Jason Isbell

Hey. How do you do it? How do you work? I am sitting here trying to think of something to say. And do you know what? I’m empty. There’s nothing there. Me? I need to have my head filled with stories and songs from other people, but when it comes time to return to the pool of stories I have nothing to give. For myself, really, I would much rather be playing computer games, and I wonder how people like David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Jason Isbell do it. Innovation? Creativity? Misery inspires genius? To hell with all that. I can be miserable and damn lazy, and I can be self-righteous and not write a word. I have nothing to give, nothing to give but lies.

This whole band stuff, my band, is ripping me apart musically. Pulling me out of my fantasy world and throwing me in the mud in the rain. Because after practice Eric and I always have a chance to talk about music and stuff. I was going to write this article about David Bowie. Innovation. Pain. Difference. And indifference. Creativity. And crap like that. I like Bowie, feel somehow connected to him. I imagined I’ve chatted with him on the internet. I met my wife through a common interest in Bowie. But we, The Blue Monsters, don’t do any of Bowie’s songs. So why should I bother?

But Eric has been dragging me into the twanging, whining pain-filled reality of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. That would be Jason Isbell. I used to think Drive By Truckers were a bunch of Lynyrd Skynyrd wantabees. And so what if they are? They had been around for five years before they brought Jason Isbell in as a third guitarist. He was a brilliant young man who came riding into and through the band straight out of school — and three years, creative differences, and an ex-wife later, Drive By Truckers is still Drive By Truckers and Jason Isbell is a solo artist. And why not? Isbell is a genius and Drive By Truckers is a great band, and those things don’t always mix.

To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t want to tour with my ex-wife, and if I was a member in a democratically run guitar band, a sexy solid bassist who “sings like a teenage Tanja Tucker” (Patterson Hood) might be preferable to a genius who needs to do his own thing. Sorry, Jason. Just using my imagination. As Patterson said, “It was time. It’s all good.”

People love listening to misery in other people. I’m sorry. I’m a cynic and I think there is something really dark in the human psyche, some deep, not-so-hidden part of us that keeps us looking for darkness in others and sends us on drinking binges trying to create that darkness in ourselves. That’s what drinking is, you know. We are bringing ourselves closer to that wonderful unknown mystery death. I know, because I have been there. We look for death in life, because we don’t know any better. So much for philosophy in a bottle.

Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit is Jason’s most recent endeavor.  The 400 Unit is “the former colloquial name of the psychiatric ward of Florence, Alabama’s Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital, which is now named the Behavioral Health Center, or One North, and is located on the hospital’s first floor." There isn’t much information on Wiki on this, but it all adds to the mysique, dont it? The band includes Derry DeBorja (keyboards), Jimbo Hart (bass), Browan Lollar (guitar), and a whole lineup of drummers from 2007 up: Ryan Tillery, Robert Walbourne, Mike Dillon, Chad Gamble and Matt Pence. Look, here is a twentytwo-year-old guitarist/songwriter who joins a power Skynyrdish guitar band, and he is a magnificent guitar player. He was compared to Rick Danko and Richard Manuel of “The Band.” Danko died of a heart attack on tour in 1999.  Manuel hung himself on tour in 1986. These are things which made Isbell question his own life, and that is what the song Danko/Manuel is about.

Is that what life is all about?  A person gives his heart and soul to music, is in a big-name band with a well-known song or two for a short time maybe, and then spends the rest of his life touring and dying in a hotel room.

Actually, that’s what the Paul Simon movie One Trick Pony is about. The endless touring with no place to lay your feet. In the movie, Paul Simon walked away from it.  A childish, irresponsible act the way it played out, if you ask me.  But the point is, Isbell is moving fast and he has something to say. What was that quote of his on Facebook a couple days ago?

“I don’t do any illegal drugs anymore, and I am afraid of no man, but you bitches are going to kill me.” – Jason Isbell, Facebook, April 2, 2011