Jason isbell felt a rush of
familiarity when he watched the
final episode of Mad Men on his
tour bus.As he saw Don Draper
go AWOL from his advertising job and
embark on an aimless cross-country road
trip, Isbell recalled his own life around
2008, after his first marriage had fallen
apart and he’d been fired from the
Drive-By Truckers due largely to his heavy
drinking. Isbell bought a motorcycle and
took off from his home in Alabama. “I
drove down to Florida, back up through
Georgia and visited some of the girls I had
met on the road,” he says in a husky Alabama
drawl. “It’s a wonder I didn’t kill myself.
I got home feeling and looking worse
than when I’d left, just completely lost.”
Isbell eventually went to rehab and
turned his dark past into some of the best
music to come out of Nashville this decade.
On 2013’s Southeastern, he reflected
on cocaine nights at Super 8’s, mistreating
vulnerable women, and starting over. “I
was behaving in a way that was deplorable
on a lot of levels,” Isbell says, drinking Red
Bull and smoking cigarettes on his tour
bus, outside the Capitol Theatre in Portchester,
New York, one recent afternoon.
Keith Richards “Trouble”
Spin this salty jam for
the first time, and you
just might think you’ve
stumbled across a
most excellent outtake
from Nellcôte in the
Seventies. Nope – it’s
a promising preview of
Keith’s upcoming solo
album, Crosseyed
Heart, due this fall.