JASON ISBELL
With special guest Damien Jurado
Saturday, February 14th, 2015 | 8pm
Peabody Opera House | St. Louis, MO
Tickets on sale Friday, October 3rd at noon!
Ticket Locations
Tickets
available at the Ford Box Office at Scottrade Center, all Ticketmaster
Ticket Centers, by phone at 800-745-3000, or online at ticketmaster.com.
Ticket Prices
$45 / $35 (plus applicable fees)
More information
jasonisbell.com | peabodyoperahouse.com| nationalshows2.com
JASON ISBELL
Southeastern is not a record Jason has made before, and
not simply because the glorious storm and drama of his band, the 400
Unit, is absent. They will tour together; it’s not a break-up record,
not an album of dissolving,
but, rather, songs of discovery. And not at all afraid, not even amid
the tears. Which is to say that he has grown up.
That it has been a dozen years since he showed up at a
party and left in the Drive-By Truckers’ van with two travel days to
learn their songs. And then taught them some of his songs in the
bargain.
Jason Isbell’s solo career has seemed equally effortless,
from Sirens of the Ditch (2007) to Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit
(2009), through Here We Rest (2011) and last year’s Live From Alabama.
Loud records, unrepentantly
southern, resplendent with careful songwriting. Songs which inspire and
intimidate other musicians, and critics.
“A heart on the
run / keeps a hand on the gun / can’t trust anyone,” Jason sings just
now, his words brushing gently atop an acoustic guitar figure “Cover Me
Up,” the song with which he has chosen to open Southeastern.
Such tenderness. An act of contrition, an affirmation of need, his
voice straining not to break: “Girl leave your boots by the bed / We
ain’t leaving this room / Till someone needs medical help / Or the
magnolias bloom.”
He sighs into the
phone, considering what he’s done, and why. “I’m really purposefully
ignorant of any sort of sales consideration, or radio considerations, or
anything like that,” Jason says. “Before I’d felt like,
this song needs to be this length, or this song needs to be mastered in
this way, or this song needs to have drums on it, or this song needs a
bigger hook. I just completely did away with all those considerations
for this record. And made it as if I were really
just making it for me, and for people like me who listen to entire
albums.”
Raw, open, and reflective. Sobriety can be like that.
Jason’s made it past his first year, which is rather more than a promise
and will always be far from a guarantee. Treatment programs teach that
one should let
go, easier said than done. Perhaps that’s why Isbell was willing to
trust his songs to David Cobb. Cobb has produced Shooter Jennings and
Jamey Johnson and the Secret Sisters, but it was a Squidbillies’ session
with George Jones which finally brought his work
to Jason’s attention. “The song that he did with George Jones was a
minute and a half, two minutes long,” Jason says, “but the production of
it was perfect because he nailed every single era of George’s career,
and that really impressed me. A lot.”
Jason Isbell chooses his words carefully and speaks them softly, only the gentle lilt of south Alabama left for shading. “A lot of my favorite songwriters and recording artists are afraid,” he says. “Afraid to turn anything over to a producer, so they continue to make the same record over and over and over and over. More often than not, really. It’s really frustrating for me.”
There had been other plans for the album, as there always
are, and for the first time Jason had the songs done well before
production commenced. In the inevitable way of things, it all came
together in a rush. They
finished recording at midnight on a Thursday. Friday he and Amanda
Shires went to their rehearsal dinner, got married Saturday, and had to
wait until they returned from their honeymoon to approve the mastered
album.
It is Amanda’s
voice and violin joining with Jason on “Traveling Alone,” as evocative a
song of loneliness as anyone’s written since “Running On Empty.” A
promise. The songs are invested with Jason’s particular, personal
truths, but they’re not about him. Or, rather, the emotional truths are
probably about the songwriter, but not the stories he’s telling. “Live
Oak” opens with an a cappella verse: “There’s a man who walks beside me /
He is who I used to be / I wonder if she
sees him / And confuses him with me?” It is the kind of question a man
asks as he readies to marry a woman who met him and knew him and loved
him before sobriety stuck (and a question a singer might well ask his
audience under the same circumstances), though
the story is about a roving criminal in either the 18th or 20th
centuries.
It is not, to be
clear, an acoustic album. “Flying Over Water” and “Super 8” have more
than the requisite amount of guitar squawl to propel them. But it is the
quite, contemplative songs that lure you in out of the
rain, and those songs especially that draw one into the arc of the
entire album. To the elegance of “Songs That She Sings in the Shower”:
“With a stake / Held to my eye / I had to summon the confidence
needed/To hear her good-bye.”
“I’ve done my
part,” Jason says, his dry chuckle trailing off. “I make things and
other people try to sell those things. I try not to mix the two
together. I think that’s just a better way to make more quality things.”
He is, of course, right.
