The Sober Ones: How Jason Isbell and others clean the old Country Rock

Fifteen years after the early end of his career, singer and songwriter Jason Isbell stands for a generation of musicians who have made a fresh start.

It is the temptations that put an end to great careers before they can even begin. No one can testify to this better than Jason Isbell, who began his future at the age of 22 when Patterson Hood, the smooth 15 years older boss of the Southern rock band Drive-by Truckers, hired him as the new guitarist for his band. For six years the boy from Green Hill in the US state of Alabama then travelled with the Truckers to fame. Isbell plays sold-out concerts, writes countless songs for the band and even finds his private happiness with bassist Shonna Tucker.

A perfect life, just not from the inside view. Jason Isbell, who grew up as a child of divorce and was introduced to the mandolin by his musical grandfather at the age of six, falls into an abyss of alcohol, party and hard drugs in the eternal cycle of record production and touring. The insecurity he feels because he doubts his own abilities as a songwriter drives him deep into an addiction that helps to repress and creates self-confidence.

The deep fall

When Shonna Tucker finally broke up with him, everything got out of hand, Isbell told us later. The singer, who played with his wife in the documentary "The Secret to a happy ending", ends up in prison. The band fires him. The letter of resignation does not sound angry, but pitiful.

Jason Isbell, who once dropped out of his English studies because of rock music, makes a solo album, but the success is modest. Only when his friend, singer Ryan Adams, manages to get away from drugs, Jason Isbell goes to a rehab clinic loaded with a guitar. He is 33, he has twelve years of rock music in his bones and is neither a young talent nor a respected old star.
But he is now "sober", as Americans call people who have gotten over a drug addiction.

The Sober Ones

People like BJ Barham, the founder of the band American Aquarium, or Dave Hause, who was on his way to the top with the punk band The Loved Ones, but only survived as a solo artist thanks to pills and powder, are among them, as well as Austin Lucas, Charlie Starr of Blackberry Smoke or even that Ryan Adams who encouraged Isbell to start over. They all turned away in time after wild years, have families and children today and careers that rely more on acoustic than on electric guitars. And they avoid the wild life of the old days.

"Rehab was my salvation," says Jason Isbell today, a barely a decade and a breathtaking rise from unknown to one of the most important American songwriters later. Like Barham, who is from North Carolina, and home, who grew up in Philadelphia, the son of an interior decorator and a painter from rural Alabama never made a secret of narrowly escaping the infamous rock 'n' roll death at the age of 27.

More than free

He sings about it and he talks about it. Isbell has also been awarded his four Grammys because his solo albums "Southeastern", "Something more than free" and most recently "The Nashville Sound" have added a new layer of meaning to the alternative country that men like Hank Williams and Willie Nelson founded.

Like BJ Barham's band American Aquarium, the former Gaslight-Anthem frontman Brian Fallon and the heavyweight Texan John Moreland, Isbell moves in the border area between folk, country and rock. He sings hymns and ballads as Bruce Springsteen invented them, on the other hand he enchants with quiet, rather inconspicuous songs whose quality lies in the almost literary lyrics.

This is also the case with "Reunions", Jason Isbell's recently released fourth solo album since the now 41-year-old dared to make a new start without bourbon and cocaine. In the seventh year of his second career, which has taken him higher up the charts worldwide than he probably ever dared to dream of, the man with the soft Southern accent has also found his happiness again.

Lucky for seven years

For seven years, Jason Isbell has been married to violinist and singer Amanda Shires, they both have a daughter, and they both play and sing on each other's albums. For example on "Only Children", a piece in the style of the deadly sadly beautiful "If we were Vampires" from the last album. Isbell paints the oppressive miniature of a helpless relationship with a tender plucked guitar and duet singing, culminating in the verse that heaven is wasted on the dead.

"Reunions" is more big rock than country or folk, Isbell steps out of the closet of his genre and directly into the footsteps of greats like Tom Petty or the Counting Crows. With songs like "Be Afraid" and and "Dreamsicle" opens the door to Jason Isbell, who according to his own statement had to fight more for this album than for all of them so far, the door to the mainstream a little bit more, without deviating from his own quality standards.