Jason Isbell’s powerful songs, compelling vocals, and formidable guitar skills have made him one of America’s most-respected singer/songwriters. A charismatic performer, his critically-lauded albums, solo and backed by the formidable 400 Unit, have earned six Grammys and nine Americana Music Awards. With an eclectic style melding country, blues, and Southern rock, his appeal transcends genres.
As his success grew, a collection of older gear has played a major role in his approach, both in the studio and onstage. That includes his latest effort Foxes in the Snow, his first solo acoustic collection.
“I’ve never done it before and it didn’t seem silly,” he says of the new album. “It seemed like a challenge – a good way to make sure I remain focused on the craft of songwriting and don’t build things to hide behind, like big production or loud guitars. I love all those things, but it’s very easy, especially in a period of change in your life and a point of vulnerability, to look for things to hide behind. I wanted to do the opposite.”
“I knew I was going to be recording with just a guitar, so I wrote songs with that in mind. It made sense to keep it very personal; I didn’t want it to sound like I’d written a bunch of rock-and-roll songs that I just decided to strip down for whatever reasons. From the beginning, I wanted to make a record that sounded small and open and vulnerable.”
Recorded at New York’s Electric Lady Studios, his animated picking complements both vocals and lyrics, all done on his mahogany 1940 Martin 0-17, “Just a little guy. It does sound really good. It’s a good example of a pre-war mahogany Martin. [Co-producer and engineer Gena Johnson] did a lovely job of miking everything.”
The title song’s delicate, complex fingerpicking required added effort.
“I had to practice that one before I went in to record it. I’m not a great fingerstyle player; I do a hybrid thing where I’ll use the flat pick and a couple fingers. That’s what I’m doing on that.”
He cited the acoustic influences of Michael Hedges, Charlie Hunter, and Hunter’s hero, veteran blues fingerpicker Mance Lipscomb, adding, “I think my favorite has been Leo Kottke – the way he can create multiple parts and really accompany his own playing.”
The final recording day tested both singer and instrument, when he had to switch studios at Electric Lady.
“It was cold in there,” he said of the second room. “When we turned the space heater on, it affected the tuning, so we had to basically leave it off while I was tracking. It got really difficult to play those parts because my fingers kept getting cold.”
A son of northern Alabama, Isbell grew up in one of America’s most-fertile musical regions. Born in 1979, he lived in Green Hill, near the iconic southern-music locales Florence and Muscle Shoals, home to both Fame Studios, the birthplace of countless soul, R&B, pop, and country hits, and the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.
Music was everywhere. His parents were serious music consumers, and his paternal grandfather, Carthel Isbell, a Pentecostal preacher who played guitar, mandolin, banjo, fiddle and Dobro, taught him to play mandolin, which fit his small hands.
“He did that with my dad and my uncle when they were kids. Dad didn’t keep it up, but my uncle still plays guitar.”
After growing a bit, he moved to guitar, mostly his grandfather’s Takamine copy of a Martin.
“He would teach me to accompany him and I would sit and play for hours at a time. I really enjoyed it from the beginning and became obsessed with it. I have that Takamine still.”
His own first guitar was an Electra Les Paul copy and a Gorilla practice amp he was given for Christmas. Much like the Tak, he says, “I could never pull myself away from it.”
Given his home region, it’s no surprise he embraced Southern rock and country.
“The Allman Brothers were all over the place and Dickey Betts had some serious country sensibilities. Gregg and Duane were from Nashville, originally. It was pretty easy for me to combine those two things. You’d call them a rock band, a hippie band, a country band, and it would all fit.”
Hearing his uncle play Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil Young material in a cover band blurred the country-rock lines even more.
“I couldn’t really tell if it was a country song or a rock song. So those were my first and biggest influences: artists who really didn’t seem to care what genre they fell into.”
Allman and Betts were early guitar heroes, but by no means Isbell’s only.
“Hendrix was huge for any of us who started out playin’ electric guitar and listening to rock radio, along with Jimmy Page and Clapton. I eat all that stuff up. My dad had a lot of those records. Then I went back and started listening to more blues artists.
“Albert King hit me very hard. Listen to Albert and you’re like, ‘Oh, I see what you can do with one note if you’re really, really meaning what you’re saying. Clapton did it with tone. He was blasting a hole in the wall to motivate himself to get that kind of emotion.”
Like many who discovered the blues through Clapton, Isbell sought out the artists who inspired his hero, which led to musical and emotional power of pre-war acoustic blues.
“I just wanted to know where that had come from and wound up with Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson and all the stuff nobody else in the third grade in Alabama was listening to.”
Johnson left an especially powerful impact. His grandfather bought the Complete Recordings vinyl box and dubbed cassettes for him, withholding the raunchier tunes until Jason was a bit older. He remains in awe of that discovery.
“I studied that stuff, and it scared the hell out of me – and it scares me more now than when I was 10 years old (laughs). That’s terrifying music – there’s so much emotion going on and it’s really, really hard to focus on anything else while that’s playing.”
At 16, he played both the Grand Ole Opry and Nashville’s Wild Horse Saloon with a Muscle Shoals band that included his best friend, 16-year-old Chris Tompkins (now a top-tier Nashville songwriter), playing mostly country covers.
Blues and rock greats weren’t his only inspiration. His compositional range expanded by delving into the greatest country singer/songwriters.
“Growing up in the South, there was something about the classic era of songwriting. I think Merle Haggard wrote as good a song as anybody. There are a lot of things I do where I’m writing a song where it pretty quickly becomes obvious that the challenge is not to sound like I’m ripping off John Prine.
“I read Tom T. Hall’s songwriting book and studied his songwriting. I feel the economic use of language and conversational way Tom T. wrote songs really speaks to me. You don’t feel like you’re listening to a songwriter that’s trying to impress you. You’re listening to a man tell a story, and that really appeals to me.
“Listen to Kristofferson, Tom T., Dolly – some songs were so dark that if you just try to describe them, it’s the most depressing thing you ever heard. But when you hear the song, there’s humor in it. That humor and sort of irony gave country music, the ability to go deeper in subject matter without depressing the hell out of everybody.
“As I go forward as a songwriter, I’m trying to figure out ways to get humor in the songs, because I’ve been writing really heavy s**t for a long time. Even I get depressed by it sometimes, so it’s nice to find a way to interject humor to keep a bit of distance from the reality of what’s goin’ on in the songs. Roger Miller was a genius, just an unbelievable musician and songwriter and singer. The wit!”
Those blossoming songwriting skills connected him with Fame Studios, as iconic then as Memphis’ Stax and Sun studios, or Motown in Detroit. Isbell began writing for their publishing company and got to know local session musicians who played on so many hits at Fame.
In 1969, four core members of that group calling themselves the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section departed Fame and opened the competing Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. Isbell got particularly close to that group, including guitarist Jimmy Johnson (1943-2019), electric bassist David Hood, keyboardist Barry Beckett, and drummer Roger Hawkins.
Their approach left a mark on Isbell’s musical philosophy. “The thing about all those musicians I grew up around…there was not much ego at all,” he reflects. Johnson gave him insight to the secrets of rhythm guitar.
“Jimmy’s rhythm playing is legendary for a reason. He played with the mindset of a producer and really served the song.”
He heard identical qualities in Hood, who added a memorable (and, for him, rare) bass solo to the 1972 Staple Singers hit “I’ll Take You There.”
“It took a lot of work to get David to play that,” he explains. “That’s not the kind of musician David is or ever was. Most people with half of the ability and technical knowledge as David has would be more than willing to play a solo at any point in time.”
Putting the song first, Isbell adds, “…was something Jimmy had, David had. (Keyboardists) Spooner Oldham and Donnie Fritts shared his absence of ego. That’s what led to them being first-call, and such an important part of musical history. They knew the song was really the breadwinner. I learned so much from followin’ those guys around.”
Hood’s son, singer/guitarist/songwriter Patterson Hood, was another close friend of Isbell’s and a member of the edgy Southern-rock band Drive-By Truckers. In 2001, Isbell replaced Truckers guitarist/songwriter Rob Malone. Hood, Isbell, and guitarist/songwriter Mike Cooley maintained the band’s original front line of three singing/songwriting guitarists.
“What we were doing was kind of punk-rock at that time. And it was so loud. We played small rooms with big Marshalls, and it was painful to be in those rooms but it was so much fun and there was something about playing guitar in a band that had two other guitar players, and writing songs for a band with three songwriters, where I could really bear down and just give ’em three or four of my best songs for each record, and not have to sing all night.”
With Drive-By, he used a Gretsch Chet Atkins Tennessean and a wine-red Les Paul. The Tennessean now resides with the Truckers’ former tour manager. “The Les Paul was stolen. Both were from the ’90s; the Les Paul I kind of miss. I had to have something with an easily adjustable bridge I could put big strings on so the tension would be good enough.
“I had two amps, but the one I really settled on was a Marshall JCM 800 and a 4×12 with greenbacks; I took the back off so it would be louder – a 100-watt Marshall wasn’t quite loud enough (laughs). Patterson had this silverface Twin and Cooley was using a Sound City 50-watt head, so there was a lot of volume comin’ off that stage.”
He left the Truckers in 2007, but remains proud of their legacy and influence. He is “…very, very lucky to have been in that band, because I learned from them. If I hadn’t joined, I don’t know what I’d be doing now. I might be writing songs for other people or playing guitar in somebody else’s band, but it wouldn’t have worked out like it did.”
Sirens of the Ditch, Isbell’s solo debut, appeared in ’07 and he formed the 400 Unit later that year; it was first heard on his ’09 self-titled follow-up. The band name came from a designation once applied to the psychiatric section of Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital, in Florence, where country star George Jones was briefly treated in 1979.
Southeastern (2013), a solo effort, was Isbell’s breakthrough. Produced by Dave Cobb, who works with Sturgill Simpson, Brandi Carlile, and Chris Stapleton, among others, the record employed only a few sidemen.
“There was something that worked really well about how quiet and small and sort of acoustically driven that record was,” he recalls. “I love to play guitar and I love electric guitar as well as acoustic, but as a songwriter, sometimes it works best when you just strip everything back.”
The Muscle Shoals session players’ philosophy Isbell admired heavily influenced his ideas for shaping the 400 Unit’s role in his music. It’s reflected in the powerful sound of the current lineup of lead guitarist Sadler Vaden, keyboardist Derry deBorja, drummer Chad Gamble, guitarist-percussionist Will Johnson, and bassist Anna Butterss.
“I had to get folks who played for the song first, people who understood me and what I was trying to say with my music and were willing to let their own ego go. It’s changed a bit over the years – not too much. Most of us have been together for quite a while.
“Sadler and I, the whole band, we studied [Muscle Shoals music]. With the exception of Anna, who’s from Australia and didn’t really grow up with it, Sadler and I spent hours and hours sittin’ around learning solos and chord changes.”
He cites Vaden as a player and real student of music. “He spends so much time listening and learning things and still goes back and learns old songs. For somebody to be a professional guitar player and spend time trying to figure out how Billy Gibbons played something… it’s really impressive.”
Isbell’s growing success finally allowed him to indulge his desire to acquire and play older gear.
“I simply couldn’t afford that stuff before,” he says. “I bought a D-18 from the mid ’50s, where you can’t exactly tell what they used for the top that sounds really, really good. That was the first good old guitar I had. I bought a ’61 ES-335 from Dave Cobb soon after.”
As his success has grown, the collection has continued expanding. Most of it is meant to be played onstage, with one specific exception – a ’34 000-28.
On tour, he carries Martin Modern Deluxe 00-28s and a dreadnought designed to work with a full band. “I’m not gonna take the 0-17 and pre-war Martin out on the road,” he says.
As for electrics, he’ll take whatever he’s into at the moment.
“I don’t consider myself a guitar collector as much as I just like to have everything I might need, and I can feel and hear little differences between all those guitars.”
His core lineup, along with the 335, includes the ’53 blackguard Tele he used on the Live at the Ryman albums. He uses a signature Tele Custom as well, calling it a direct descendant of his beloved ’65 Candy Apple Red Tele, with its neck profile and customized bridge pickup.
“I guess somebody took a mallet and tried to flatten the polepieces early on, and they knocked part of the bottom off the pickup cover. It’s a really hot, microphonic pickup, which I love. When it started to come unwound, we took it to Tim Shaw and he rewound it, but we were very adamant that he didn’t fix it.
“I have one great example of everything I might need – a ’65 Candy Apple Red Strat, a ’58 Strat with a maple neck – actually, it’s a ’57 with a ’58 shipping date – a ’60 slab-board Strat, a ’59 Les Paul and a ’60 Les Paul Custom that’s red. A ’53 goldtop with a Bigsby. Larry Cragg put the Bigsby on that before I got it. And I have red ’63 Firebird.”
His ’61 Les Paul Standard is “a great guitar. It’s still got the side-pull [vibrato], but it’s just for balance. I don’t touch that thing (laughs). That guitar’s really good.”
Amp-wise, his Dumble Overdrive Special with serial number 22, formerly owned by guitarist/producer Dennis Herring, is always with him.
“I’ve got a tweed Twin, a high-powered tweed Twin, a ’64 Vibroverb and a couple Magnatones that are a couple of years old, but they hang in there with all those classic amps.”
When he has time, Isbell still enjoys listening to older and current guitarists. “I think Julian Lage is fantastic. We were playing the same venue in Europe recently and spent a little while chatting afterwards. He’s a wonderful person and a genius player.
“I like what [Umphrey’s] McGee is doing with this self-recorded, down-tuned guitar stuff. Blake Mills, obviously, is incredible. I like Celisse’s playing a whole lot. Grace Bowers is a great guitar player. There’s no shortage of really, really good guitar players right now.”
He calls Billy Strings, “An explorer. I love that about him, coming from a flatpicking bluegrass background to spread out like that.”
With 400 Unit – the solid, intuitive ensemble he envisioned – he takes pleasure in working with the band and swapping licks and ideas with Vaden, especially in concert.
“Sadler had a pretty similar musical upbringing, and if you find somebody who is attuned to your creativity in the right way, there’s an unspoken language. And he has the same goal of live performance that I do.
“There’s some things you have to hit to make the song be the same song, but in between that you get a lot of space to roam and to improvise. And it just keeps you more interesting. We play a lot of shows, and I would get bored if we did the same thing the same way every night.”
This article originally appeared in VG’s March 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
