Music

Jason Isbell: The best of the best

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Oct 23, 2022
Category: Country

HEADLINE NEWS, OCTOBER, 2022: An English site, AUK, has just named “Southeastern,” Jason Isbell’s 2013 release, as its “Number One Americana Album of the 21st Century.”

And not by a few votes — “Southeastern” polled more than double the votes of its closest rival. AUK isn’t alone in loving “Southeastern.” That CD swept the 2014 Americana Music Awards, winning Artist of the Year, Album of the Year and Song of the Year. People who love it love it a lot — like a religious artifact. [To buy the CD from Amazon and get the MP3 stream free, click here.]

The excellence of Jason Isbell can come as no surprise to Head Butler readers. In 2016, I raved about “Something More Than Free” and had a hard time keeping the music videos down to four songs — they’re terrific, do watch In 2017, I all but bought downloads of “The Nashville Sound” for all of you. As I wrote:

I saw Jason Isbell in New York last week. The audience stood when he walked on stage and never sat down. They knew what they were getting, and they were hungry for it: human-scaled art, deep truth captured in the moment when the thoughts and feelings are fresh. And he writes simply — his lyrics would make great t-shirt slogans.

Translation: Jason Isbell writes the songs I wish I wrote.

And not just me. After a recent concert, a friend emailed: “When I turned around, I saw a ton of men and women just standing with their palms on their chests. Not even singing along, just communing with him.”

Jason Isbell stands alone at the pinnacle of White American songwriting and musicianship. Isbell’s life is a great story — you really, really want to read the story of Amanda Shires, the violinist and singer who was then Isbell’s girlfriend, refusing to hear one more time how he wanted to get sober and doing something magnificent to jumpstart that effort. (She’s now his wife, and a songwriter and musician, and a mother.)

The first thing that grabs you about Jason Isbell: the lyrics.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before/A man walks into a bar and leaves before his ashes hit the floor”

“Time moves slow when you’re seventeen and then it picks up steam at twenty-one/Pretty soon you’ll remember when you could remember when you loved someone.”

“Even times that don’t seem like much will be your only crutch when you’re alone. ”

This is how you see yourself floating on the ceiling
And this is how you help her when her heart stops beating
What happened to the part of you that noticed every changing wind
This is how you talk to her when no one else is listening
And this is how you help her when the muse goes missing
You vanish so she can go drowning in a dream again

And this. OMG, this:

It’s not the long, flowing dress that you’re in
Or the light coming off of your skin
The fragile heart you protected for so long
Or the mercy in your sense of right and wrong
It’s not your hands searching slow in the dark
Or your nails making love’s watermark
It’s not the way you talk me off the roof
Your questions like directions to the truth

It’s knowing that this can’t go on forever
Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone
Maybe we’ll get forty years together
But one day I’ll be gone
One day you’ll be gone

If we were vampires and death was a joke
We’d go out on the sidewalk and smoke
Laugh at all the lovers and their plans
I wouldn’t feel the need to hold your hand

Maybe time running out is a gift
I’ll work hard ’til the end of my shift
And give you every second I can find
And hope it isn’t me who’s left behind

Love songs, all of them, of a kind I don’t see often enough: love songs for sentient adults.

The video of “Traveling Alone” is Exhibit A. You think it ends when the chorus repeats. Stay with it — the last few seconds are the point. Watch here.

And — I can’t resist – one song, the video and the lyrics. Watch “Cover Me Up.”

A heart on the run
Keeps a hand on a gun
You can’t trust anyone
I was so sure
What I needed was more
Tried to shoot out the sun
The days when we raged, we flew off the page
Such damage was done
But I made it through, ’cause somebody knew
I was meant for someone

So girl, leave your boots by the bed
We ain’t leaving this room
‘Til someone needs medical help
Or the magnolias bloom
It’s cold in this house and I ain’t going out to chop wood
So cover me up and know you’re enough
To use me for good

I put your faith to the test
When I tore off your dress
In Richmond on high
I sobered up, I swore off that stuff
Forever this time
And the old lover’s sing
“I thought it’d be me who helped him get home”
But home was a dream
One that I’d never seen ’til you came along

So girl, hang your dress out to dry
We ain’t leaving this room
‘Til Percy Priest breaks open wide
And the river runs through
And carries this house on its stones
Like a piece of driftwood
So cover me up and know you’re enough
To use me for good

Been there. Done that. Every word true. Wish I’d written it.