For the second straight winter, a celebrated Americana musician played Portland’s State Theatre despite the fact that their popularity has well outgrown the venue capacity. Last February, Brandi Carlile dazzled local audiences with a solo performance. On Monday, Jason Isbell brought his full band to rattle the rafters.

For the artists, it’s a chance to flex their muscles after recent Grammy wins. For us, these concerts are a reprieve from the cold weather and short daylight hours. We deserve it, and we’re fortunate that artists like them love to play here.

Isbell’s songs double as short stories and character studies, like his hero John Prine or Bruce Springsteen. Drawing from his own background and his journey to sobriety, he trains his lens on people in unteneble situations who persevere and strive to escape; even his love songs track as a desire for salvation and safety. As with Springsteen, he takes a folk background and filters it through a rock band, the 400 Unit. Though various members had backed up Isbell for some time, they coalesced as a permanent group worthy of its own distinct name and even began getting co-billing credit on Isbell’s album covers beginning in 2017.

The 400 Unit adds muscle to songs that have more supple, acoustic origins – such as “24 Frames” – without cluttering the compositions. In concert, Isbell frequently shouted out new bassist Anna Butterss, who offered evocative counterplay to his quieter numbers. The star sideman, however, remains Sadler Vaden, a genuine guitar hero. Isbell, no slouch on the instrument himself, relished the opportunity to play sideman for a turn on “Honeysuckle Blue,” by Vaden’s former band Drivin’ n’ Cryin’. They then played “Decoration Day,” a song Isbell wrote while in the Drive-By Truckers, as a Neil Young-esque guitar dirge.

The set mostly favored material from the band’s 2023 album “Weathervanes,” including the heart-rending Grammy-winner “Cast Iron Skillet,” with a generous side helping of songs from Isbell’s 2013 breakthrough “Southeastern.” The concert’s highlights also included two tracks from the 2017 album “The Nashville Sound,” including the set-closing love song “If We Were Vampires” and the pensive “Last of My Kind.”

Modern country music is full of nostalgia for better times, often stripped of the melancholy inherent in nostalgia and presented as joyful celebrations of the past. In songs like “Last of My Kind,” Isbell takes that basic framework while also looking at the protagonist’s present and wondering about their future. He also accepts that the character’s history laid the foundation for a troubled present and depicts the past as something that nips at your heels as you attempt to flee.

Why do his fans keep coming back to hear these same stories over and over again? For starters, the songs rock; you can dance to them, you can drink a beer with your friends to them, and there are far worse ways to spend a Monday night in Maine. But somewhere in the tales of tragedy, romance and redemption, of pushing through when life seems like a dead end, is an empathy that speaks to common desires we all share. At their core, his songs are reminders to forgive others, and to forgive ourselves, and it’s something that we all need to periodically hear.

Robert Ker is a freelance writer in Portland. He can be reached at bobzker@gmail.com.

Copy the Story Link

« Previous

FX reaches back over 400 years for its next ambitious series, adapting the hit novel ‘Shogun’

Next »

In court, Don Henley recounts the making of Eagles’ megahit ‘Hotel California’