The Healing Power of Art...

"Running with our eyes closed..." - Jason Isbell

Yes, Jason is one of the great songwriters. No doubt. We own 3 or 4 of his albums. All of them are intelligent, beautifully-written and masterfully recorded works of art. Jason plumbs the depths of his life. Child of a messy marriage & divorce, a raucous stint with the Drive By Truckers, a long trail of substance abuse; drinking (years & years of hard drinking), and drugging.  Jason goes there. It is the core and the code of his creative life. There is a great documentary about Jason and his musical collaborator & wife Amanda Shires streaming on HBO right now. You come away with a real appreciation of Jason's excavation of his past, and his self-reflective songwriting process; he has a deep desire to examine the trauma and the pain of a life. He isn't afraid to dive in and try to depict all the hard, gory, details, using those experiences to create shimmering, beautiful, powerful, heartfelt and real songs. As Jason tells it, he is working on himself through his art, working on being a better human being. He is painfully aware of the preciousness of the moment. Seeing the world with clarity and empathy and trying to capture it all with evocative, well-chosen words and images. It is all quite inspiring and cathartic for him, and for anyone who goes on the journey with him. He is intentionally, obsessively dealing with the multi-headed, Human Thing, making art, poetry, & beautiful music out of the hard trails and smoking wreckage.