Speaker 1: Pushkin. Rolling Stone recently called Jason Isabel arguably the most
Speaker 1: revered roots rock singer songwriter of his generation. Jason was
Speaker 1: born in rural Alabama to a close knit family of musicians.
Speaker 1: He played gospel and old hillbilly songs on the mandolin
Speaker 1: and guitar before discovering the blues. When he was twenty two,
Speaker 1: Isabel joined southern rock band that Drive By Truckers, who
Speaker 1: just had on The Show recently, and after six years
Speaker 1: with them, started out on a successful solo career. He's
Speaker 1: released six albums, won four Grammys, and wrote the song
Speaker 1: maybe It's Time for Bradley Cooper's version of a Star
Speaker 1: is Born, a pivotal song in the movie's plot. He's
Speaker 1: just released his newest album called Reunions, accompanied by his
Speaker 1: band The four hundred Unit, and is building a solid
Speaker 1: body of evidence that he is, in fact, one of
Speaker 1: the most gifted songwriters working today. Jason and Rick Rubin
Speaker 1: met for the first time just before the interview You're
Speaker 1: about to hear. They talked about his Southern roots, his
Speaker 1: approach to songwriting, and he cracks out a song called
Speaker 1: Overseas from his new album that at the time no
Speaker 1: one aside from his manager, had ever heard this is
Speaker 1: broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond.
Speaker 1: Here's Rick Rubin talking to Jason Isabel. Rick dives right
Speaker 1: into Jason's thoughts on the spiritual value of making music.
Speaker 1: What did I ask about, do you find a spiritual
Speaker 1: relationship to music? Yes? A short answer is yes, I do.
Speaker 1: You know, for all the reasons that are probably cliched
Speaker 1: by now, but it's one of these things where whatever's
Speaker 1: happened to me throughout my wife, be able to make
Speaker 1: music has been ultimate goal. And I think anything when
Speaker 1: you find that one purpose for yourself and you give
Speaker 1: yourself over to the process of that purpose rather than
Speaker 1: the goal of that purpose, it becomes a spiritual thing.
Speaker 1: So for me, you know, I never wanted to be
Speaker 1: a musician. I just wanted to make music, and every
Speaker 1: wanted to be a songwriter. I just wanted to write songs,
Speaker 1: or I needed to write songs. Some days I didn't
Speaker 1: want to, but I needed to, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think that from my personal experience, I don't know of
Speaker 1: anything more spiritual than that, you know, And that's not
Speaker 1: even really discussing the connection that's on a personal level,
Speaker 1: you know, an inspect of the ritual aspect of it totally. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think when when ritual sort of evolves on
Speaker 1: its own, you know, rather than you begin with the
Speaker 1: ritual and then try to find what's holy about it,
Speaker 1: you know, I think there's something that's more honest to
Speaker 1: me about that interesting. You know. I never felt like
Speaker 1: I had to practice. I never sat down and thought
Speaker 1: I need to work on my guitar playing today. It's
Speaker 1: just what I did when I didn't have to do
Speaker 1: anything else. Did the writing did it start with the right?
Speaker 1: Was the initial idea more focused on the writing or
Speaker 1: more focused on the playing? The playing, definitely, you wanted
Speaker 1: to be in a band or or be a I
Speaker 1: just wanted to play all the time. And did you
Speaker 1: see yourself as a singer? Always? No, No, not at all.
Speaker 1: It took a long time for that to happen. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it took a long I think something about amplification, you know,
Speaker 1: made it possible for me to enjoy singing. You know,
Speaker 1: when I started singing into a microphone in the studio
Speaker 1: or on stage, the hugeness of that and the things
Speaker 1: that I could do was mic technique, and you know,
Speaker 1: manipulating the situation. I think attracted me to singing more
Speaker 1: than it had in the past, you know. But for
Speaker 1: the first ten years of my musical development, all I
Speaker 1: wanted to do was play the guitar. That was all
Speaker 1: I wanted to do, you know, And I didn't think,
Speaker 1: you know, I pictured myself playing guitar in front of people,
Speaker 1: but that was as far as it went. And did
Speaker 1: you grow up playing guitar with records? Is that how
Speaker 1: you learned to play? Yeah, My grandfather and my uncle,
Speaker 1: my dad's little brother, they both played. My grandfather was
Speaker 1: a preacher, Pentecostal preacher in Alabama, and Pentecostal church was
Speaker 1: really kind of the most rock and roll church, you know.
Speaker 1: So they had bass and drums and electric guitars and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and he played all kinds of instruments.
Speaker 1: Him and all his siblings grew up playing gospel music,
Speaker 1: and a couple of them were professional musicians, but for
Speaker 1: the most part they were hobbyists or religious musicians. So
Speaker 1: my parents were super young when I was born, and
Speaker 1: they both worked, and I would stay with my grandparents,
Speaker 1: and my grandfather started teaching me how to play guitar,
Speaker 1: and he would say, you know, you play the rhythm guitar,
Speaker 1: I'll play a lead instrument. He would play claw hammer,
Speaker 1: banjo or mandolin or fiddle, and we would learn these,
Speaker 1: you know, he would teach me these hillbilly songs. He
Speaker 1: liked old country songs. The more humorous the better for him,
Speaker 1: you know. He liked Grandpa Jones and the Opry Stars
Speaker 1: and you know, the Heehaw Gang and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: And then somehow I got interested in the blues when
Speaker 1: I was eight or nine years old, and he would
Speaker 1: reward me if I would play like rhythm guitar for
Speaker 1: a couple of hours. He would take his guitar and
Speaker 1: tune in to an open tuning and play with his
Speaker 1: pocket knife on his lap. And that was like my
Speaker 1: reward for that, you know. And then at one point
Speaker 1: he took me to the record store and bought when
Speaker 1: the Robert Johnson Complete Recordings Box came out, he bought
Speaker 1: me that on cassette. But him being a preacher and
Speaker 1: me being ten or eleven years old, he overdubbed all
Speaker 1: the songs onto a blank casset, except for like like
Speaker 1: Traveling Riverside, the ones that had anything that he considered
Speaker 1: to be obscene. He took those out, you know, so
Speaker 1: like to squeeze my limon. Stuff didn't make it in.
Speaker 1: Then when I was about fifteen, he gave me the
Speaker 1: original box which I already had on my own, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to tell him that, you know, but
Speaker 1: he was like, I think you're old enough for this now,
Speaker 1: so he gave me the original box set. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that was is huge for me, and that was kind
Speaker 1: of I mean, this was the eighties in Alabama, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't like, you know, the music was popular anymore really,
Speaker 1: but for me it was as though it was having
Speaker 1: its heyday because that's what was the music that was
Speaker 1: going on when you were growing up, Country music mostly,
Speaker 1: you know, that's what my friends listened to. And who
Speaker 1: would have been the artist, just so I could picture
Speaker 1: of the era, probably early Garth Brooks, Like I remember
Speaker 1: ninety ninety one, I saw Garth at the State Fair
Speaker 1: for a dollar right before the pop Belly pig Ray
Speaker 1: and I think Friends in Low Places came out like
Speaker 1: a week later, so it was you know, he was
Speaker 1: He probably never played in the Daylight again after that,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, so that that was really big. And
Speaker 1: then my uncle had a cover band. It's great, by
Speaker 1: the way, Like, was it a great experience seeing Garth? Then?
Speaker 1: It was, but I didn't know, like looking back on it,
Speaker 1: you know, back then, I thought, this guy's working really hard.
Speaker 1: He's got a microphone on his head. You know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of cool. But it was like the fair in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and I kind of wanted to get on to riding
Speaker 1: fair rides, you know. But it was in hindsight, it
Speaker 1: was a very I mean, they were hungry and they
Speaker 1: were working really really hard, and that probably wasn't their
Speaker 1: only show that day, and they still definitely brought it,
Speaker 1: you know. But it wasn't like I looked at him
Speaker 1: and thought, this guy's about to change country music significantly.
Speaker 1: I just thought, Wow, this guy's working really hard at
Speaker 1: four o'clock in the afternoon and Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. You know.
Speaker 1: But then I really liked what was on the radio
Speaker 1: in those days. I mean I loved Prince and Crowded
Speaker 1: House and Till Tuesday and all these really great pop songs.
Speaker 1: So there was this strange combination of that and then
Speaker 1: the arena rock and southern rock that my dad was
Speaker 1: listening to. Dad was in diseasy type and skinnered and
Speaker 1: these big rock bands and playing guitar. That became a
Speaker 1: big deal for me, that kind of stuff. You know.
Speaker 1: My uncle played in a cover band. They would practice
Speaker 1: in the garage and my dad and my mom would
Speaker 1: go over there and drink Margarita's and fall asleep on
Speaker 1: the weight bench and they would My uncle had like
Speaker 1: a broken cry baby wah pedal and they would cover
Speaker 1: like a hurricane and the wah pedal would do that
Speaker 1: you know, when the pot breaks when it does that,
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, And I remember that from probably seven
Speaker 1: or eight years old, and they would play it for
Speaker 1: like twenty five minutes, so I don't think I could
Speaker 1: stay awake for all of like a herring came. So
Speaker 1: it really helped. Coming from the family that you came
Speaker 1: from really helped form your world of music. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was huge. I got very lucky, Yeah, very lucky,
Speaker 1: because it was just like it was second nature for
Speaker 1: them to support what I was doing. They didn't realize
Speaker 1: they were supporting me. They just thought this is how
Speaker 1: we all spend time together, you know. Um. And it
Speaker 1: didn't occur to me until much later on when some
Speaker 1: of those folks weren't around anymore that you know. They
Speaker 1: gave me a gift that most people never get. You know,
Speaker 1: I knew what I wanted to do from There's no astronaut,
Speaker 1: no fireman, no nothing like that. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: play the guitar for the rest of them. Do you
Speaker 1: think it was more seeing them doing it or hearing
Speaker 1: what was being played in the house? Do you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying it was? Would the same have happened
Speaker 1: if it was just hearing recordings? Or do you think
Speaker 1: seeing people played a role in it? Oh? Seeing them
Speaker 1: do it definitely did the community of it, you know,
Speaker 1: because we would get together every Sunday night. My grandparents
Speaker 1: would have friends and family over to their house after
Speaker 1: both church services were over, and they would bring something
Speaker 1: to eat and they would sit around and play. And
Speaker 1: it was to me it was like, I don't even
Speaker 1: want to use the word accessible, because it was just natural.
Speaker 1: You know. I didn't know everybody's family didn't do that.
Speaker 1: I thought everybody was doing the same stuff. You know.
Speaker 1: My parents didn't play, but they were always there and they,
Speaker 1: you know, were always listening to music or somehow around
Speaker 1: people who were playing music in the room, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember, I don't ever remember thinking that looks difficult.
Speaker 1: You know, I just wanted to participate. You know. I
Speaker 1: didn't have a whole lot of friends in school because
Speaker 1: I just wasn't really redneck enough in North Alabama to
Speaker 1: fall in with any of those groups. So at one
Speaker 1: point I realized, Oh, everybody thinks this is cool that
Speaker 1: I play the guitar, So I'm going to do that
Speaker 1: in front of everybody, and they'll be nice to me,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's still I'm still working. I'm still
Speaker 1: going on that principle to this day. Do you do
Speaker 1: you keep a diary? I take a lot of notes
Speaker 1: for songs, A whole lot of notes. Has it always
Speaker 1: been the case? Have you? When did you start taking
Speaker 1: notes for songs? Oh? Yeah, that's a good question. Um,
Speaker 1: probably when twenty years ago. I guess when. I when
Speaker 1: I first got serious about writing songs, when I was
Speaker 1: in college and and I thought, you know, I might
Speaker 1: I might be able to do this and write some
Speaker 1: songs that need to be written rather than just copies
Speaker 1: of things that I've heard other people do. The first
Speaker 1: set of songs that I wrote, I didn't really I
Speaker 1: went to college in Memphis at University in Memphis and
Speaker 1: used to be Memphis State, and I didn't really get
Speaker 1: out and play live or you know. I saw a
Speaker 1: lot of shows and saw a lot of people perform.
Speaker 1: And then I was working at a restaurant and one
Speaker 1: of the guys that worked there at the restaurant with
Speaker 1: me had had a show booked and he asked me
Speaker 1: if I wanted to open for him at this coffee
Speaker 1: shop downtown, and I said, yeah, I'll do that, And
Speaker 1: I didn't have any songs written. I thought, well, I
Speaker 1: don't want to just play cover songs. So I wrote
Speaker 1: like forty minutes worth of songs like overnight pretty much,
Speaker 1: you know, just flipping back and forth between different songs,
Speaker 1: and I wrote enough material timed it out so I
Speaker 1: could go do my opening set, you know, and that
Speaker 1: those songs got I got my first publishing deal off
Speaker 1: of those, and you know, I wound up demoing them
Speaker 1: and it got me a lot of attention, you know, locally.
Speaker 1: I was able to take a draw and quit working
Speaker 1: regular jobs and all that kind of stuff from that batch.
Speaker 1: Do the meanings of the songs change for you over
Speaker 1: time or do they tend to stay the same The
Speaker 1: meanings don't change for me, but the significance of them
Speaker 1: changes and everything around them changes. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: an object in a room. Like if you were to
Speaker 1: watch a scene in a movie where somebody filmed, say
Speaker 1: an ashtray sitting in the middle of a room, but
Speaker 1: they you know, they did it like time lapse, where
Speaker 1: you saw it over the course of twenty years. The
Speaker 1: ash tray would be the same, but the significance of
Speaker 1: the ash tray in the room would be very different.
Speaker 1: The context keep context keeps changing. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: for me that's the best way for it to work,
Speaker 1: for me to be able to deliver songs from fifteen
Speaker 1: or twenty years ago, because you know, I got sober
Speaker 1: about seven and a half years ago, and my work changed.
Speaker 1: And how did that happen? What was the motivation to
Speaker 1: get sober? I knew that I needed to. Um. I'd
Speaker 1: been drinking a lot for a long time and doing
Speaker 1: various drugs, and I fell in love with my wife,
Speaker 1: my current wife, who was not my wife at the time.
Speaker 1: I say current wife because she wasn't my wife at
Speaker 1: the time, not because I have plans on her not
Speaker 1: being in the future. UM, Amanda. I knew she wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna put up with that shit, you know, And and
Speaker 1: I think everybody I'd been with in the past would
Speaker 1: put up with it, and she wouldn't. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to do something, or she tell you
Speaker 1: that you just felt it. Um, Well, they all tell
Speaker 1: you that, I don't think. I don't know. I haven't
Speaker 1: had that experience. Well okay for me, they all told
Speaker 1: me that, but this time I believed it, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know I can't. I came to her one
Speaker 1: night when we were just dating and we were on
Speaker 1: the road together. She's a musician also and a songwriter,
Speaker 1: and I told her I needed to quit drinking. I
Speaker 1: didn't think I could do it on my own, and
Speaker 1: she said, well, if you're sure about that, then you know,
Speaker 1: we'll do what we need to do to make sure
Speaker 1: you quit. And I repeated it again a couple days later,
Speaker 1: and she said, all right, that's it, you know. So
Speaker 1: she called Tracy, my manager, and my mom and a
Speaker 1: few other friends who she didn't really know very well
Speaker 1: at all, in the middle of the night and said
Speaker 1: he needs to go to treatment. And Tracy made the
Speaker 1: arrangements and you know, the accountability of my family and
Speaker 1: my friends. Knowing that I was serious about it caused
Speaker 1: me to fulfill my end of the bargain. And I
Speaker 1: went in, you know, thirty six hours later and haven't
Speaker 1: had a drink since. That's great, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: you wanted it to happen, So yeah, that's a big
Speaker 1: piece of it. It is. And I got lucky because
Speaker 1: you know, I don't have it genetically, and I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people struggle. You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people go to rehab multiple times and they fight and
Speaker 1: they fight and they just can't get a handle on it.
Speaker 1: But well, for whatever reason, you know, knock on wood,
Speaker 1: I haven't really had that much desire. There are moments,
Speaker 1: but they pass, you know, and I've learned to be
Speaker 1: grateful enough to talk myself out of those those moments.
Speaker 1: You know, count the things that have happened since the end,
Speaker 1: and pretty soon you're like, yeah, I don't really need
Speaker 1: a drink right now. Maybe I just need to go home.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more of Rick's conversation with
Speaker 1: Jason Isabel after the break. We're back with more from
Speaker 1: Jason Isabel. Would you say that your writing is more
Speaker 1: of an intellectual process or is it something else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more intellectual for me. I mean, you know, the
Speaker 1: inspiration Like I've used this quote before, but Chuck Close said,
Speaker 1: inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show
Speaker 1: up and get to work. And I love that because
Speaker 1: if you're not inspired, then you're not an artist. You're
Speaker 1: not paying attention, you don't have the level of awareness
Speaker 1: that you need to have to create. Eight. Um, So
Speaker 1: that's a constant you know. Inspiration is like like heart rate,
Speaker 1: it's always running, it's always there, and all the things
Speaker 1: that I consider to be sort of magical and mystical
Speaker 1: about the process are constant. You know. That's that's I
Speaker 1: think part of the character of being a creative person
Speaker 1: that I think I walk to the grocery store with
Speaker 1: the same level of mysticism as I write a song.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, it's all process. It's it's a way
Speaker 1: of being in the world exactly. It's yeah. So I
Speaker 1: don't you know, I don't think about creating as a
Speaker 1: supernatural or preternatural or um as an experience that that's
Speaker 1: disconnected from the mathematics of creating. You know, Creating for
Speaker 1: me is solving puzzles. Now, there are when you when
Speaker 1: you solve the puzzle, you do feel rewarded, you know,
Speaker 1: by something great than yourself. I think there's something when
Speaker 1: you hit it just right. Yeah, you know, and you've
Speaker 1: hit it just right many many times, and you probably
Speaker 1: have that feeling where it's like, whoever to just help
Speaker 1: me with that? Thank you? You know, absolutely, because you
Speaker 1: feel at that moment like something's happening that you didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily do all by yourself. Always, yeah, all of it.
Speaker 1: I mean my experience is that we have little to
Speaker 1: do with it. Yeah. Yeah, you show up and pay
Speaker 1: close attention and our patient because that's a big part
Speaker 1: of it, is the patients involved. But a lot of
Speaker 1: it feels like to me, feels like it comes from elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can go with that for sure. But I think
Speaker 1: to find it, you know, you have to sometimes you
Speaker 1: have to turn every rock over. Absolutely, You've got to
Speaker 1: be the person that's willing to look in most places.
Speaker 1: And that's I guess goes along with the patients. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the in the right process. Do you ever think
Speaker 1: of the audience? I try not to. Uh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I think I do my best work when I'm
Speaker 1: not doing that, but I'll allow myself to think of
Speaker 1: the audience if it's in the service of challenging them
Speaker 1: or helping in some way. Not I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think about pleasing them or about meeting their you know,
Speaker 1: requirements or expectations. But I do think about pushing them,
Speaker 1: you know, or maybe presenting things to them in a
Speaker 1: way because like on the last album, I had a
Speaker 1: song called white Man's World that was about privilege and
Speaker 1: about you know, realizing who I am and what opportunities
Speaker 1: I have that some people don't just simply by the
Speaker 1: fact that I'm white and male in America and especially
Speaker 1: in the South, which the song talks about that too.
Speaker 1: M So I was thinking about my audience when I
Speaker 1: wrote that song, but I was thinking about it in
Speaker 1: a way that like, I want to push your buttons
Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, I want to make you
Speaker 1: consider that you know now that you hold me in
Speaker 1: a certain esteem, you're willing to pay fifty or seventy
Speaker 1: five bucks to come stand and listen to me do
Speaker 1: this for whatever reason. Now, I would like to use
Speaker 1: that to kind of square up on you a little bit.
Speaker 1: Would you play it for me now? Yeah, sure, beautiful,
Speaker 1: thank you beautiful. How did it start that song? I
Speaker 1: think with the groove, And then I thought, this, the
Speaker 1: groove is a little funky, so I have to be
Speaker 1: careful with it, you know, because I really enjoy music
Speaker 1: that used to be called black music. But I'm also
Speaker 1: very careful about making it because I'm not I don't
Speaker 1: feel qualified to make it, you know, not in that way.
Speaker 1: So I think, if I'm gonna make a song that
Speaker 1: has that kind of groove, there needs to be a
Speaker 1: purpose to it, you know, So I need to make
Speaker 1: something that is aware. And it was around the time
Speaker 1: of the presidential election when I was writing this song.
Speaker 1: It was right after the presidential election, and I wrote
Speaker 1: a flurry of songs, as as a lot of songwriters
Speaker 1: did in that week or two and still are, but
Speaker 1: that was one of them. And I thought, what, you know,
Speaker 1: what can I say about who I am and what
Speaker 1: my responsibility is that might sway people a little bit
Speaker 1: and might also, you know, earn my keep as far
Speaker 1: as playing a song with that kind of groove goes,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's a blues really, so it's like,
Speaker 1: if I'm going to play the blues, I better fucking
Speaker 1: sing the blues, and I better do it for the
Speaker 1: right reason, you know, And I think that's that's where
Speaker 1: it came from. So I thought, well, what is one
Speaker 1: truth and then let's write another true thing, make them rhyme.
Speaker 1: But I remember writing very easily and comfortably about my
Speaker 1: own admissions in that song about like how I wish
Speaker 1: now that I had stood up and said something when
Speaker 1: I was hearing racist jokes, you know, and writing about
Speaker 1: that aspect of you know, southern that's not necessarily you know,
Speaker 1: more ruralness, but I definitely there's there's a line from Dixieland,
Speaker 1: you know, so it's like I'm talking about I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the South right there. That part was very easy
Speaker 1: as far as working that puzzle that one kind of
Speaker 1: fell out, but getting to the chorus was was difficult
Speaker 1: because you don't want it to be too flippant, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're trying to motivate people to think about, you know,
Speaker 1: something like like a racial division or like privilege, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to look at what happened in a way
Speaker 1: that either keeps it from being repeated or suggests that
Speaker 1: it might not have been the most human course of action,
Speaker 1: or you know, suggest that your perspective might be skewed,
Speaker 1: not necessarily flawed, but you might not be seeing every
Speaker 1: angle to this situation. So that was a that was
Speaker 1: a tough balance for me to figure out how to
Speaker 1: how to talk about race in this way from my
Speaker 1: own perspective. You know, I knew from the onset that
Speaker 1: I was going to have to reveal some things about
Speaker 1: myself in a song like that. You got to be
Speaker 1: more honest than you're comfortable with, or nobody's going to
Speaker 1: give a shit, you know. Um, So that that was
Speaker 1: the that was the hard part of writing that one.
Speaker 1: It wasn't so much the normal puzzle that I'm used to,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to make something meaningful and beautiful. In
Speaker 1: a way, it was the idea of how do I
Speaker 1: dwell all enough on what has happened up until now
Speaker 1: to possibly get some people my audience to reconsider their
Speaker 1: role in it. Do you think that that is even possible? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: on a small scale, you know. But I choose to
Speaker 1: think that that's possible because it's like I was talking
Speaker 1: to somebody the other day and I was like, Man,
Speaker 1: if you want to think of it this way, it's
Speaker 1: traffic and storms. That's it. That's all that's left of humanity.
Speaker 1: That's all we've got to look forward to. We're going
Speaker 1: to be sitting in traffic until storm kills us. But
Speaker 1: I would rather not, you know, I would rather think maybe,
Speaker 1: maybe sometimes some eighteen year old white guy in a
Speaker 1: fraternity in Georgia, here's that song and thinks, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: my way of thinking, Maybe my dad wasn't exactly right
Speaker 1: about all that shit. You know, maybe I do have
Speaker 1: a little bit of privilege, and then maybe that'll open
Speaker 1: them up into thinking something. I don't think I'm gonna
Speaker 1: move the all powerful needle, but for me to go
Speaker 1: to sleep at night, I have to think that there's
Speaker 1: some sort of a purpose, you know, motivational in some
Speaker 1: way or another. When I think about protest songs, and
Speaker 1: I'll call that a protest song, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's it's the strict definition that works. So, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a badge of honor if we think of it.
Speaker 1: If we think of protest songs, I tend to think
Speaker 1: of them as speaking to like minded people more than
Speaker 1: having the power to change other people. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: if anything, and this may not be right more often
Speaker 1: than not, if someone didn't agree with what you were
Speaker 1: saying in the song, they would more likely not like
Speaker 1: the song and not maybe not like your other songs
Speaker 1: because of it. But but I've not been to one
Speaker 1: of my concerts those those folks. It's it's an interesting
Speaker 1: it's an interesting dynamic because I'm sort of a country
Speaker 1: singer and I'm sort of a Southern rock singer. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's not it's not like I'm necessarily
Speaker 1: certain that they look like me. The audience looks like me.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't really, I can't really change that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've tried, but there I think are a
Speaker 1: lot of and you know, I've wound up having some
Speaker 1: pretty serious conversations with folks about that. Um, I just
Speaker 1: think I think there's an opportunity there, even though it
Speaker 1: could be a very small I'm talking you know, it
Speaker 1: might be people you could count on if you change
Speaker 1: one person, it's incredible. It is it's incredible, and it's
Speaker 1: worth all the work. Yeah, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people out there, I think, compared to other people who
Speaker 1: believe the way that I believe, I think I have
Speaker 1: a lot of open ears from the other side. And
Speaker 1: I don't mean that from the other side like a
Speaker 1: political divide. I mean just a lot of people that
Speaker 1: might listen to what I'm saying that might not have
Speaker 1: necessarily agreed with me before they heard that. And I
Speaker 1: know that is fucking hubris, I know, but we all
Speaker 1: have to be a little bit egomaniacal to do all
Speaker 1: this crazy shit. You know. I used to think that,
Speaker 1: like the Dixie Chicks thing, because that's still something that
Speaker 1: comes up a lot in Nashville, especially probably in a
Speaker 1: lot of other places. You know. I used to think
Speaker 1: that that was because their audience was very different from
Speaker 1: them as far as, you know, the things that they believed.
Speaker 1: But then one day we were playing at the Roundhouse
Speaker 1: in London and the first time I played there, and
Speaker 1: I was walking around the place on the sidewalk and
Speaker 1: it hit me, you know what happened because she's a woman.
Speaker 1: It happened because Natalie is a woman and said those things,
Speaker 1: and she was talking out of turn because she was
Speaker 1: a woman. Because if Tim McGraw had said it, you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's a blue dog Democrat. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he would have said exactly the same thing, but you know,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't It wouldn't have happened. Eric Church has said
Speaker 1: things recently that a lot of his audience disagreed with,
Speaker 1: but they keep on buying records and tickets, and nobody's
Speaker 1: burning Eric Church CDs outside of records radio station, you know.
Speaker 1: So that was a real eye opener for me. That
Speaker 1: was another level of that privilege. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a man, and I'm not gonna get black bald
Speaker 1: for saying what I believe quite as easily as Natalie
Speaker 1: might have, you know. And that's another thing. Like the
Speaker 1: responsibility to the blues music that I'm making, I have
Speaker 1: a responsibility to the message itself. You know, you have
Speaker 1: to use that privilege to try to chip away at it.
Speaker 1: I'll say, even from the perspective that I have about
Speaker 1: protest music, it's still even if it only is supporting
Speaker 1: an idea that someone already believes, it still has power.
Speaker 1: It still feels like we're not alone. But I think
Speaker 1: that's the real power of protest songs is more of
Speaker 1: a m It feels like you're part of something bigger
Speaker 1: than yourself, and you don't feel alone. More than getting
Speaker 1: someone else to believe what you believe. Through the song. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so somebody might not give up as quickly if they
Speaker 1: feel that way, they might not give up on the
Speaker 1: fight that quickly as they think. Well maybe so, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe so. I don't even know if it has to
Speaker 1: do with fighting or not. I think even just the
Speaker 1: just the feeling, not alone, it's a big deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's true. That's enough and sometimes We'll be back
Speaker 1: with more from Jason Isabel and Rick Rubin after the break.
Speaker 1: We're back with more from Jason Isabel. I noticed in
Speaker 1: the song that you played there's no repetition in the chorus.
Speaker 1: So the chorus repeats in the song, but none of
Speaker 1: the words in the chorus repeat. Yeah. Would you say
Speaker 1: that that's a common in your song writing, that there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of repetition. Yeah. Yeah, And I've tried
Speaker 1: to write in more and not had a whole lot
Speaker 1: of success with it. Sometimes I don't even have a chorus.
Speaker 1: A lot of my songs that don't have a chorus
Speaker 1: at all because I just feel like I've got more
Speaker 1: to say to get the story out, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't repeat myself a lot. Yeah, there's something interesting
Speaker 1: when a song I like when a phrase can be
Speaker 1: repeated over and over in a song, yet it almost
Speaker 1: feels like you're hearing different things and not hearing different things,
Speaker 1: but it means something different as the song progresses. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, just like that feeling. And it's so
Speaker 1: interesting how certain phrases it's hard to find a phrase
Speaker 1: that bears repeating. Yeah, but I'm thinking right now, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes perfect sense that they would say
Speaker 1: wild horses couldn't drag me away multiple times. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: never have I thought I wish they just said that once. No, this,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm getting some very valuable advice, Like
Speaker 1: thank you first of all very much. It's well good,
Speaker 1: let's do this again sometimes but no, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that because you've already told me a few
Speaker 1: things that I'm like filing away in my mind. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it's just not occurred to me. I've
Speaker 1: always thought I've already said that, I don't have to
Speaker 1: say it again. But obviously you're right. A lot of
Speaker 1: the songs that are my favorites do that, you know,
Speaker 1: And there's a reason for it. Yeah, not necessarily to
Speaker 1: introduce new information, but no, and it's not necessarily even laziness.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's refrain, and I don't have refrain a lot. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's interesting when both when it's satisfying to feel that,
Speaker 1: and it's hard, you know, I know from spending time
Speaker 1: working with songwriters, those phrases don't always come so easy.
Speaker 1: And it's miraculous because that when it does come, because
Speaker 1: it's always, or more often than not, a very ordinary phrase.
Speaker 1: So you could have ten ordinary phrase, you could have
Speaker 1: a hundred ordinary phrases, and you can repeat each one
Speaker 1: of those phrases ten times, and ninety nine of those
Speaker 1: it's not interesting and after the third repeat you don't
Speaker 1: want to hear it anymore. But there's somewhere at the
Speaker 1: end to ten you feel like, let's keep going, let's
Speaker 1: keep saying these words over and over because it does
Speaker 1: something else. It has some other power. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: picks up steam in a way almost like a snowball
Speaker 1: or something or that that you start thinking and I
Speaker 1: don't know if it has to do with what the
Speaker 1: words mean or the what the how they sound, or
Speaker 1: some combination if you can hit on both, and that's
Speaker 1: probably yeah, where it like you almost start deconstructing the
Speaker 1: meaning like the first time, it means what it means
Speaker 1: on the surface, but as the repetitions go, your relationship
Speaker 1: to the phrase changes right right, and like the second
Speaker 1: one can almost be like sarcasm or irony. But then
Speaker 1: after that it gets poignant. It gets like like hallelujah,
Speaker 1: like the Leonard Cohen like he just says Hallelujah over
Speaker 1: and over and a and the first time it's like,
Speaker 1: the second time it's like, whoa hold on? Was that
Speaker 1: second one blasphemy? You know? And the third one it's like,
Speaker 1: oh no, it's all those things and none of those things. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good that's a good point. I never tried.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever tried it, but I will
Speaker 1: now now that you told me to free of charge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're taking from this whatever you I'm taking all of it,
Speaker 1: and whatever works is great. Yeah. Do you want to
Speaker 1: play me another song? Do you have any any new songs,
Speaker 1: anything that's sort of fresh, but yeah, maybe hasn't even
Speaker 1: come out yet. I do, I sure do. I would
Speaker 1: love to play I saw I've never heard I'll play
Speaker 1: a song hardly anybody's I think Tracy may have heard
Speaker 1: it once, But beautiful thank you. When did you add it? Um?
Speaker 1: A few months ago? Yeah, about three months ago. I
Speaker 1: guess I've written a few cents, but I think that
Speaker 1: one's the one that I'm probably the most attached to
Speaker 1: right now. The new bunch that had a little bit
Speaker 1: of the repetition that we were just talking about it,
Speaker 1: and right when I got to it, I thought about that,
Speaker 1: and it proved that point of each time he said it,
Speaker 1: it didn't feel like, oh, he's just repeating himself. It
Speaker 1: felt like the emotion deepened with what you were saying
Speaker 1: and with the melody that was working with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it really it felt like satisfying, yeah, to hear that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it also kind of maybe I let myself do
Speaker 1: it that time, because at first it's my love want change, yes,
Speaker 1: But by the end it's my love want change a thing.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like my love is steady but
Speaker 1: also inconsequential, yes, you know, And I think maybe that's
Speaker 1: why I let myself do it. But now that I
Speaker 1: think about it, also though, I should probably let myself
Speaker 1: do it even when there's not that that twist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: cool man, Yeah, thanks, thank you so much, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. Thanks to Jason Isabel for talking with Rick
Speaker 1: at a live show in January. Jason called his new
Speaker 1: album Reunions his best yet. Make sure to check it
Speaker 1: out when it drives. You can hear more from Jason Isabel,
Speaker 1: including the song he wrote for A Star Is Born
Speaker 1: by visiting Broken Record podcast dot com. Also subscribe to
Speaker 1: our YouTube channel for bonus content at YouTube dot com
Speaker 1: slash broken record Podcast. Broken Record is produced help from
Speaker 1: Jason gambrel Me LaBelle Martin Gonzalez and Lea Rose Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: A theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.