Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
His Favorite Bar Is Our Second Home
Jul 10, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
-
Welcome to Daytrotter
-
Streetlights
original version appears on Jason Isbell and the 40 Unit
'Streetlights' is told from the point of view of someone who's been traveling for a very long time, and has decided (with the help of quite a few drinks) to reconnect with old friends and family. It's really about drunk-dialing and getting lost trying to find your car.
-
The Last Song I Will Write
original version appears on Jason Isbell and the 40 Unit
'The Last Song' is, among other things, a ballad about political and personal isolation. I guess the idea for the outro came from 'Layla,' but that wasn't a conscious thing.
-
The Blue
original version appears on Jason Isbell and the 40 Unit
'The Blue' is a love song about writing love songs. It focuses on the idea of using the pain of impossible situations to make something cathartic and creative.
-
Seven-Mile Island
original version appears on Jason Isbell and the 40 Unit
'Seven Mile Island' focuses on a failing father and his preoccupation with an historical location in North Alabama where Natives gathered when they were away from their tribes. The island serves as a good place to fish and find arrowheads for local families, and a good place to hide and drink for teenagers.
I think there's a big difference between the 60-year-old man who sits in the crummy bar on the outskirts of town, the one that's so familiar it both hurts and soothes - the one that's nothing more than a glorified tool shed with a pool table and a bartender, and a 30-year-old man who does the same. They are both guys who belly up to the bar and when the inquiry comes, "What'll you have?" their response is common and predictable. They are men with a drink, with a taste for whiskey and beer, rarely anything peculiar. It's better for them to just stick with a prescription that has proven viable and effective for as long as they care to remember, though they're not in the memory business when it comes to many things, just the scarring, disastrous matters that have left them poorer and lonelier. The difference between the 60-year-old and the 30-year-old is that one's already been through the fiery fires and the other is in the process of lighting his own bed afire, prepping himself for what's sure to come. There have already been some predicaments and some episodes, epically heated and memorable, but they've assured themselves of more - all that much more wicked and jarring. Jason Isbell, the one-time member of one of the greatest modern-day American bands the Drive-By Truckers, seems to split the difference between that fogey and the young buck, both encroaching and thriving on the acreage plowed and sowed, harvested and then planted again by the old country and bluegrass men who couldn't help but get tangled up in the miserable guts and vines of women and booze and the volatile interactions that are bound to take place, historically repeating themselves on all of the suspecting many. Isbell digs into these time-honored situations like a boy tamping a spade into the moist soil searching for night crawlers to take to the lake with a fishing hole. There's all of the general sadness and reverence toward the matters of destruction and heartbreak, or ultimately replicating the same mistakes again and again that have plagued the otherwise solid and fundamentally admired relationships between men and women since the beginning of time, but there's something like a comfortable fit to these stories as well, as if there wasn't anything finer than a good tale of heartbreak. There is something so tasty and mouth-watering about a man - good, bad, deserving, undeserving - getting his shit handed to him. It's almost as if he should be able to take it, should be able to handle all of the repercussions, should be able to hold it together to bounce on to the next. But sometimes there is no next and there is more of a deep-seeded squalor and tear that cannot be fixed in a man. Sometimes there's a recognition that this one, this time was a bad one. There were bottoms, maybe several that were hit and it's a long way back up. There may not be the kind of strength needed to get there. And that's where Isbell takes us, to the bottom of the quarry, to the deepest depressions and valleys and it's funny how there are taverns there - the kind of darkened and morose dens of desperate, despondent and dilapidated men of every age. We're taken to the stool right beside all of them and we hear them hack the tar from their sorry lungs, we hear them mumble epitaphs and bits and pieces of the sad turns that their lives have taken and we're fascinated by it all. It takes us into the souls of men who, like clockwork, pull up to the closest convenience store at a little after 5 p.m. every afternoon and buy their six-pack, which they'll finish before dinner and then they'll go out for a nightcap, just to top off the tank and be amongst their brothers. When Isbell sings, "Love leaves you no choice in the matter/There ain't a damn thing sadder than a man in the throes of something real," in "No Choice In The Matter" from his self-titled new record, we're all trading off rounds and listening to the sorrows talk themselves out in a dingy bar that at least some people call home.
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit Official Site
Lightning Rod Records
