[music]

Anna Sale: On the podcast Death, Sex and Money, we are not afraid of hard conversations. Have you thought back and wished you'd gone to a different industry?

Female Speaker: I could only regret it if I felt guilty of something.

Anna: Listen to Death, Sex and Money wherever you get your podcasts.

[music]

Male Announcer: Listener supported, WNYC studios.

[music]

David Remnick: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.

[Jason Isbell- In a Razor Town]

In a razor town, you take whoever

You think you can keep around

There's an echoed sound

That permeates the sidewalk

Where she shuffles 'round

David: Jason Isbell got into the music business pretty early, so early that he had a music publishing deal by the time he was 21. At the same time, he joined the band Drive-by Truckers, but he really came into his own as a songwriter around 10 years ago as he was getting sober from years of alcohol and drugs. The record was called Southeastern, and it swept the Americana Music Awards in 2014. Those songs have got it all; great lyrics, great melodies, great stories, and more acclaimed records have followed.

[Jason Isbell- I've Been Loving You Too Long]

I've been loving you too long to stop now

David: Isbell's most recent is called Georgia Blue. It fulfilled a promise he made that if Joe Biden won the state in 2020, he'd make an album for charity of cover songs by Georgia artists. One of Isbell's great admirers is The New Yorker's, John Seabrook. John sat down with Jason Isbell at The New Yorker Festival in 2016, when the record Something More Than Free had just come out, and a little later in the program, we'll also hear some of Jason Isabell's music.

[applause]

John Seabrook: Thank you. All right, how are doing?

Jason Isbell: I'm doing well, thank you.

John: You got your baby back in the hotel.

Jason: The baby's in the hotel. She's not alone.

[laughter]

John: That's good. You were telling me earlier that when you guys, Jason and his wife are both artists, and they're often on the road together, and when you guys are on the road together, you usually have the baby.

Jason: Yes, if Amanda is out on her tour, and I'm out on my tour, I take the baby most of the time. Just because I have a safer vehicle for touring. It's true. When we can, we all go out together. She just put a record out a couple of weeks ago. She's in a small theater in Louisiana tonight, and she's in a van with a bunch of dudes, so she sends the baby with me because I'm in a bus with a nanny.

[laughter]

John: I've got some songs here that I want to have a very collegey songwriting seminar with you. Because Jason is such a good writer, I thought it'd be actually worthwhile going over some of the words. I feel like these days, it's hard to find songs where the lyrics are really as rich and complex as Jason. Before I do that, I wanted to just go back and set the scene in terms of you becoming a songwriter in terms of where you came from. You come from a very musically rich place and how early experiences that you had might have shaped you as a songwriter or determined the fact you would become a songwriter.

Jason: I started out playing different musical instruments with family members. My dad's dad, and my dad's brother, and my mom's brother, my mom's dad, and all my aunts and uncles on both sides really either played or sang. My granddad on my dad's side was a Pentecostal preacher, and every Sunday we would go and eat dinner at their house, and then maybe one Sunday a month, maybe two Sundays a month, his extended family would come. His brothers and sisters would come, and they all brought instruments. That was just how we passed the time as a family, was sitting around playing mostly gospel music and old traditional country songs. They were very religious, very. Like, my grandmother had the long skirts, never wore pants in her life.

John: Oh, wow.

Jason: Never took any kind of medication until she was almost dead, she took some ibuprofen.

John: She blew it.

Jason: She didn't cut her hair, she didn't wear makeup. They were very, very religious, holiness, which is a version of Pentecostal that's not quite snake handling but it was serious business. It was very serious. Very, very serious holy business. I started out learning those songs. It was like a childcare thing. My parents both worked. My grandparents lived right next to the high school where I went from kindergarten through 12th grade, and so I would walk to their house until my parents got home. Then, in the summers, I would stay at their house pretty much every day while my parents worked. To keep me occupied, and also because he just really liked my company for whatever reason, my granddad taught me to play different instruments.

The majority of that was the guitar because he played banjo, he played fiddle, mandolin. He called those lead instruments, and then there had to be a rhythm instrument, so I had to play rhythm guitar. It was like a musical boot camp situation. This started when I was seven years old or so and he had these huge, the guitars that I play now, Big Dreadnought named after the largest boat, it's a big guitar. I couldn't hardly reach around the guitar, and he would give me a hard time, like, "You're getting lazy," but there was always a reward at the end of it.

If I would go through hours of playing rhythm on these gospel and country songs with him, he would play blues songs for me. He'd put the guitar in his lap, and he would play slide guitar and open tunings.

John: Cool.

Jason: I always begged him to do that, but before he would do it I would have to play the Jesus stuff for a couple of hours. [chuckles] When I was probably 10 years old or 11 years old, he took me to the local record store and bought me the complete Robert Johnson Recordings when that came out altogether.

John: Wow, nice.

Jason: Then we get back to the house, and he's got a little cassette player that dubs from one cassette to the other, and so he records all the songs onto a blank cassette that aren't particularly vulgar. All the squeeze my lemon stuff. He gives me the cassettes of the songs that don't have that stuff on it, and then when I'm like 15, he gives me the original boxset. He says, "I think you're old enough to handle these songs now." It's from the '20s, it's not that racy, and this is 1990. I was already into Nirvana at this point.

John: He wasn't I guess. That's funny. You got a scholarship to the University of Memphis.

Jason: I did, yes.

John: While there, you studied creative writing?

Jason: Yes.

John: Fiction writing, because I think one can see the influence, and we can go to this in a second, but I feel like in your songs, you can see someone that has clearly thought about point of view, and narrative, and how to tell stories and all this. Would it be fair to say that what you learned from fiction writing actually did make a big difference in your songwriting?

Jason: Yes, very much. Not just what I learned from writing it, but just from the habits of reading that I developed early on, and then got really intense about while I was in college. I knew I wanted to write better lyrics. I thought if I study fiction, then I'll be able to write fiction whether it rhymes or not. I didn't want to study poetry because thankfully, I knew at that point, that a poet is not just a really good songwriter. It's a completely different thing. It's so different. The microscope is at a completely different diameter at that point.

I knew that if I read a whole lot and was forced to write a whole lot, then it would make me better with words, and so that's why I studied creative writing.

John: Yes. Okay, now I just want to jump ahead to one of the songs that you wrote on the album Northeastern, which came out in 2013.

[laughter]

John: Sorry, we're in the North.

Jason: I know it's a windy town.

John: Northeastern. Okay, sorry. I know this. I know it's called Southeastern. I just made a little mistake, and it's very stressful being up here.

[laughter]

John: Anyway, so I'm going to read the first verse. I'm just going to read, I'm not going to sing. Maybe Jason will sing this song later, but this is a song called Different Days.

Jason: It's so weird when somebody reads the lyrics and doesn't sing them.

John: Do you want to sing?

Jason: No, no, no. I would rather you do that. I don't mean it's weird for me.

John: I'm not going to sing [crosstalk].

Jason: When I did the NPR interview, Terry Gross did it, and you're wearing headphones because you're at a remote location. It was that moment where Terry Gross is whispering my lyrics to me right now. This is like smoking on a plane. I've made it.

John: Anyway, Different Days. This is the first verse of Different Days,

Staring at the picture of the runaways on the wall

Seems like these days you couldn't run away at all

And even if you did, what you got to run away to

Just another drunk daddy with a white man's point of view

John: Now, staring at the pictures of the runaways on the wall, what's happening in the beginning of this song?

Jason: I was, let's see, when I started that song--

John: What's your impulse to write this? How does this song start?

Jason: I'm standing at the grocery store, I think it was Walmart. Yes, as I lived in Alabama at the time, and I didn't go grocery shopping before 2:00 AM at that point in my life. I'm like, "They have this big board of missing and runaway children as you come in and out the door before you get to the door greeter, you pass the runaway children." I'm standing there staring at it, and it just occurs to me, "How is it possible that you could even run away?" It seems like anybody could keep up with you, especially if you're a teenage kid who's probably extremely active on social media.

I know this is probably insensitive, but if I'm a 16-year-old, and I'm running away, I'm making it three days before I'm on Instagram. You know what I'm saying? Somebody is going to find me, I'm going to drop a pin accidentally.

John: The likes. 1,100 likes.

Jason: Yes.

[laughter]

Jason: I'm thinking that "How is it possible?" Then most of the kids who do, they have this idea of, "I have to get away from these abusive parents or these parents who don't believe the way that I believe." In my mind, I'm thinking they probably wound up with something much worse or something just like what they were running away from. That's the ones who really got very lucky and didn't just get picked up and murdered. That was the songs, they're heavier than I am probably.

John: How do you know that's a song? How do you know? Are you standing there saying, "Man, this is a song."?

Jason: Because I thought it was insightful. I stood there, and I thought, "It seems like you couldn't even run away at all." Then I thought that rhymes with wall, and I'm looking at a wall.

[laughter]

John: That's all it takes?

Jason: Yes.

John: Oh.

Jason: That's all that part of it takes. It really takes a lot of riding around and killing time, but the songwriting part, yes, you just have to pay attention. You have to stop and go, "I'm thinking of a song right now, and I didn't realize it until just now." Like traveling alone, I was literally traveling alone. I was sitting in an airport, and I thought, "Man, I'm tired of traveling alone."

[laughter]

[applause]

Jason: Then I thought, "Why don't I say that 12 times in a row?" I'm singing into my cell phone, and there's a guy sitting next to me at the gate and I don't want him to know I'm singing into my cell phone, so I'm doing this. Then I get home and I listen to the memo, and it's [onomatopeia] and I have to figure out-- That's the bulk of my work is trying to figure out what the hell I was saying into my phone.

John: Let me just go to the next verse because I think the point of view changes a little bit, which is another thing you do in your songs.

I can see you in my mind's eye, catching light

Sleep beside the river if we make it out of town tonight

You can strip in Portland on the day you turn 16

You got one thing to sell and benzodiazepine

John: Now, rhyming on benzodiazepine is a feat.

Jason: Thank you, yes.

John: Good for you.

Jason: That's what we call the Loretta Lynn rhyme, when you stumble on one, that's just, "How do these words rhyme? This is unbelievable." It's the right drug.

John: You got, day you turn 16 and benzodiazepine.

Jason: It falls in there pretty well. I think, the day you turn, that's probably the part that had to be manipulated a little bit to get the meter to land just right because it would have been more direct to say from 16 or from the age of 16. When you say, "The day you turn," it drops the meter correctly. you also think, "Then this person must be eager to make their own income even though it may not be the-- You start thinking more things, you get deeper into it, and think more about the character, but it's the right drug. That's the miracle of it. It's like, that's What this person would be using.

John: They'd be taking, yes.

Jason: Yes, and that's not what she has to sell, and I've had people that mistook that. They think I'm saying you have one thing to sell.

John: Oh, I see.

Jason: That's benzodiazepine, that's not it.

John: That's not what she has to sell.

Jason: That's not the one thing she has to sell. We all know what she has to sell, but the drugs are so she can live with selling it.

John: What's happened now in these two verses is you've gone from someone who was looking at this poster on the wall, in a Walmart, to thinking of yourself as another younger person who might have been a Confederate and run away with this person.

Jason: Yes, run away with her. There's a shifting narrator that becomes a little bit less trustworthy as it moves along, but that's what I like about songs as opposed to other kinds of writing. The rules, you can ignore the rules. There are certain rules you can't ignore, but rules of time, rules of tense, rules of point of view, they're just out the window. What's true and what's fiction is also out the window. It doesn't matter, they don't put them on the shelves that way. They put books on the shelves that way at Barnes & Noble, but they don't do that in what used to be called record stores.

John: Right, that's true. There's no nonfiction or fiction songs.

Jason: No, there's no nonfiction section for songwriters.

John: I think we as listeners often think that you are telling the truth about your life in your songs.

Jason: Yes, always. People don't think Schwarzenegger is the Terminator, but they think that I am always talking about myself.

[laughter]

John: Part of it is we know the drinking, we know that your life story involves stopping drinking and that this was a big thing for you. Not only for you but for your songwriting. Your last two albums have had a lot of songs that seem to be about that. I would say this song, Different Days, is also about that.

Jason: Most certainly, yes.

John: Do you find that being public about not drinking, first of all, it cuts out a lot of country songs for you? You're not going to be singing a lot of songs in bars probably, at least in the present day.

Jason: Not a lot.

John: Do you feel that that was a choice that actually might have alienated some of your fans or do you feel like you don't care?

Jason: No. I wouldn't have cared, but no, it didn't. There are people when I sing Cover Me Up, and I sing the line about swearing off that stuff, drinking alcohol, people throw their damn drinks up in the air. [screams]

[laughter]

Jason: I love it. I love the irony of it.

John: That is good.

Jason: I love that it's not lost on them, they have to do that. They have to roll tide however they can. They have to do it, however, they can get that out, even if that means spilling their beer in the name of sobriety, on the person standing next to them. That's the thing, you can't aim. You can't aim songs, you can't aim art really.

John: That's right.

Jason: My wife says I have to say I'm an artist, so I had to say I'm an artist.

John: What? You don't say it enough really, or--

Jason: I just don't want to say it because I'm from the school like James McMurtry where he says, " I used to think I was an artist. Turns out I'm a beer salesman." There's a lot of things James McMurtry says that are brilliant, but he's one of the best.

John: [unintelligible 00:17:49]

Jason: He's one of the best.

John: Yes, he is.

Jason: Anytime I'm talking to anybody about drinking and songs, I'll always bring up that line where he says, "I don't want another drink, I just want that last one again." I think that is the fucking cellar door of alcohol songwriting. It's perfect. That's the whole problem. You can never have that second or third drink over and over and over and over. The seventh drink is not just a repeat of the second or third drink, and he made all that go into a line that rhymes and sounds beautiful. He's a genius. Plus he says the sweetest things and he can't open his mouth all the way, so it sounds like he hates your fucking guts when he's talking to you.

[laughter]

Jason: If you come off stage and says, "That was a beautiful set, I was really moved by those songs," and he never parts his teeth.

John: Do you think that your songs, your songwriting, or your music changed from when you were drinking to when you were not drinking? Can you see differences in your--

Jason: It got a lot better when I quit drinking. A lot better because, before, I would get up in the afternoon, and I would be hungover, so I would drink a pot of coffee. If I was particularly hungover, I'd take a swig out of the bottle, maybe a couple of swigs, maybe more than that. Then I would sit down and start to write a song. You're looking at probably 2:30 before I actually have a pen in my hand, and I'm sitting down, writing a song.

From 2:30 to 4:30, I'm dealing with my hangover, and I'm trying to come up with good lyrics. Then it's six o'clock, and this is the time when everybody gets off work, and they're going to be in the bar. I was living above a bar and pool hall in Sheffield, Alabama for a long time. Up until I got sober, that's where I moved out of and went to rehab, and then stayed with some friends, and then went to Australia with Ryan Adams of all things to do when you just got sober. It turned out to be really good because he had been sober for a few years at that point, and he knew how to occupy your time.

John: How did he do that? What did he do?

Jason: He's like a 15-year-old. I think a lot of him went back to the person he was when he started doing drugs and drinking in the first place. He's renting out laser tag facilities. We're going heavy metal records shopping to find the most satanic records we can possibly find.

John: Watching Star Wars?

Jason: Yes. Pinball all the time. Pinball and cats, and pinball and cats, and pinball and cats.

John: I guess that works.

Jason: Yes, and he had, on that tour, ordered us some, keytars and so we set up on the bus at night. Rather than going out to a bar, we would sit and we would jam on keytars like we were Herbie Hancock in our minds. This is the kind of stuff he does. I don't know. It's like he's a kid, and you're like, "Shit, I'll be a kid with you, dude. Let's do that instead of speedballs." By the time the sun went down, I was done writing for the day, so I would go to the bar, and I would drink for 10 hours, and then it would all start over. When I quit drinking, it doesn't really matter what you start with, as long as you got time to edit, and I'm sure you know this, as long as you put the time into it, you're going to wind up writing something good.

You don't have to wait to be inspired. All that is bullshit. Like Chuck Close says, "Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work."

John: I like that, ye.

Jason: When I got sober I just started showing up and getting to work. Then instead of going down to the bar when the sun went down, I stayed there with my song. I kept my ass in the chair, and the songs got better. Rather than having two or three great songs and some filler on a record, I had two really, really solid records from start to finish.

John: Absolutely, yes. Thank you.

[applause]

David: The New Yorker's John Seabrook. In a moment, we'll hear Jason Isbell playing a couple of those songs from a live show at The New Yorker Festival in 2016. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, stick around.

[Jason Isbell-Elephant]

She said, "Andy, you're better than your past"

Winked at me and drained her glass

Cross-legged on a barstool, like nobody sits anymore

She said, "Andy, you're taking me home"

Female Announcer: The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported by Capital One. With no fees or minimums, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Even easier than deciding to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast, and with no overdraft fees, is it even a decision? That's banking reimagined. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com/bank. Capital One NA Member FDIC. WNYC Studios is supported by PBS presenting in their element. As the climate crisis becomes a present-day reality, learn how Indigenous leaders work to protect vital elements, earth, air, fire, and water in this four-part docuseries now streaming on pbs.org/perilandpromise.

Nancy Solomon: When you set out to make a true crime podcast, you don't know what you've got or where you'll end up.

Male Speaker: Oh, I didn't know that.

Nancy: Find out why New Jersey is taking up a cold case that's more than seven years old. I'm Nancy Solomon. Join me for a journey into the crazy world of Garden State crime and politics. Now you can listen to the full eight-part series of Dead End: A New Jersey Political Murder Mystery, wherever you get podcasts.

[pause 00:23:57]

[music]

David: Welcome back to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We just heard a conversation with Jason Isbell who's made a name for himself as one of the great Americana songwriters who's working today. He comes in the tradition of people like Merle Haggard or Guy Clark. [inaudible 00:24:28] He'll perform two songs now. Different Days and How To Forget.

[music]

[applause] [Jason Isbell-Different Days]

Staring at the pictures of the runaways on the wall

It seems like these days you couldn't run away at all

And even if you did, what you got to run away to

Just another drunk daddy with a white man's point of view

I can see you in my mind's eye, catching light

We'll sleep beside the river if we make it out of town tonight

You can strip in Portland on the day you turn 16

You got one thing to sell, and benzodiazepine

Ten years ago, I might have seen you dancing in a different light

And offered up my help in a different way

But those were different days

That was a different day

Had a girl back home and we shared her single bed

When I whispered in her ear she believed every word I said

And if she didn't believe she didn't dare give me slack

Or it was, "Baby I love you, get off of my goddamn back"

Then time went by and I left and I left again

Guess Jesus loves the sinner but the highway loves the sin

My daddy told me, I believe he told me true

That the right thing's always the hardest thing to do

Ten years ago I might have stuck around for another night

And used her in a thousand different ways

But those were different days

Those were different days

And the story is only mine to live and die with

And the answer is only mine to come across

But the ghosts that I got scared and I got high with

Look a little lost

Ten years ago I might thought I didn't have the right

To say the things an outlaw wouldn't say

Those were different days

Those were different days

Those were different days

[applause]

Jason: Thank you. Is there a way to turn my microphone up? Can we turn my microphone up? I feel like I'm in a Sprite commercial. Can we turn my microphone up? I'll just go ahead and start, then if it gets louder, I'll just be happier later. I'm going to try this. This is one of those songs I usually need to warm up to sing, but let's just have low expectations, that way we won't be disappointed. Oh, that's my guitar, and it was plenty loud. That guitar is good now. Now the microphone, the other one.

[test singing]

Hey, hey, hey, hey

This is me

There we go

Hey, hey

Jason: Great, okay. Let's see.

[Jason Isbell-How to Forget]

Give her space, give her speed

Give her anything she needs

Get her out of here

Give her weed, give her wine

Give her anything but time

Get her out of here

She won't stop telling stories

And most of them are true

She knew me back before I fell for you

I was strained, I was sad

Didn't realize what I had

It was years ago

I was sick, I was scared

I was socially impaired

It was years ago

My past, a scary movie

I watched and fell asleep

Now I'm dreaming up these creatures from the deep

Teach me how to forget

Replace the character set

Teach me how to unlearn a lesson

Teach me how to forget

'Cause I ain't sorry just yet

Teach me how to unlearn a lesson

Have a seat, have a drink

Tell the jury what you think

Was I good to you

Was it hell, was it fun

Did you think I was the one

Was I good to you

And now that I've found someone

Who makes me want to live

Does that make my leaving harder to forgive

Teach me how to forget

Replace the character set

Teach me how to unlearn a lesson

Teach me how to forget

'Cause I ain't sorry just yet

Teach me how to unlearn a lesson

Teach me how to forget

Replace the character set

Teach me how to unlearn a lesson

Teach me how to forget

'Cause I ain't sorry just yet

Teach me how to unlearn a lesson

[applause]

Jason: Thank you. Thanks a lot.

David: Jason Isbell performing Different Days and How to Forget at The New Yorker Festival in 2016. He's touring the country starting in August. Next week I'll talk about the January 6 Committee hearings with Congressman Jamin Raskin of Maryland. I hope you'll join us for that. To close today, here's Jason Isbell with Speed Trap Town.

[Jason Isbell-Speed Trap Town]

She said it's none of my business but it breaks my heart

I dropped a dozen cheap roses in my shopping cart

Made it out to the truck without breaking down

I guess everybody knows you in a speed trap town

It's a Thursday night but there's a high school game

I sneak a bottle up the bleachers and forget my name

These 5-8 bastards run a shallow cross

It's a boy's last dream and a man's first law

And it never did occur to me to leave till tonight

When there's no one left to ask if I'm all right

Sleep until I'm straight enough to drive, then decide

If there's anything that can't be left behind

The doctor said daddy wouldn't make it a year

Oh, but the holidays are over and he's still here

How long can they keep you in the ICU

See the veins through the skin like a faded tattoo

He was a tough state trooper till a decade back

When that girl who wasn't momma caused his heart attack

He didn't care about us when he was walkin' around

Just pullin' women over in a speed trap town

And it never did occur to me to leave till tonight

When I realized he'll never be all right

Sign my name and say my last goodbye, then decide

That there's nothin' here that can't be left behind

The road got blurry when the sun came up

So I slept a couple hours in the pickup truck

Drank a cup of coffee by an Indian man

A thousand miles away from that speed trap town

A thousand miles away from that speed trap town

[applause]

Jason: Thank you.

David: This week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll talk with Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Democratic governor of New Mexico. She's declared her state a reproductive safe haven, and that could very well lead to conflict with her neighbors.

Michelle Lujan Grisham: The fact that another state can try to sue a provider that's licensed here is the most disgusting and despicable aspect of this particular decision.

David: Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham on The New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC Studios. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

 

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.