{"id":15582,"date":"2018-12-05T05:30:10","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T10:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=15582"},"modified":"2018-11-12T13:00:45","modified_gmt":"2018-11-12T18:00:45","slug":"jason-isbell-high-road-leads-him-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/12\/05\/jason-isbell-high-road-leads-him-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Isbell: High Road Leads Him Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though he\u2019s been a musician for most of his life, Alabama-born guitarist-singer-songwriter Jason Isbell didn\u2019t launch his career as a solo artist until 2007. But in little more than a decade, he has racked up numerous awards (artist of the year, song of the year, album of the year) from the Americana Music Association, earned four Grammy awards, and was the Country Music Hall of Fame\u2019s Artist-in-Residence in 2017. At the 17th<\/sup> Annual Americana Honors & Awards, Isbell and his group the 400 Unit won album of the year, song of the year (\u201cIf We Were Vampires\u201d) and group of the year.<\/p>\n

Isbell is one of few artists in the Americana\/country field to succeed on a large scale both critically and commercially. Still touring in support of his latest album, The Nashville Sound<\/i>, more than a year after its release, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit performed at Asheville\u2019s Memorial Stadium Sept. 21.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Isbell grew up in Green Hill, Alabama, just across the river for Muscle Shoals, home to the two celebrated recording studios, FAME and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. Session bassist David Hood took the fledgling musician under his wing. In the process, he imparted some valuable lessons. \u201cShow up on time,\u201d Isbell recalls being told. \u201cAnd make sure all of your gear works. Do that, and you\u2019re already going to be way ahead of most musicians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isbell laughs at the memory. \u201cI got a kick out of that, but it\u2019s true. And that\u2019s the kind of guy David is: He just does whatever needs to be done, and he\u2019ll let everybody else figure it out later.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hood \u2014 who remains an active musician today \u2014 played an important part in recordings by Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson, Cher, Bob Seger, Traffic, the Staple Singers, Etta James, Percy Sledge and countless others. And the music made in Muscle Shoals exerted a major influence upon Jason Isbell.<\/p>\n

The guitarist has definite ideas as to why the music recorded in the tiny North Alabama town is so quintessentially American. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of struggle in there,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd the combination of different ethnicities, musicians, producers, and songwriters were all trying to make music that had soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this case, Isbell isn\u2019t using the term soul<\/i> to apply to a genre of music, though. \u201cI think that they were trying to make music that was honest and emotional,\u201d he explains. \u201cAnd I think being more concerned with manipulating people\u2019s emotions than with selling millions of albums turned out to be a really good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an approach that Jason Isbell has taken to heart. He spent six years in the Drive-By Truckers, the band led by David Hood\u2019s son Patterson, but he placed only a handful of his songs on the group\u2019s albums. \u201cI knew the band was really stacked with quality songwriters,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I didn\u2019t want to bring in anything that was subpar; it took me a long time to write a good song in those days. I was still developing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writing good songs seems to come easier for Isbell these days; The Nashville Sound<\/i> secured the #1 spot on the indie, country, folk and rock charts. But his life hasn\u2019t been without its own struggles; he battled alcoholism for many years before getting sober in 2012. For him, the best thing about putting those problems behind him is being able to be a good husband and father. \u201cI\u2019m glad that my daughter was born three years ago rather than thirteen years ago,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause I wasn\u2019t able to keep my own ass clean back then, much less somebody else\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Isbell admits that there is a downside to getting clean. \u201cMen who are raised in the South aren\u2019t given a lot of tools to actually discuss your emotional life and your interior life,\u201d he explains. \u201cAnd that was a lot easier when I was drunk. So once I got sober, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to function emotionally and be open with people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isbell has succeeded on that score, too. A frequent visitor to Asheville since his days with Drive-By Truckers, the guitarist always looks forward to meeting up with old friends here. \u201cMy friend Doug Riley, who owns Asheville Pizza & Brewing, grew up in North Alabama,\u201d he says. \u201cWe like to spend some time with Doug and hang out at some of his places. Asheville is a great town to just walk around in, taking in the beauty of the city and the strangeness of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Isbell doesn\u2019t partake of the products of the city\u2019s famous breweries. \u201cEven when I drank, I never really got into microbrews,\u201d he says. \u201cThey always upset my stomach \u2026 probably because I drank a case of beer every time.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne or two might not have caused me so much trouble,\u201d he says with a chuckle. \u201cBut there we are.\u201d Instead, Isbell takes advantage of another of Asheville\u2019s offerings. \u201cAsheville is like the brunch capital of the south,\u201d he says. \u201cSo it\u2019s brunch all the time for me. Constant brunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Come back tomorrow for even more Jason Isbell.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though he\u2019s been a musician for most of his life, Alabama-born guitarist-singer-songwriter Jason Isbell didn\u2019t launch his career as a solo artist until 2007. But in little more than a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15583,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,41],"tags":[237,3629],"class_list":["post-15582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alt-country","category-americana","category-interview","tag-asheville","tag-jason-isbell","cat-4-id","cat-6-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15584,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15582\/revisions\/15584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}