Red Mosquito

Jason Isbell RE: separation with Shires wrote: “I think I’m just going to try to be honest in all the ways that I legally can. I mean, there’s certain things that we’ve agreed not to talk about, but I think I can still manage to tell people who I am and what the truth is from my perspective.

“You know, it’s one of those things when not everything that ends is a failure. I think we did a lot of really beautiful things together, and I have really fond memories of all of that, and I don’t regret any of it, you know, even the hard stuff. It’s like when I got into recovery, I wound up after a few years looking back and thinking, I don’t regret even the worst parts of that, because it all kind of goes into making me who I am, you know?

“And the time will come when the wounds aren’t still fresh. The time will come when I’m able to take all this and put it into my work in a way that is honest and true but makes sense for me. I’m going to be patient, and in the meantime, I got plenty of other shit to write about.”

oasisfan35 wrote:

lvc wrote:I came in here to see what the read was on his latest work only to find out about the divorce. Sad to read.

I'd honestly found his pubic persona to be increasingly grating, arrogant, and condescending and not at all the empathetic master craftsman that shows up in so many of his songs and that was coming through in later works where the songwriting was way more agenda-driven than story-driven. I think he misread what his real gift was and got a bit absorbed in the mythos of the world-changing artist. A bit how Bono became a weaker writer once he started teaming up with Oprah on poverty initiatives. I guess my general opinion is that politics and social change are fine but their inherent didacticism doesn't always make for good art.

Bob Dylan did well to shroud it all in mystery, personae, and bullshit.

oasisfan35 wrote:

lvc wrote:I came in here to see what the read was on his latest work only to find out about the divorce. Sad to read.

I'd honestly found his pubic persona to be increasingly grating, arrogant, and condescending and not at all the empathetic master craftsman that shows up in so many of his songs and that was coming through in later works where the songwriting was way more agenda-driven than story-driven. I think he misread what his real gift was and got a bit absorbed in the mythos of the world-changing artist. A bit how Bono became a weaker writer once he started teaming up with Oprah on poverty initiatives. I guess my general opinion is that politics and social change are fine but their inherent didacticism doesn't always make for good art.

Bob Dylan did well to shroud it all in mystery, personae, and bullshit.

I don't know his public persona much aside the interviews, live shows and some awards acceptances but I don't think the bold is fair at all if one purports the writer as the subject or narrator of the work. I think the next sentence is total horseshit but to each their own there.

I also find the last album quite topical yet also very story-driven. Listened to it today right after The Nashville Sound while working in the yard.

edit: Also want to add that separating the art from the artist is definitely something I have thought about very much over the years and with time aka experience I'm finding it a thinner line whether I like it or not, which is odd to me.

That said, the rise of social media, both accounts of the artists and the public at large, constant interview media machine, et al has not exactly helped this matter in my opinion but confounded it. I find it fascinating but at times almost like a carwreck I'm debating to turn to.

lvc wrote:

oasisfan35 wrote:

lvc wrote:I came in here to see what the read was on his latest work only to find out about the divorce. Sad to read.

I'd honestly found his pubic persona to be increasingly grating, arrogant, and condescending and not at all the empathetic master craftsman that shows up in so many of his songs and that was coming through in later works where the songwriting was way more agenda-driven than story-driven. I think he misread what his real gift was and got a bit absorbed in the mythos of the world-changing artist. A bit how Bono became a weaker writer once he started teaming up with Oprah on poverty initiatives. I guess my general opinion is that politics and social change are fine but their inherent didacticism doesn't always make for good art.

Bob Dylan did well to shroud it all in mystery, personae, and bullshit.

I don't know his public persona much aside the interviews, live shows and some awards acceptances but I don't think the bold is fair at all if one purports the writer as the subject or narrator of the work. I think the next sentence is total horseshit but to each their own there.

I also find the last album quite topical yet also very story-driven. Listened to it today right after The Nashville Sound while working in the yard.

edit: Also want to add that separating the art from the artist is definitely something I have thought about very much over the years and with time aka experience I'm finding it a thinner line whether I like it or not, which is odd to me.

That said, the rise of social media, both accounts of the artists and the public at large, constant interview media machine, et al has not exactly helped this matter in my opinion but confounded it. I find it fascinating but at times almost like a carwreck I'm debating to turn to.

I crammed a lot of clauses into those sentences so I'm not sure I 100% know where the horseshit lies. I'll allow it's highly likely to be in there.

I mostly was thinking about how he was pretty much a dick on Twitter a lot. This was a while back and it always seemed to be about Trump in some way or another. People baiting him and him rising right to the bait. I unfollowed him because it just wasn't interesting. I'm not on twitter anymore or whatever it's called now, but it made songs like Hope the High Road a bit clangy in my ears because he was on the low road a lot online. Definitely fighting people down in the ditch.

Anyway, I saw him live once and the band is truly great. I could listen to Isbell talk guitars all day. I was never a huge fan of Amanda Shire's fiddle contributions personally, but in that genre I'm probably wrong. I just like electric guitars better.

Live From The Ryman Vol. 2 draws from multi-track recordings by the band’s longtime front-of-house engineer, Cain Hogsed, from four of the last six years of sold-out shows at Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium. Hogsed co-produced the album alongside Isbell, and mixed the tracks with Nashville, TN’s Todd Tidwell. The album features 15 live versions of songs from the band’s last two critically acclaimed, award-winning studio albums - Reunions (2020) and Weathervanes, (2023), as well as stunning rendition of “The Last Song I Will Write,” from Isbell’s 2009 self-titled release, and a poignant cover of Tom Petty’s “Room at the Top.”

releases October 4, 2024

Spoiler: show

1 Save the World
2 King of Oklahoma
3 Only Children
4 Overseas
5 Dreamsicle
6 Running with Our Eyes Closed
7 Middle of The Morning
8 The Last Song I Will Write
9 Strawberry Woman
10 Cast Iron Skillet
11 Miles
12 River
13 When We Were Close
14 Room at the Top
15 This Ain't It

liebzz wrote:I will get into maybe a little more detail on the live albums thread, but Vol. 2 is where this guy’s music finally clicks with me. I have enjoyed it fine but it hadn’t got its hooks into me until this one. Now I’ll need to go back and revisit.

liebzz wrote:I will get into maybe a little more detail on the live albums thread, but Vol. 2 is where this guy’s music finally clicks with me. I have enjoyed it fine but it hadn’t got its hooks into me until this one. Now I’ll need to go back and revisit.

Rolling Stone wrote:Set for release March 7, the album is the songwriter's first without his band the 400 Unit since his 2007 debut Sirens in the Ditch

Jason Isbell has announced the forthcoming studio album Foxes in the Snow. The record will be Isbell’s first solo acoustic collection, recorded over a five-day period at Electric Lady Studios in New York this past October. It is also the first Isbell studio album to not feature his longtime band, the 400 Unit, since his 2007 solo debut Sirens in the Ditch.

Ahead of the album’s arrival, Isbell released the song Bury Me, which begins with him singing a cappella before launching into a plaintive country-folk tale, which makes a light allusion to a past Isbell song Live Oak and puts forth a novel pronunciation of the word obituary before arriving at a sing-along chorus: “I ain’t no cowboy/But I can ride.”

Little much else is known about Foxes in the Snow, other than the fact that it was recorded on Isbell’s 1940 Martin guitar and that the tracklist includes titles like Ride to Robert’s (about the legendary Nashville honky-tonk?) and Good While It Lasted (perhaps a nod to the songwriter’s 2024 split from singer-songwriter Amanda Shires?).

It’s possible that some of those questions could be answered on Isbell’s extensive solo acoustic tour, which begins Feb. 2 in Berlin, a full month before the album’s March 7 release date. In the U.S., the tour will hit cities like Chicago, Washington, D.C., Nashville and New York, where he’ll set up shop at the Beacon Theatre for two nights.

Foxes in the Snow is the follow-up to 2023’s Weathervanes, which was released shortly after the release of an HBO documentary that chronicled the recording of his 2020 album, Reunions, as well as the building tension in his personal and creative life at the time.

“When you try to be as honest with people as possible, there is a concession that you have to make,” Isbell told Rolling Stone later that year. “You have to allow more of your personal life to be made public, but I think that works for me.”