band (Hood is 15 years older than him, Cooley 13 years older). I think Isbell said he took his first ever flight the day after he joined the band, on a European tour, and it was all downhill from there. That said, I saw the hell out of the Truckers when he was in the band (and before! and after!) and I never saw him, or any of them, fuck the show up.

His favorite record is disintegration? Wtf

I liked his DBT output (favorite: "TVA") but have repeatedly failed to love his albums though he always has some tracks that really show he's a master song-story teller. But thanks to Alpine Static and some other suggestions, the best bits make a great best-of! I pulled from the following:

Live At Twist & Shout: Goddamn Lonely Love, Outfit
Sirens Of The Ditch: Dress Blues
Here We Rest: Alabama Pines
Southeastern: Elephant, Relatively Easy
Something More Than Free: 24 Frames, Speed Trap Town
The Nashville Sound: Cumberland Gap, If We Were Vampires
Reunions: It Gets Easier
Weathervanes: Cast Iron Skillet, When We Were Close, White Beretta

Anyone else have suggestions? How about something from the self-titled album?

Self-Titled: Cigarettes & Wine
(acoustic bonus version from Deluxe Edition is nice too)

also:
Here We Rest: Codeine
SouthEastern: Super 8
Georgia Blue: Sometimes Salvation

Oh a new profile/interview of him in GQ by Kaleb Horton? Go on, then.

https://www.gq.com/story/jason-isbell-just-another-actor-with-a-night-job

my favorite writer & my favorite singer. great piece!

WXPN always plays that "Death Wish" single when I'm driving my kid to school. It's been stuck in my head for months.

good song

he and shires are splitting

Normally couldn't possibly care less about celebrity and musician marriages, but was surprised to feel kinda sad about this one. They both seem like really good people doing good things in the world, hope they both find happiness.

Aw.

xp totally

Their last albums hinted at Rumours-esque turmoil.

Isbell solo does nothing for me but Drive By Truckers were the most important band in the world to me during the years he was in the group and my first thought upon seeing the news was that I hope he can maintain his sobriety through this bit of turmoil

he just posted on his 11th sober anniversary.

Nice, that’s good news, I figured that having almost centered his career around his sobriety that he’d be pretty solid in it at this point (plus, it’s been over a decade), but it always seemed like his wife was the final glob of glue holding it all together and that if that ever came undone anything could happen.

That sucks. No 40 years together

I sobered up
I swore off that stuff
Forever this time

(It's kind of interesting that if you listen to live recordings, that's an instant applause line - when one presumes that 73% of the audience is holding a Bud Lite at that precise moment. I cannot pretend to understand the world.)

I'm kind of surprised people are surprised by this. For several years it's seemed like it could boil over at any second (and probably did multiple times).

yeah i’m bummed but not exactly surprised. the vibes have been strange for a while imo.

He gives good interviews and it's fun to see him light up fools on twitter, but I've never gotten the impression he'd be a pleasant person to hang around with or—even worse—be married to.

i dunno that Shires is a walk in the park either tbh

He had abruptly stopped Tweeting in mid-December, but I thought he had maybe moved to another platform. . .

What struck me watching the documentary was that 'this is a songwriter who has a spouse/sometimes bandmate/MFA in Poetry involved at a very granular level in the songwriting process. Much respect for even trying to make that work, but that's going be very difficult to sustain'.

Well, somebody on here pointed out his own lit(eature) studies, at Memphis U., I think--dunno how far he got toward a degree, but he said years ago that his tastes were way ahead of his abilities, or skills, so that kind of self-conscious striving seems to have affected his lyrics sometimes, like in a recent interview he quoted Shires,"I know how you feel about that, because I know you, but it doesn't come across," and he said he was indignant at first, but then he tried again, and wrote something more (intelligible or something)(think it was a song about or involving their daughter, growing up in this fucked world).

Sobriety as a major theme, yeah, reminds me of what I said upthread:

Oh yeah----my comments from last year's Nashville Scene ballot:
Jason Isbell, Reunions:

Under pressure of atmosphere, memories, incl. of present and future, spooky and urgent----music more varied after "Running With Our Eyes Closed," calmer but still insidious, words finding their way in---"St. Peter's Autograph,", hmmm--but I get some of 'em right away, esp the one about sober life incl. dreams about drinking, a couple nights a week now, like, "I had one glass of wine, woke up feelin' fine,and that's how I knew it was a dream," but some are rougher, like the even realer-seeming dream of calling in sick to treat yourself down town--you deserve it, self, you been real good for so long---"It gets easier, but never easy, " why have I never heard a song about this must-be-fairly-common experience before? So far, Reunions seems like one of his most sustained achievements in quite a while:

https://jasonisbell.bandcamp.com/album/reunions

― dow, Saturday, October 23, 2021

re what I said a few days ago about "It gets easier, but never easy," and slipperiness of sober living, just now recalled that this has been a theme emerging in various ways ever since he cleaned up, as I commented on in a paste way upthread:
From Rolling Country, my initial impressions:

Jason Isbell, Something More Than Free: doesn't travel with the more sustained undertone of excitement found in Southeastern---recorded sober, apparently!---but "Are you takin' the grown-up dose?" is still the question, or one of 'em, and it's often remarkable what can sprout from dry, quiet starting over, especially when the past gets out of bed and comes cruising through one's present-day/night of carefully worked out details, brushing them just a hair or three from conventional alignment. Or not, in which case it's conspicuous by etc., but always the singer's cue.
"Children of Children" and "24 Frames" will be the relatively big (npr) radio cuts, if any are, but most tunes as well as words tend to take fetching turns.
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/08/420588068/first-listen-jason-isbell-something-more-than-free

― dow, Friday, July 10, 2015 4:38 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not to say this 'un doesn't *also* sound like it was written and recorded sober---it does, and it also sounds like that's what it's about: dealing with the unfiltered, or differently filtered---but Southeastern seemed like more of an adventure.

― dow, Friday, July 10, 2015 4:42 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maybe it's just subtle for me---diggin it tho!

― dow, Monday, July 13, 2015 5:51 PM (six years ago)