Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: The last couple of years have been huge for Jason Isbel.
Speaker 2: The Alabama born singer songwriter's latest album, Weather Vans, won
Speaker 2: the Grammy for Best Americana Album this year. He also
Speaker 2: snagged a role in Martin scor says He's Killers of
Speaker 2: the Flower Moon, which is up for Best Picture at
Speaker 2: this year's Oscars. Then there was a critically acclaimed HBO
Speaker 2: documentary released last year about the making of Isabel's previous album, Reunions,
Speaker 2: that also put his personal life on display warts and all.
Speaker 2: On today's episode, I've talked to Jason Isbel about the
Speaker 2: exhilarating experience of filming Killers of the Flower Moon and
Speaker 2: how he prepared to act in scenes opposite Leonardo DiCaprio.
Speaker 2: Heads up, if you haven't seen the movie yet, one
Speaker 2: you should and two there's definitely major spoilers in our conversation,
Speaker 2: so just know that going in. Jason also contemplates how
Speaker 2: old right about the dissolution of his marriage and why
Speaker 2: he struggles to write a balls out rock song. This
Speaker 2: is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin, Mitchmill.
Speaker 2: Here's my conversation with Jason Isbel. Hey, how are you man.
Speaker 1: I'm doing well. Thanks, having a good day, how about yourself?
Speaker 2: Yeah, do it, having a good day, having a good day.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We met at Shangri Lock with your manager Tracy Rick,
Speaker 2: like twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a little while. Yeah, it's been a
Speaker 1: little while. That was a good day though. Once I
Speaker 1: got out of the car, I know that takes a
Speaker 1: long time to get out there from LA.
Speaker 2: It's a long drive. And I think you had been
Speaker 2: rehearsing for with Mayvas Staples maybe or to do something
Speaker 2: with Mayvus that day.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was. It was Mayvs's eightieth birthday. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I did all three of those. I did one in La,
Speaker 1: one in Chicago, and one in New York that year.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: You gotta do you know, it's Mayvas, whatever Mavis is.
Speaker 1: You just say yes and go do it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Time is flying, man, But I'm glad we still have
Speaker 2: some legends like her around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt, So no doubt. And will I know,
Speaker 1: I know, really WILLI is still kicking man, still out
Speaker 1: doing show. He says, unbelievable. I think Willie. The thing
Speaker 1: that gives me about him is like, you know, people
Speaker 1: always say when you talk about like political stuff, that
Speaker 1: you're going to run off half of your audience. But
Speaker 1: I think unless you're Willie Nelson, you don't have an
Speaker 1: audience that is made up of every different type of person.
Speaker 2: Why do you think that, I mean, is it just
Speaker 2: because the decades he's been at it.
Speaker 1: I think it's part of what he does, you know.
Speaker 1: I think it's the way he writes songs and the
Speaker 1: way he performs. And yeah, also it's the fact that
Speaker 1: he's been doing this for nearly eight decades now, you know,
Speaker 1: because then people sort of see you as more of
Speaker 1: an institution than just a personality, and they figure that
Speaker 1: Willie's weather a whole lot of different kinds of storms.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, because I guess certainly early in his career
Speaker 2: he alienated the traditional country establishment early, so I guess
Speaker 2: he's gone through those various times of alienating this potential
Speaker 2: fan base in that one to rive at the place
Speaker 2: I guess not too themlike Snoop where it's kind.
Speaker 1: Of right, that's true. Yeah, that's true. Probably why they
Speaker 1: get along so well that one other reason. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're right at a certain point, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're that much of a legend. You're you're just
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, more of a piece at
Speaker 1: the fabric of cultural society rather than just an individual
Speaker 1: trying to do a job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not to butter you up, but it seems like
Speaker 2: you're inching. Like the way your career has gone from
Speaker 2: being a really incredible guitarist, great songwriter to probably an
Speaker 2: even better songwriter and actor.
Speaker 1: And it's a lot. It's been a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: It's been really nice. The opportunities have been good ones,
Speaker 1: and I felt like I've gotten to do it at
Speaker 1: a pace for the most part, at a pace that
Speaker 1: I'm comfortable with. And I'm forty five now, so it's
Speaker 1: not like all of a sudden I'm gonna be shocked
Speaker 1: by the pitfalls of celebrity. It's just like it's not
Speaker 1: really gonna bother me much. Just boy it, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'm happy that things are going the way they are.
Speaker 1: It's been a really nice few years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to talk about music before we talked
Speaker 2: about that. Because of The Flower Moon floored me. The script,
Speaker 2: the acting, the way it was assembled and your acting
Speaker 2: was like who knew.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't know that was what was going to happen.
Speaker 1: I thought when I got there, I thought I could
Speaker 1: really screw this all up, you know, and they could
Speaker 1: send me home. But I do feel like at every
Speaker 1: stage people were working on that movie in a way
Speaker 1: that I think they were more invested with telling that
Speaker 1: story than they would have been in just in a people.
Speaker 1: And you could sense that from you know, craft services,
Speaker 1: to hair and make up, all the way up to
Speaker 1: Marty and his ads. It's like everybody there had a
Speaker 1: purpose that was beyond just making a good movie. And
Speaker 1: that kind of atmosphere really helped me do something that
Speaker 1: I didn't know if I could do or not. And
Speaker 1: then the other actress on set were so gracious with
Speaker 1: their time. I would just say what do I do here,
Speaker 1: you know, and they would tell me, well, here's what
Speaker 1: I would do, So you would just ask, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: straight up. And I told him that from the start,
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't have any training with this.
Speaker 1: I've never acted in anything before, done some voice over
Speaker 1: stuff and played myself in a couple of things, but
Speaker 1: never really acted. And I said, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: go ask people what to do, and then I will
Speaker 1: try my best to do that. And I think that
Speaker 1: was kind of refreshing for you know, Ellen, casting director
Speaker 1: and some of the producers and stuff, because they're like,
Speaker 1: all right, well we can work.
Speaker 2: With that coachable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very highly, highly coachable. That was not mo for
Speaker 1: that whole process. But the four women who were playing
Speaker 1: the Osage sisters were extremely helpful to me because they
Speaker 1: would come up and say, who do we know in
Speaker 1: this room? What did we do this morning before this
Speaker 1: scene started, how was there night last night, and just
Speaker 1: kind of things that would get me in the headspace
Speaker 1: of character rather than think about the details of Oh
Speaker 1: my god, did I do my bow tie right? You know.
Speaker 1: That was super helpful and there was a high standard
Speaker 1: of expectation I think, but at the same time, everybody
Speaker 1: understood that, you know, I was not a professional actor,
Speaker 1: and they sort of helped me get to the point
Speaker 1: where I felt comfortable.
Speaker 2: Your role literally quite literally changed from the one that
Speaker 2: you were offered to the one that you wound up playing,
Speaker 2: which was Bill Smith.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So what point did you realize you were going to
Speaker 2: have a scene basically going head to head with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Speaker 1: Well, I had to read that scene as part of
Speaker 1: my audition, because at first you know, I had been
Speaker 1: offered some like smaller cameo roles, and I just went
Speaker 1: back and studied as hard as I could, got as
Speaker 1: much information on the story and from David's book the
Speaker 1: source material, and then went back and watched all of
Speaker 1: his library of Congress readings and Q and A's and
Speaker 1: found all the public record documentation on everybody after the
Speaker 1: end of the movie that they were telling, you know.
Speaker 1: And then finally I'm just on this laptop in my
Speaker 1: room and there's Leo and Marty on zoom on zoom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it was height of the pandemic, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just the hair and I kind of slipped my
Speaker 1: hair back and put on a brown shirt that looked
Speaker 1: like it could have existed a one hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: I think it was viz Vim was what I was wearing,
Speaker 1: because it was the closest, closest I had to one
Speaker 1: hundred year old Oklahoma shirt, you know, And just wound
Speaker 1: up doing that like at home on my what was it,
Speaker 1: forty first, forty second birthday thing, and yeah, so it
Speaker 1: was I was terrified. I was terrified, but I was
Speaker 1: also determined, you know, I didn't want to get that
Speaker 1: close to it and then not get it, you.
Speaker 2: Know, Yeah, having a zoom audition. That's it's you and
Speaker 2: Martin Scorsese and the cap I mean, that's that's heady.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. It was a lot, man, it was
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: Does he walk you through it?
Speaker 1: Not really, you just start reading. That was that and
Speaker 1: I sort of I thought to myself, I need to
Speaker 1: just do things and not be anything. And that was
Speaker 1: what helped me more once I got on the set.
Speaker 1: You know, somehow through the process of trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what to do, I landed on the idea that
Speaker 1: self awareness was the enemy. And if you spend any
Speaker 1: time or any energy thinking does this look right? What
Speaker 1: do I look like? What do I sound like? Then
Speaker 1: that's going to take you out of the moment. So
Speaker 1: I was there thinking, don't focus on anything except the
Speaker 1: conversation that you're having with Ernest, not with Leo. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter that it's Leo. It just it's Ernest right
Speaker 1: now and you're not Jason or Bill, and that's what's happening.
Speaker 1: And so that's what I did. I just tried to
Speaker 1: do that. I think the accent helped me a whole lot.
Speaker 1: I think the fact that you know, I had sort
Speaker 1: of adopted certain mannerisms of people that I grew up
Speaker 1: around in Alabama. You know, in my mind, Bill was
Speaker 1: kind of like a building contractor, you know, somebody who
Speaker 1: wanted to look like a big deal but necessarily wasn't,
Speaker 1: you know, the most confident person on the inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I just.
Speaker 1: Played it like that. I just thought, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: this guy that my dad didn't like when I was
Speaker 1: eight years old because he was, you know, wearing a
Speaker 1: fur coat at the football field. I'm that, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a peacock. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Bill wasn't quite trying to fit in with what was
Speaker 2: going on around, of anything going on around.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, ultimately in.
Speaker 2: The best way. I mean more, you know, clearly had
Speaker 2: the moral high ground.
Speaker 1: Probably, but we don't know, you know, we don't know
Speaker 1: because I think that's another point that the movie makes
Speaker 1: is that you know, you're giving the evidence that you know,
Speaker 1: Ernest and Hale, these people are bad people doing bad things.
Speaker 1: But with some of the tercier characters, especially like Beal,
Speaker 1: you don't ever really know, you know, if he's there
Speaker 1: purely out of good motivations, or if he's there to
Speaker 1: do the same thing that they're doing. And I sort
Speaker 1: of started seeing this as a real gift because uncertain
Speaker 1: is a lot more interesting to me, you know, as
Speaker 1: a as an entertainer, performer, artist, whatever. I like to
Speaker 1: figure out what I'm talking about as I'm going, you know,
Speaker 1: when I'm writing a song or anything, or playing a
Speaker 1: solo or whatever. So with Bill, I kind of thought
Speaker 1: to myself, well, the audience is not going to know
Speaker 1: exactly if my motivations are pure or not, so I
Speaker 1: don't have to know that either, you know, if I
Speaker 1: deliver a shadowy character to them, then that's what they're
Speaker 1: going to take from it. And at the end of
Speaker 1: the movie, I had so many people that watch the
Speaker 1: movie saying, you know, was Bill a good guy or
Speaker 1: bad guy? Did he murder his first wife and marry
Speaker 1: her sister or did bad things just happen to him?
Speaker 2: And I don't know, I didn't even consider that as
Speaker 2: a possibility.
Speaker 1: Ordered the first wife, Yeah, I saw the same movie
Speaker 1: you did, maybe maybe not, you know, yeah, but wasting
Speaker 1: illness that didn't hold up for very long. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't hear people dying of wasting illness now. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, if I had to bet money
Speaker 1: on it. I would say that, yeah, Bill probably did
Speaker 1: kill his first wife and then marry her sister to
Speaker 1: keep those same landrights in his name, and that's probably
Speaker 1: why his character ernest word so at all. It's you know,
Speaker 1: I was in my mind the way I was playing
Speaker 1: it was because we're both conning me and we're just
Speaker 1: not working together. And nobody hates more than that dynamic.
Speaker 2: You know, Yes, what was it like to play this
Speaker 2: scene where you're dying?
Speaker 1: That was tough. That was tough. I tried to like
Speaker 1: get out of having to go full on, you know.
Speaker 1: And like, right before we started to shoot, I was like,
Speaker 1: so I'm in shock, right, you know. I'm talking to Adam,
Speaker 1: the assistant director, and I'm like, I'm playing this like
Speaker 1: I'm in shock. I'm not feeling all of this. I
Speaker 1: just got blown off. I don't really know what's going on.
Speaker 1: Adam was like, yeah, sure, whatever, And then it occurred
Speaker 1: to me, Adam doesn't give a fuck. Adam's trying to
Speaker 1: get everybody where they're supposed to be. He didn't care.
Speaker 1: So I get down there and the first time I'm
Speaker 1: kind of like taking it easy, and then I hear
Speaker 1: Marty over the fucking walkie talkie's like you're on a ten,
Speaker 1: you are on a tea. You're feeling every bit of this.
Speaker 1: And I was like, shit, now I have to really
Speaker 1: embarrass myself, you know. So I did about three more
Speaker 1: takes where I was just screaming my head off, and
Speaker 1: you know, luckily I was comfortable because I had played
Speaker 1: a show in Salt Lake City on Friday night, and
Speaker 1: then I flew on a private right after I got
Speaker 1: off stage to Oklahoma to rehearse Saturday morning at eight am.
Speaker 1: And then after the rehearsal, I got back on that
Speaker 1: jet and went to Red Rocks and played two nights
Speaker 1: at Red Rocks in Colorado, and then came back to
Speaker 1: Oklahoma to shoot the scene. So I had been up
Speaker 1: all weekend. I played three shows and rehearsed that scene,
Speaker 1: and then you know, it's late at night, and the
Speaker 1: makeup just took forever, so much makeup, and you can't
Speaker 1: touch your face, like I accidentally scratched my forehead. You know,
Speaker 1: everything was itching. And I did this one time and
Speaker 1: oh my god, the Swiss makeup guy was all over me.
Speaker 1: He's like, you cannot touch your face, You cannot touch
Speaker 1: your face. You know, it's like, shit, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: have to itch, you know. And it had taken up
Speaker 1: hours to put it on. And then at one point
Speaker 1: he says, okay, so other movies the blood goes around
Speaker 1: the eye, but in Marty's movies, the blood goes in
Speaker 1: the eye. And I was like, all right, let's fucking
Speaker 1: do it, you know. So I just held my eye
Speaker 1: open and he squirted it right on the eyeball. You know,
Speaker 1: do you even know what this?
Speaker 2: Stuffs me?
Speaker 1: No, no clue and no idea, you know. And I'm
Speaker 1: laying down like in the house, you know, which was
Speaker 1: the house that we had filmed in. The house had
Speaker 1: been there for one hundred years and then they took
Speaker 1: it down. But I'm laying there. They're sticking all this
Speaker 1: stuff in me and piling more like wood on top
Speaker 1: of my body. And the shot is one of the
Speaker 1: Scorsese tracking shots, you know, where he comes in and
Speaker 1: weaves around the house until it gets to the side
Speaker 1: of my faith beautiful shot, I mean, one of his
Speaker 1: real signature moves. You know. When I found out it
Speaker 1: was that kind of shot, I was like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: I get to be the focal point of one of
Speaker 1: those shots is amazing, but shots that goes back to
Speaker 1: meanstreak exactly. Yeah, something that he started doing at the
Speaker 1: beginning of his career and perfect it early, and that's
Speaker 1: how you feel like you're in his universe, you know.
Speaker 1: But it was super humid, and it was late and
Speaker 1: summertime in Oklahoma, and between takes, if I closed my eye,
Speaker 1: it would stay shut because that fake blood would kind
Speaker 1: of coagulate a little bit, and so I couldn't move
Speaker 1: my arms because they were under all that wood and debris,
Speaker 1: and so when they would call action, I would have
Speaker 1: to sort of start the process of peeling my eye
Speaker 1: open without using my hands at all, because my eyes
Speaker 1: had to be open when the camera got to me.
Speaker 1: So I was laying there screaming while I was trying
Speaker 1: to open my eye, and I wound up not having
Speaker 1: to act necessarily as much because it was so uncomfortable
Speaker 1: that it was a little bit easier to just scream
Speaker 1: like you're in pain and pissed off and terrified.
Speaker 2: You know. Wow, Man, it was hard.
Speaker 1: It was really hard because I'd never done anything like that,
Speaker 1: and it was like, I think it took us four takes,
Speaker 1: which I was pretty happy about it didn't take all night.
Speaker 2: So I don't know that that's a predicament. Too many
Speaker 2: actors have really been in to have been blown up.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, like sure in a action flick
Speaker 2: in the eighties, like plenty of people got blown up,
Speaker 2: but you get blown up off the shot and you're
Speaker 2: just kind of not seen again. But then to have
Speaker 2: to act like you're blown up and then you have
Speaker 2: to act, I don't know who else is really. I'm
Speaker 2: sure it's happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it happens, but not a lot. Yeah, not a lot,
Speaker 1: especially in a movie that's worth a shit. You know.
Speaker 1: Sure there's a lot of people in Robocough that are
Speaker 1: that way, but in a Scorsese movie, and you know,
Speaker 1: I had to really do it. But there's something about
Speaker 1: the way he handled the death scenes in that movie.
Speaker 1: He's done this in a lot of other ones too.
Speaker 1: It's very brief, and while it's really graphic and really disturbing,
Speaker 1: he doesn't wallow in it. It's not pandering. He's not
Speaker 1: using that to manipulate the audience. It's like, pop, somebody's dead,
Speaker 1: they fall down. That's the scene. I want you to
Speaker 1: have that information. I gave you that information, let's move on,
Speaker 1: you know, And there were so many things I noticed
Speaker 1: watching the movie a couple times after it was all done,
Speaker 1: you know, where he was sort of untangling the cliches
Speaker 1: and the myths of how Native people have been treated
Speaker 1: in Westerns in the past, you know, and like, if
Speaker 1: you notice, almost all the women that are being murdered
Speaker 1: in this movie, something happens with their scalp, their scalp
Speaker 1: comes off or they get it cut off in a
Speaker 1: field autopsy, which to me was like a very clear
Speaker 1: nod to you know, saying that the Natives would scalp
Speaker 1: us white people and all of those John Wayne movies
Speaker 1: and forward Westerns and everything. And then like the first
Speaker 1: scene where they're smoking the death pipe and they're smoking
Speaker 1: their way of life. You know, they're giving like basically
Speaker 1: a funeral for their way of life once they found
Speaker 1: the oil. You know, that's also kind of a reversal
Speaker 1: of the whole idea of the peace pipe. And you
Speaker 1: know what you would normally expect a Native burial ceremony
Speaker 1: to be, Like, it's like they're burying their era and
Speaker 1: their way of existing. There's so many of those beautiful
Speaker 1: things where I'm like, oh, I see what he used
Speaker 1: to do, and he's just reversing the script and showing
Speaker 1: you a little bit more of what it was really like.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick break and then come
Speaker 2: back with more of a conversation with Jason Isbell. We're
Speaker 2: back with more from Jason Isbell to your point about
Speaker 2: the reversals that he was sort of including in the movie.
Speaker 2: There were people were pretty upset about it, and I
Speaker 2: guess you shouldn't be surprising, but I mean, given the
Speaker 2: level of art that was displayed, I don't know how
Speaker 2: you can take umbrage with his storytelling, yeah, or what
Speaker 2: he was trying to do, even in terms of subverting
Speaker 2: the history of cinema.
Speaker 1: Right right, I can see it if you're triggered, if
Speaker 1: you have like generational trauma and watching these things happened
Speaker 1: to indigenous people is triggering to you. That makes total
Speaker 1: sense to me. You know, it's not a criticism that
Speaker 1: I would levy at the movie, because I would have
Speaker 1: no reason to. But when somebody does, I can't argue
Speaker 1: with that. I'm like, yeah, that makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: It would be really hard to see, especially the way
Speaker 1: a lot of Native cultures handle you know, ancestry and
Speaker 1: their forebears and sort of take you know, spiritually that
Speaker 1: weight on in a way that the rest of us
Speaker 1: might not I understand. But as far as from a
Speaker 1: storytelling perspective, it's hard for me to see any flaws.
Speaker 2: And I met more people who were calling the storytelling
Speaker 2: like woke.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I don't know about it. If you use
Speaker 1: that word that I turn off. I'm clocked out. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're using that in that way, if you're not
Speaker 1: Donald Glover and you're talking about being woke, that I
Speaker 1: am not paying attention to you anymore. That is pretty
Speaker 1: incredible to me to imagine how somebody can see something
Speaker 1: so historically accurate and handled with such respect for what
Speaker 1: actually happened. But you know, there's a reason we hadn't
Speaker 1: already know this story, and you know, it had to
Speaker 1: be intentional like that. That had to be done intentionally
Speaker 1: or we would have all learned it in the sixth grade,
Speaker 1: you know, and even people out there in Oklahoma did
Speaker 1: they didn't know this stuff had happened. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, with what was going on in Tulsa with
Speaker 1: black businesses in Tulsa, you know, is this all happened
Speaker 1: at the same time. So there were black folks coming
Speaker 1: from Tulsa to Bartlesville and paul Huska to get away from,
Speaker 1: you know, the massacre that was happening over there, and
Speaker 1: they were hiding out around the osage who had their
Speaker 1: own shit to deal with.
Speaker 2: And I thought that was beautiful. Some people thought that
Speaker 2: the part where King Hale sees the newsreel Forum film
Speaker 2: about the Tulsa Masaca that was ham fisted.
Speaker 1: Ham fisted by God, because that's what happened, you know,
Speaker 1: that's what happened. That's what happened. And it was right
Speaker 1: next door. And I mean Tulsa was an hour away,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd drive over to Tulsa to get dinner.
Speaker 1: And then at the same time when we got there,
Speaker 1: when we showed up on set, we were looking at
Speaker 1: photos from the era, you know, in the costume department,
Speaker 1: trying to get everything right, and they were wearing masks,
Speaker 1: you know, because the flu that started in Kansas that
Speaker 1: everybody called the Spanish flu was then it was nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, and we were all standing there in their
Speaker 1: masks looking at the pictures of people wearing bandanas around
Speaker 1: their face. Like, what the fuck man one hundred years later?
Speaker 1: Exactly one hundred years later, you know. Yeah, so history
Speaker 1: clearly repeats itself if you, you know, don't pay attention
Speaker 1: to it, and sometimes if you do. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: heard a lot of people talking about how, like Molly's character,
Speaker 1: you know, why did she stay around so long? You know,
Speaker 1: why did she stay with him? Why did she try
Speaker 1: to work it out for so long? And that's one
Speaker 1: that really bothered me because I think that shows a
Speaker 1: really huge lack of understanding of her perspective, you know,
Speaker 1: and the circumstances that had led her to that point
Speaker 1: in her life and what her options were. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe if she didn't have to have a legal guardian
Speaker 1: to take her own money out of the bank, she
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been so motivated to stay with this asshole,
Speaker 1: you know. But there was a lot of like real
Speaker 1: you know, people who just weren't willing to take one
Speaker 1: extra step to think, well, maybe that person's experience is
Speaker 1: a little bit different than mind.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and also just people who you know, put
Speaker 2: themselves in a hypothetical situation they know exactly that I.
Speaker 1: Mean, yeah, armchair quarterbacks.
Speaker 2: Turns out it's complicated what we did, you know, it's
Speaker 2: not it's not simple.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of different variables that go into
Speaker 1: every choice that we made.
Speaker 2: She wore those all in her face. You could see
Speaker 2: all of the complications. What do I do? Her acting
Speaker 2: was just beautiful.
Speaker 1: She's unbelievable, man. And that last scene with two of them,
Speaker 1: where all she really wanted him to do was tell
Speaker 1: her the truth and he couldn't. Even after all that,
Speaker 1: he couldn't. You know, She's basically just saying, do you
Speaker 1: love me more than your fear? You know? And he
Speaker 1: couldn't do it. And that was that. And Yeah, Lily
Speaker 1: is really like nobody I've ever known. I mean, we
Speaker 1: stay in touch, you know. And I saw her when
Speaker 1: I played in Oklahoma a few weeks ago. And it's nuts, because,
Speaker 1: you know, there have been some people like Chris Stapleton
Speaker 1: opened for us right before his thing just went nuts,
Speaker 1: and you know, Casey Musgraves and sturge Old. There have
Speaker 1: been people that I've been around who were on a
Speaker 1: real pretty steep upward trajectory. But I've never seen it
Speaker 1: like with Lily right now, because you know, she's just
Speaker 1: taking over the world all of a sudden and I
Speaker 1: don't honestly don't think it's gonna change the person that
Speaker 1: she is. And that is like, that's rare man, that's
Speaker 1: unicorn shit right there. It just seems like she keeps
Speaker 1: me settling more into herself as all this beautiful chaos
Speaker 1: happens around her right now. And I think she's just
Speaker 1: gonna use whatever sort of recognition she gets to do
Speaker 1: cool things for other people, which is really a gift
Speaker 1: to everybody.
Speaker 2: Well, it's great. I mean, it seems like she's in.
Speaker 2: Not that I can be a judge of this. I
Speaker 2: don't act, but she seems like she's an actor in
Speaker 2: the mold of a real actor, like a de Niro
Speaker 2: or DiCaprio or a Pacino or the people who it's
Speaker 2: a craft.
Speaker 1: It's not.
Speaker 2: I'm not in to be famous. I'm not into be
Speaker 2: a movie star or celebrity. It's like, so what I
Speaker 2: do and it's just gonna get better and better.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's serious and the work itself is the reward,
Speaker 1: you know. And like that was something that surprises me
Speaker 1: about Leo, because I mean, dude is very, very famous
Speaker 1: and he has been since he was a little kid,
Speaker 1: and that man works hard. He was out there all
Speaker 1: day every day, first call, you know, usually last to leave,
Speaker 1: you know this, ninety five degrees and we're all in
Speaker 1: tweed suits and he's out there all day and if
Speaker 1: he gets half an hour, he runs back to his
Speaker 1: trailer and takes a nap and comes back out there
Speaker 1: and it gets back to work. Because I was very impressed.
Speaker 1: You know, it can't be the money that's motivating him
Speaker 1: at this point, because you don't have enough time left
Speaker 1: to count, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Well, I could talk to you about
Speaker 2: this film forever because it's so good, but we should
Speaker 2: talk about music and maybe we can listen to something
Speaker 2: real quick before all right, ok, before we make a switch?
Speaker 2: Where the fuck did this come from?
Speaker 1: Man? This is Kevin Kenny. We did this tribute to
Speaker 1: Kevin Kenny, the songwriter, one of my favorite people on earth.
Speaker 1: But the thing that Kevin does that I love so
Speaker 1: much is like he had a bad driving and crying
Speaker 1: in the eighties and the nineties and they still tour,
Speaker 1: they still do stuff. But he's a folk songwriter and
Speaker 1: he writes folk songs. But this would play big, old
Speaker 1: boneheaded rock rifts and it was a combination that's so
Speaker 1: hard to pull off, but Kevin has pulled it off
Speaker 1: so well for so long. They had a pretty big
Speaker 1: hit with Straight to Hell. That was on college radio.
Speaker 1: I'm Going Straight to Hell. That was their big one.
Speaker 1: But so many good songs where it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the riff sounds like ac DC, but then what he's
Speaker 1: singing over the top is like would he go through?
Speaker 1: It's amazing. And when I first started touring solo, I
Speaker 1: was still with the Drive By Truckers. Some of the
Speaker 1: first solo shows that I did were with Kevin. I
Speaker 1: was opening for it. He would go to the Goodwill
Speaker 1: and buy a lamp and that would be his stage show.
Speaker 1: He would put the good wheel lamp on stage and
Speaker 1: turn it on. That would be his light show, you know.
Speaker 1: And then after a few shows, after the end of
Speaker 1: the tour, he gave me the lamp. I was so honored.
Speaker 1: It's a horribly ugly lap, Like I've never been with
Speaker 1: a woman that would allow it in the house. So
Speaker 1: there's a lamp in storage that I got from Kevin Kenny.
Speaker 1: But that was sort of a ride of passage for
Speaker 1: southern folk songwriters. Was if you got a lamp from
Speaker 1: Kevin Kenny.
Speaker 2: You know that's amazing. You sound incredible on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. I love singing rock songs. It's hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard to write a rock song for me. I
Speaker 1: know for some people it works differently, but I do
Speaker 1: better with like these introspective, quiet, sad sort of jams.
Speaker 1: And then when it's time to write like a balls
Speaker 1: out rock song, it's just too many options. You know,
Speaker 1: I overthink it. So when I get a chance to
Speaker 1: sing one, I really enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Is it too many options in terms of the guitar
Speaker 2: playing or the songwriting lyrics.
Speaker 1: I think that's what's hard for me, because I'm not
Speaker 1: going to write a song where I'm like, what's the
Speaker 1: thin Lizzie line and jail Breaker says, hey, you good
Speaker 1: looking female, come here. Like I can't write that down
Speaker 1: on a piece of paper and not mark it out,
Speaker 1: you know, like I'd be like, man, no, I can't
Speaker 1: let that slide. But I can't think of anything that
Speaker 1: would be more perfect from Phil ly Not than that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's aft, you know, it's really tough, and
Speaker 1: correspond Scott and Brian Johnson, you know, they were really
Speaker 1: good at that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: A song like big balls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so dumb, but I would not want it
Speaker 1: to be different at all, And I never get tired
Speaker 1: of it, never gets boring, thunderstruck for Christ's sakes, Like,
Speaker 1: who's gonna write that down as a songwriter and say
Speaker 1: this is my song today. But if it had been different,
Speaker 1: it would have sucked, you know. So, Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: tough call to write a rock and roll song. It's
Speaker 1: really hard.
Speaker 2: Do you have riffs stored away somewhere?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like from failed rock and roll songs?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Tons, tons. I haven't accepted that they're failed yet.
Speaker 1: One day, you know, it'll be when I'm eighty, I'll
Speaker 1: put out the bonehead ac DC sounding record.
Speaker 2: But why can't you do like the Kevin Kenney thing
Speaker 2: of like just put like, you know, the lyrics you
Speaker 2: would normally write over the bomb bas I do.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I do two or three songs on a record.
Speaker 1: I do that. But that's tough because you know, at
Speaker 1: a certain point it becomes lipstick on a pig. You know,
Speaker 1: at a certain point you're like, this doesn't sound right.
Speaker 1: The music is now I'm going with the words that
Speaker 1: I'm hearing, And then you've made a production mistake. You know,
Speaker 1: like if I was singing the lyrics to Elephant, you know,
Speaker 1: over the music to You Shook Me all night long,
Speaker 1: like people would be pissed. People would be like, man,
Speaker 1: this is terrible. You didn't take this seriously at all.
Speaker 1: You know, you got to be careful. It's got to
Speaker 1: be congruous in some way. You know, it's got to
Speaker 1: feel like one piece of work. So to do it right,
Speaker 1: you got to just walk that line where the lyric
Speaker 1: just barely scoots into dumb enough and the riff just
Speaker 1: barely scoots into smart enough to where they kind of
Speaker 1: line up. But if you get too smart with the riff,
Speaker 1: then you're making prog rock, And if you get too
Speaker 1: dumb with the lyric, then you're just writing an ACDC song.
Speaker 1: So you've got to like really skirt that line.
Speaker 2: That's a great point. You don't want to venture into
Speaker 2: prog rock.
Speaker 1: Unless that's what you may if you're good at that.
Speaker 1: But if you dip your toe in frog rock, that's
Speaker 1: going to be really bad because they take that shit
Speaker 1: real seriously, you.
Speaker 2: Know, super serious. Yeah, tell me about Strawberry Woman. Man,
Speaker 2: that line this young man crying in the cowboy hat
Speaker 2: he's got square boots, so he for real.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well, you know, there's a lot of argument
Speaker 1: over which sort of cowboy boots you should wear. My
Speaker 1: little brother wears square toed boots, and I bought him
Speaker 1: a pair of pointier toe boots for Christmas, so I'm
Speaker 1: hoping to move them over into that. But that's also
Speaker 1: kind of an inside joke about playing the pedal steel
Speaker 1: guitar because if you'll notice, the pedals are so small
Speaker 1: and they're so close together that if you don't wear
Speaker 1: the right kind of shoes, you'll accidentally hit more than
Speaker 1: one pedal at a time. So this is why the
Speaker 1: pedal steel is a true cowboy instrument, because cowboy boots
Speaker 1: are what you wear in order to be able to
Speaker 1: hit this one pedal at a time.
Speaker 2: Fascinating. So that's why the next line wouldn't last five
Speaker 2: minutes on a pedal.
Speaker 1: Steel, right because he starts hitting the rock. We're disconnected,
Speaker 1: it seems like it. But if you're a musician, you go, oh,
Speaker 1: I see what he means. You know, because a lot
Speaker 1: of steel players, if they don't wear cowboy but still
Speaker 1: play in their socks, you know, because you just got
Speaker 1: to be able to hit a very narrow pedal there
Speaker 1: and not hit the ones next to it. But also like,
Speaker 1: I like this image of you know, the naivete of
Speaker 1: having your heart broken, and a cowboy, like a real cowboy,
Speaker 1: is a very specific type of naive. Like they have
Speaker 1: chosen to spend their time around animals rather than around people,
Speaker 1: so they don't learn these worldly things. And then by
Speaker 1: the time they're old, they've become wise before they become worldly,
Speaker 1: you know, which is a really interesting combination. They make
Speaker 1: for very stubborn, very interesting old men. But when they're
Speaker 1: kids and they're still you know, in the shape that
Speaker 1: you have to be to break horses and things like that,
Speaker 1: they're basically frozen as twelve or thirteen year olds for
Speaker 1: a good long while. Because they just don't spend time
Speaker 1: around human people.
Speaker 2: They become wise before they become worldly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So their wisdom comes from nature, it comes from work,
Speaker 1: and it comes from like finding things out on their own.
Speaker 1: They don't get a whole lot of advice cowboys. They
Speaker 1: find things out the hard way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Cowboys never cease to be fertile songwriting territory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for Willie Nelson or for Phil Lahy, not
Speaker 1: you know, they all write about it. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just a really different type of person. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to be an American cowboy. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of them in Manitoba and Alberta and Spain.
Speaker 1: You know, they got smaller horses in Spain. But it's
Speaker 1: the same basic principle. But yeah, it's interesting because it's
Speaker 1: like you're making this conscious decision to not participate in
Speaker 1: modern civilization. So there's a naivete, that kind of an
Speaker 1: innocence about it that's really beautiful. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: on the rare occasion that they wander into town, hilarity.
Speaker 1: And so you know, did your brother take that line?
Speaker 1: By the way, Oh, he got a kick out of it.
Speaker 1: He got to be a kick out of it. But
Speaker 1: he is definitely more cowboy like he's a real red tack,
Speaker 1: you know. Like somebody asked me the other day, like,
Speaker 1: what would you do in the apocalypse? I find my
Speaker 1: little brother. You know, we would go out in the
Speaker 1: woods and come back fatter than we were when we left,
Speaker 1: you know, because he could actually just wander off and
Speaker 1: survive just fine. He's one of the only people I
Speaker 1: know that could really do that.
Speaker 2: Man, you gotta take him on tour with you, then,
Speaker 2: I know, see, that's that's what you want to find
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 1: You take him on tour and then you bruin it
Speaker 1: because that is not where he wants to be. You
Speaker 1: don't want to be in a tour bus in New
Speaker 1: York City. You know, he wants to be out in
Speaker 1: the woods somewhere.
Speaker 2: A cowboy on a tour bus in New York City
Speaker 2: would be uh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's happened. I guess that happened a
Speaker 1: lot early on. You know, George Strait had to get
Speaker 1: everywhere somehow. But I don't think he would enjoy it
Speaker 1: as much as I would.
Speaker 2: Speaking of George straight Man, I was thinking about him recently.
Speaker 2: His music is phenomenal. Yeah, but he feels like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, like I guess he feels now oddly like
Speaker 2: a part of the fabric of country now more than
Speaker 2: like an artist. He's like, he really is like an
Speaker 2: elder of the music. Not I don't mean to put it, no,
Speaker 2: I know what you mean way, or an insulting way.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a legend, and you know he got
Speaker 1: it from not really writing his own songs. Like he
Speaker 1: was an interpreter of song, which kind of like to
Speaker 1: me is the part of country music that relates to
Speaker 1: what like Sinatra was doing or some of the old
Speaker 1: jazz singers you know, who weren't composers. And I think
Speaker 1: that there can be an art in writing songs. There
Speaker 1: can be art in delivering songs interpreting songs as well,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think you don't have to be
Speaker 1: a songwriter to be an artist. But if you call
Speaker 1: yourself a songwriter, or if you're not a great singer,
Speaker 1: then you know you're going to have to write some
Speaker 1: of your own songs or step things up a little bit.
Speaker 1: But George Strait had such a wonderful quality to his
Speaker 1: voice and delivery of those songs. You know, sometimes it's
Speaker 1: not something you can learn. Sometimes it's just about where
Speaker 1: your voice sits and the resonance of your voice, especially
Speaker 1: in country music or you know, show tunes. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like Sinatra would just go in and start singing.
Speaker 1: You know, you better have the tape on it because
Speaker 1: you might get one take. Because he knew that what
Speaker 1: people wanted was the quality of his voice. And I
Speaker 1: think it was that way with George straight Now you
Speaker 1: get to somebody like George Jones, and then that's a
Speaker 1: whole different thing, because you know, George Jones had that
Speaker 1: sort of country quality to his voice, but he could
Speaker 1: control it in a way that was just unbelievable. Every
Speaker 1: once in a while on Instagram or TikTok or something,
Speaker 1: a clip will come up with him just sitting around
Speaker 1: drinking a beer and singing a song and it sounds
Speaker 1: like the best possible performance anybody I know could pull
Speaker 1: off on a stage at a football stadium, and it's
Speaker 1: just him sitting in a chair, smoking, drinking, you know,
Speaker 1: not even paying attention to what he's doing. George Jones
Speaker 1: really had a beautiful gift, But it doesn't take all that,
Speaker 1: you know. I think if you're good at delivering somebody
Speaker 1: else's words in a way that makes people believe it,
Speaker 1: and you have that natural quality to your voice that
Speaker 1: sits in just the right place, which is what George
Speaker 1: Strait had, I think you can get yourself into the
Speaker 1: fabric of country music that way.
Speaker 2: Is it weird now for your songs to sort of
Speaker 2: start becoming part of like the songbook?
Speaker 1: It's all weird. Everything is so fucking weird to me,
Speaker 1: but I like hearing my songs out in the wild,
Speaker 1: even if other people are singing them. Now. Stuff I
Speaker 1: happened with Morgan that, you know, I wasn't a fan
Speaker 1: of after that, but at the time when he covered
Speaker 1: the song, I thought, man, this is great. Bunch of
Speaker 1: young people are going to hear the song, and it
Speaker 1: gave me some reassurance that when you're being specific with
Speaker 1: these songs, that's when people really have a close connection
Speaker 1: to them because they think he knew a secret about me.
Speaker 1: How did this song writer know this? It's very specific,
Speaker 1: very detailed feeling that I was having. I thought I
Speaker 1: was alone, And to me, that's the best thing that
Speaker 1: art can do is when somebody says I thought I
Speaker 1: was alone until I heard this. You know, now I
Speaker 1: know there's at least one other person out there that
Speaker 1: feels exactly the same way. I think. To do that,
Speaker 1: you have to, you know, try not to be too vague.
Speaker 1: You can't really write with a target in my mind,
Speaker 1: like a specific audience that you're trying to nail. You
Speaker 1: have to just make yourself the target, you know, and
Speaker 1: write the kind of music that speaks to a very
Speaker 1: detailed account of your own experience, and then you just wait.
Speaker 1: You just do your best job with it, and you
Speaker 1: wait for somebody a thousand miles away to pop up
Speaker 1: and say that exact same thing happened to me. And
Speaker 1: that's a really beautiful thing because then you're reminded of
Speaker 1: what we have in common rather than our differences.
Speaker 2: We're pausing for one last quick break and then we'll
Speaker 2: be back with Jason Isbell. Here's the rest of my
Speaker 2: conversation with Jason Isbel your ability to not only to
Speaker 2: write so personally, but I do know it seems like
Speaker 2: you have a commitment to living your life openly and honestly.
Speaker 2: You know, like similar to the way like Howard Stern.
Speaker 2: You know, let's say, like it seems to have no
Speaker 2: qualms putting any of his follies on display for the world.
Speaker 2: It seems like you have had no qualms doing that.
Speaker 2: And it's helpful for one, I think, to other people,
Speaker 2: because just like a song that's so personal to you
Speaker 2: can be heard by somebody else and they can sense
Speaker 2: that they're not alone, feel that they're not alone, feel seen,
Speaker 2: feel heard by something that relates only to you, but
Speaker 2: now is not only personal, but it's like being a
Speaker 2: married person myself that went through the pandemic. Watching your
Speaker 2: HBO film was like Jesus fucking Christ, we weren't the
Speaker 2: only ones.
Speaker 1: Right, And that was tough, man. That was tough, you know.
Speaker 1: And there are poems because I sit back and think,
Speaker 1: why do I have to do this shit again? You
Speaker 1: know why? I got to tell everybody what's going on
Speaker 1: once again. But with the bigger risks come the bigger
Speaker 1: rewards as far as that goes, And you know, there's
Speaker 1: a certain level of accountability, Like if I know that
Speaker 1: my thing is to be honest with people about how
Speaker 1: I live my life, that I'm going to try really
Speaker 1: hard to live my life the right way in a
Speaker 1: way that I could be proud of, you know. But
Speaker 1: also I sort of see it as most of the
Speaker 1: risks to me are negligible. You know, I'm a person
Speaker 1: from a protected class, and I have been blessed with
Speaker 1: the encouragement and the gifts that I need to climb
Speaker 1: out of trailer Park, Alabama and get to a place
Speaker 1: where I'm really comfortable. And in that way, I kind
Speaker 1: of feel like I'm one of the people with the
Speaker 1: armor on, you know what I'm saying. And those people
Speaker 1: should go to the front of the line because they
Speaker 1: have the armor on. So I can say something that
Speaker 1: somebody else would be afraid to say, you know, and
Speaker 1: then they can resonate with that. They're going to get
Speaker 1: more out of it because it's not necessarily possible for
Speaker 1: them to say, Hey, hands up, here's what's going wrong
Speaker 1: with my life, or here are the mistakes that I've made,
Speaker 1: or hear the things that have been difficult for me.
Speaker 1: They might not be able to start that conversation, but
Speaker 1: they might be able to chime in if you start
Speaker 1: that conversation.
Speaker 2: Was there anyone like that for you growing up?
Speaker 1: That's a good question, you know. I felt like my
Speaker 1: grandfather was pretty good about being open and honest with everybody.
Speaker 1: And when I was a kid, he was a Pentecostal
Speaker 1: preacher in Alabama, and he didn't know how to write
Speaker 1: until he started preaching. My grandmother taught him how to
Speaker 1: write so he could write down his sermons and give
Speaker 1: them in charge. And you know, he'd grown up share
Speaker 1: proper and basically got to the point where, you know,
Speaker 1: he could go to the grocery store and get what
Speaker 1: he wanted, and so the worst thing he could do
Speaker 1: would be send him to the grocery store, because he
Speaker 1: would come back with it all kinds of like old
Speaker 1: fashioned candy, you know. So when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I was like, I want to go to the grocery
Speaker 1: store with him, you know, because it's all the stuff
Speaker 1: that he never had when he was a kid, couldn't
Speaker 1: afford when he was a kid. But he was a
Speaker 1: very honest person, and I noticed that, like when there
Speaker 1: was a deal, when he was buying a car or
Speaker 1: trading a guitar, or trading a horse or an animal
Speaker 1: or something, he usually got beat Almost all the time.
Speaker 1: He would he would get beat in those deals, and
Speaker 1: at one point I thought, Man, this sucks. My granddad
Speaker 1: always gets beaten, they say. But then after a while,
Speaker 1: I thought, you know what that actually is what you
Speaker 1: want to be. You want to be the guy that
Speaker 1: is honest. Because when he would go in, he would say, well,
Speaker 1: this horse has had too much sweet feed and it's foundered,
Speaker 1: so it's not worth much. But somebody else he was
Speaker 1: trading with, would, you know, doctor things up and make
Speaker 1: it look really, you know. And by the end of
Speaker 1: his life I sort of figured out he didn't have
Speaker 1: any regrets really, and I thought that's because he been honest.
Speaker 1: You don't look back on your deathbed and say, I
Speaker 1: wish I'd gotten more for that truck, But you might
Speaker 1: look back and say, I feel bad for cheating so
Speaker 1: many people out of something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you don't know what you're cheating the other
Speaker 2: person out of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't know how they came by their money.
Speaker 1: You don't know how they got that horse. You don't know,
Speaker 1: and you're not interested in it because you're just trying
Speaker 1: to get yours. And I was lucky enough to grow
Speaker 1: up around people who took that stuff seriously and realized
Speaker 1: that what might seem like a loss at the time,
Speaker 1: it was a wind in the long run by being
Speaker 1: more honest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting, man. At what point did you realize
Speaker 2: that that was actually an asset of your grandfather's.
Speaker 1: In my late teens, probably when he was getting on
Speaker 1: in years and didn't have a whole lot of time left,
Speaker 1: I thought, because I did that with all my grandparents
Speaker 1: really when they were close to the end of their life.
Speaker 1: I just kind of found myself, not on purpose, but
Speaker 1: just sort of looking back and thinking, well, how would
Speaker 1: I feel if I was in the spot what I
Speaker 1: have enemies or regrets or people that I wanted to
Speaker 1: settle up with or apologize too. And he really didn't.
Speaker 1: He wasn't afraid. He was a religious man, faithful man,
Speaker 1: and he thought, well, this is gonna be a relief.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go on to somewhere beautiful. He didn't have
Speaker 1: anybody to apologize to. He asked my dad like at
Speaker 1: the end, he's like, you need any money before I go?
Speaker 1: You need any money? My dad was like, no, I
Speaker 1: got my own family and my own job, and I'm
Speaker 1: all right. But that's what he was thinking about still,
Speaker 1: was taking care of other people. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a pretty good way to go out.
Speaker 2: It's a great way to go out. It seems like,
Speaker 2: you know, he knew the meaning of life.
Speaker 1: I think so. I think that's true if you can
Speaker 1: leave with the tab all settled up. But it seems
Speaker 1: like that'll do.
Speaker 2: Do you think you need to live your life as
Speaker 2: honest as you do? To be as honest in yourself?
Speaker 2: Like in other words, can you I'm thinking about like
Speaker 2: a Dylan maybe who Well, maybe he's a bad example
Speaker 2: because I don't know how honest he is in his left.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, he's not. I mean, I think he's honest
Speaker 1: in everything, but I don't think he's truthful. I think
Speaker 1: he's honestly lying about ninety percent of the time. But
Speaker 1: that's what he's committed himself to. And it's like, if
Speaker 1: I wanted to be Bob Dylon, that's what I would
Speaker 1: do too. But I don't want to be Bob Deling.
Speaker 1: I love Bob Dylon, but that's not what I want
Speaker 1: to be. I want to be me, you know, And
Speaker 1: my path, the way that I have found is most
Speaker 1: rewarding for me and gives me an individual voice, is
Speaker 1: to reveal these things in an honest way. Also, I
Speaker 1: kind of like somewhere along the line, I committed myself
Speaker 1: to this idea of unraveling the bullshit and the mystery
Speaker 1: of all of it, this idea that you know, you
Speaker 1: can be a rock and roll star and not behave
Speaker 1: like a terrible man, and you can be a songwriter
Speaker 1: and not have to mythologize everything. I think part of
Speaker 1: that came from like when I was fourteen thirteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: a pearl jam hit and I thought, man, these dudes
Speaker 1: are dressed like me, they look like me, and they're
Speaker 1: not trying to dress it up. They just walk on
Speaker 1: stage and they play these songs and it's amazing. It's
Speaker 1: just as entertaining as David Bowie. To me at the time,
Speaker 1: not that there's more value in one way or the other,
Speaker 1: but it just made more sense for me as a
Speaker 1: person to just continue being who I was and then
Speaker 1: just take that on stage and keep doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you announced you're separating also from Amanda. How are
Speaker 2: you going to navigate that publicly and your songwriting life?
Speaker 1: And I don't know, what do you think I should do?
Speaker 1: I don't know help what do I do? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think I'm just going to try to be honest in
Speaker 1: all the ways that I legally can. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: certain things that we've agreed not to talk about, but
Speaker 1: I think I can still manage to tell people who
Speaker 1: I am and what the truth is from my perspective.
Speaker 1: You know. It's one of those things when not everything
Speaker 1: that Ann's was a face. I think we did a
Speaker 1: lot of really beautiful things together, and I have really
Speaker 1: fond memories of all of that, and I don't regret
Speaker 1: any of it, you know, even the hard stuff. It's
Speaker 1: like when I got into recovery, you know, I wound
Speaker 1: up after a few years looking back and thinking, I
Speaker 1: don't regret even the worst parts of that, because it
Speaker 1: all kind of goes into making me who I am,
Speaker 1: you know. And the time will come when the wounds
Speaker 1: aren't still fresh, The time will come when I'm able
Speaker 1: to take all this and put it into my work
Speaker 1: in a way that is honest and true but makes
Speaker 1: sense for me. I'm going to be patient, and in
Speaker 1: the meantime, I got plenty of other shit to write about.
Speaker 1: That's one thing I think a lot of songwriters miss
Speaker 1: is like the inspiration. You don't need it, and you
Speaker 1: don't need it. It's everywhere. If you can't just look
Speaker 1: out your window and find twenty things to write a
Speaker 1: song about, then you know you're not a real serious
Speaker 1: songwriter yet because it's all over the place.
Speaker 2: Meaning you don't need to write about the thing that
Speaker 2: feels necessarily most pressing in your right life.
Speaker 1: Exactly, yeah, exactly. You might not be ready for that
Speaker 1: right now. You might need to get there through other means,
Speaker 1: you know, work yourself up to it. There might be steps,
Speaker 1: and then somewhere along the way you could discover the
Speaker 1: beauty of allegory. I'm sure I have been writing about
Speaker 1: the things that are going on right now in my
Speaker 1: life for quite a while. You know, I'm currently writing
Speaker 1: about those things, but on the page, it might look
Speaker 1: like I'm writing about a butterfly or a car accident.
Speaker 1: That's the beauty of allegory. You don't have to know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about all the time. You know, you
Speaker 1: don't have to know what the overarching idea. Your brain
Speaker 1: will work on that level if you just focus on
Speaker 1: details and rhyme and making something beautiful happen eventually by
Speaker 1: the end of it. Very often I look down and go, oh,
Speaker 1: I just wrote a song about my marriage, or I
Speaker 1: just wrote a song about my child. This whole time,
Speaker 1: I thought I was writing about football or something. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, fascinating. I forgot to ask, you wrote
Speaker 2: whether Van's on set of Killsing the fire Moon, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Almost all of it? Yeah, A good chunk of
Speaker 1: that record I wrote on the set.
Speaker 2: Did the character you were playing influence your point of
Speaker 2: view as a songwriter at that moment or was it
Speaker 2: easy to keep that separate.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that bill influenced that, but I
Speaker 1: definitely know that the work that I was doing influenced
Speaker 1: it because, on one hand, the most obvious way was
Speaker 1: just watching Marty conduct the whole orchestra, and the fact
Speaker 1: that he was open to hearing ideas from other people.
Speaker 1: And when I went out there, I thought, either it's
Speaker 1: going to be he's going to be a micromanager and
Speaker 1: he's going to be in on every decision, or he's
Speaker 1: not going to be there that much. I did not
Speaker 1: expect him to have that kind of perfect mix of
Speaker 1: those things where he was active. He was on set
Speaker 1: every day, working out in the heat. Even at eighty
Speaker 1: years old. He would make the l's with his fingers
Speaker 1: and look at the shot and say, I want it
Speaker 1: to look like this, you know, amazing, amazing, crazy. It's
Speaker 1: like a movie about a movie about a movie. But
Speaker 1: you know, there was one night where it was just
Speaker 1: me and the scene, and so it was Marty and
Speaker 1: then the ad and all the crew, and I had
Speaker 1: the pistols. When they throw the dog on my front step,
Speaker 1: the dead dog right before I get blown up and
Speaker 1: I walk out. It's part of that montage. And I
Speaker 1: walk out the front door and I see the dog
Speaker 1: and I've got my pistol in my hand, and you know,
Speaker 1: I thought, man, I gotta do this. So first I said,
Speaker 1: I think we need to load this pistol because you know,
Speaker 1: the weight's going to need to look right, and if
Speaker 1: they see it from the end of the barrel for
Speaker 1: any reason, you're gonna want to see slugs and you know.
Speaker 1: So the prop master did the thing where they had
Speaker 1: taken each shellcasing, they had pried the lead out and
Speaker 1: then they had swabbed the inside out, dropped one bebe
Speaker 1: inside the shell, and then pressed the lead back in.
Speaker 1: Then they would shake it. Every time they would load
Speaker 1: one end, they would shake it by my ear and
Speaker 1: I would have to verbally confirm I hear the BB
Speaker 1: and then they would put it into the pistol and
Speaker 1: then shake it and put it into the pistol and
Speaker 1: just to make sure. So that's like when that accidental
Speaker 1: shooting happened on the rust set. I was like, something's
Speaker 1: way off here because I could not have shot anybody
Speaker 1: if I had tried. But after that, I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a single action pistol. And be being from Alabama,
Speaker 1: I used to have a pistol very similar to the
Speaker 1: one that I was holding in a movie, and I
Speaker 1: thought these Yankees don't know about single action. I might
Speaker 1: have to say something, you know. And if I walk
Speaker 1: out on my step, I see the dog, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that it's dead yet. I don't know if the
Speaker 1: people are still in the yard. I'm cocking the pistol
Speaker 1: because with a single action, if you don't cock it,
Speaker 1: you can't fire it. That's why in the old Westerns
Speaker 1: they would hold the trigger down and fan the hammer
Speaker 1: like this. Oh yeah, because it's the hammer that does
Speaker 1: the firing. Like with double action, when you start to
Speaker 1: pull the trigger, the pressure causes the hammer to come
Speaker 1: back and then go forward, but with single action, you
Speaker 1: have to pull the hammer back first. The trigger all
Speaker 1: that does is release it, so the hammer goes forward.
Speaker 1: So that means every time you fire, you've got to
Speaker 1: cock and fire, cock and fire. And so I just
Speaker 1: tapped Marty on the shoulder and I was like, I
Speaker 1: think I would cock the pistol. And Marty said, you
Speaker 1: think you'd cock it? I was like yeah, and I
Speaker 1: explained why. He said, all right, let's shoot it. So
Speaker 1: they shot, and it took another three or four hours.
Speaker 1: They shot the scene of me cocking the pistol, and
Speaker 1: then when I saw the movie. It was in the movie,
Speaker 1: it was the most satisfying click. But taking away from that,
Speaker 1: you know, I went in to produce Weather Veins that
Speaker 1: I'd written mostly out there, and I thought, man, there's
Speaker 1: a way to do this where you can retain your
Speaker 1: vision and still hear what everybody around you has to say,
Speaker 1: and you can let them enjoy participating and making the
Speaker 1: project a better thing, and still this is your movie
Speaker 1: or this is your record, because nobody had any question
Speaker 1: by the end of it who had direct did that movie?
Speaker 1: That was really sort of inspiring for me.
Speaker 2: You know, that's an incredible thing. Yeah, because making music
Speaker 2: can be such a singular.
Speaker 1: Load, like yeah, lonely.
Speaker 2: Solitary thing, and making a film, by necessity, is involved
Speaker 2: so many more people beyond the director, writer or the
Speaker 2: tour you know.
Speaker 1: There are hundreds of people, hundreds of people on that set.
Speaker 1: But you know, he was listening to people and it
Speaker 1: made for a better movie and it was still Marty's movie.
Speaker 1: So that was a good thing to see.
Speaker 2: Was your band grateful?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, we had a great time. We had
Speaker 1: a blast, you know, because it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I would say, why don't you go mess with this?
Speaker 1: For a while, see what you come up with and band.
Speaker 1: There's nothing that a musician likes to hear more than
Speaker 1: that when you're in the studio. Hell yeah, I'll go there,
Speaker 1: turn some knobs and push some buttons.
Speaker 2: I'm glad they had a great arc and I was
Speaker 2: so sad to see him in the movie. I wanted
Speaker 2: to be on tour reunions and just mowing the lawn.
Speaker 1: I get out there, I know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's fulfilling studio time. And he's out there with you now.
Speaker 1: Knock on wood. The quarantine is behind us, I hope.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, same, yeah. Hey man, Well thanks for
Speaker 2: taking the time to chat.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: It's like I wish I could thank you. I want
Speaker 2: to do a damn documentary on that, so.
Speaker 1: Good documentary on it. Yeah yeah, well, thank you. Good
Speaker 1: to talk to you, Jessin. I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Jason Isbel for the chat. We'll be rooting
Speaker 2: for Killers of the Flower Moon at the Oscars. You
Speaker 2: can hear all of our favorite Isabel songs throughout his
Speaker 2: career on a playlist at Broken record podcast dot com.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash
Speaker 2: Broken Record Podcast where you can find all of our
Speaker 2: new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record.
Speaker 2: Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with
Speaker 2: marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
Speaker 2: is Ben Tollinay. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 2: If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider
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Speaker 2: by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.