Jason Isbell was born and raised in Alabama and has called Nashville home for several years, but his name is just as synonymous with Georgia as anywhere else -- he spent six years with the Athens-based group Drive-By Truckers, and considers Atlanta a home away from home.
The alt-country singer-songwriter, who has been steadily building a fan base for his solo work since parting ways with the Truckers in 2007, says there's one big difference he sees at his Atlanta shows these days.
"Well, there’s more people there now, so that’s good," Isbell said with a laugh from his home in Nashville. "Honestly, Atlanta was really one of the first places that we ever had any success when I was with the Drive-By Truckers, and then especially when I had the solo project, too. We could always count on a good crowd at The Earl or Star Bar or even on up to the Tabernacle or the Fox...I would consider an Atlanta show as much of a hometown gig as anywhere, really, for me at this point."
Isbell will get the chance to play a "hometown" show this weekend as the headliner for Parklife music festival , being held this Sunday in Piedmont Park.
He discussed his new baby, commercial success and his beloved Atlanta Braves in advance of the show.
Q: First, congratulations on your new baby, (Mercy)!
A: Thank you. She's a good one, we think we're gonna keep her. We like her.
Q: Since 2013, you got married (to fellow musician Amanda Shires) and became a father. How do you think your new roles will change the types of songs you write or the albums you make?
A: I really don't know if it'll change the type of songs I write. I really only write one type of song, and it's mostly a way for me to try to unpack certain things and explain the world to myself, and then, if it's done right, to communicate with other people in that way. I pretty much always have the same goal. But, that being said, every time I write a song or a record, I try to make it a document of where I am in my life. So I'm sure that since these things are a part of my life now, that they will find their way into the songs, because I plan on continuing to document my own life as long as I can.
Q: Your 2013 album, "Southeastern," has sold more than 170,000 copies, and your new album, "Something More Than Free," has already sold more than 100,000 copies. How important is commercial success to you?
A: It doesn’t hurt at all. It’s not the ultimate goal, but once you’ve got the ultimate goal taken care of, which is, for me, to be able to continue making music as a career and continue to communicate with people and write the types of songs that I want to write -- once that’s all going as well as it possibly can, then yeah, it’s great to have it work on more of a national or international scale. I couldn’t tell you it doesn’t matter, because it certainly does.
I own my record label and I own my publishing. It’s important to me to handle the business side of things correctly because if you don’t, you don’t have anything to retire on, and you have to the kinds of records that you don’t want to make or take the kinds of gigs you don’t want to take because you have to take care of yourself and your family. So I would much rather sell a couple hundred thousand copies of a record that I really believe in now, rather than have to go play the chitlin circuit when I’m 50 to play the bills.
Q: Your wife plays with you onstage and records with you, and you work with her on her projects. How are you able to separate your personal life from your professional life?
A: I don't want to necessarily want to speak for her, but I'm probably pretty correct in assuming that she feels the same way I do about it. I don't think music is part of my professional life as opposed to my personal life. It's much more personal to me being on stage and performing with my wife or going in the studio and playing on her songs or when she helps me finish something of mine. That's just a really great way to spend time together on top of the fact that it's our job. So we don't have to divide – we can always sit down and listen to music or we'll analyze records. That's the great thing about having a job like we have, you don't have to make it separate from your personal life. You can enjoy it and still make a living off of it.
Q: You're a die-hard Braves fan. What do you think of their performance this year?
I’ll tell you something. I’m not as disappointed in the team – and this is going to be a strange thing, but I’ll tell you – I feel like the Braves organist, Matthew Kaminski, I know him, and he’s a really cool guy...Matthew used to be able to play these really hilarious, witty songs when people would come up to bat, and I don’t think they let him do it anymore. Now he's got to play all this stuff from the '20s and '30s and it’s not nearly as entertaining to be at the ballpark as it used to be. There are only a handful of those guys left playing organ at baseball stadiums, and Matthew is probably the best in the business. That bothers me more than the team – the team could lose 120 games and it wouldn’t really piss me off. I was a fan in the '80s. I’ll always be a fan of the team, I just hope they don’t take all the fun out of being at the ballpark.
Q: Would you be open to playing at a Braves game?
A: Oh yeah, that'd be great. I'd love to do that. Singing that National Anthem is a difficult thing. I don't know that I would want to do that, because it's a hard song to sing, and if you mess it up, you're all over the Internet. But I would be happy to play a concert or throw out a first pitch or anything like that. I'd love that.
Q: What do you think about the team's move to Cobb County (in 2017)?
It makes me feel old, because the majority of the games I went to were in the parking lot of the old stadium. I was almost out of high school when they built Turner Field. Most of the games that I actually got a chance to go to were at the old Fulton County Stadium. So that fact that they’ve already burned through what I consider to be a new stadium makes me feel like an old person. You know, if it helps my dad park the car, then I’m all for the new stadium. Because I remember he used to think – we’d drive to the games, and he would think there’d be no way we could park up close and we’d wind up parking five miles away from the stadium and then we’d get to the stadium and there’d be a thousand empty parking spots, so if they could figure out a way to remedy that…
I’m not a local, so I can’t say civically how I feel about them moving the stadium, but as a fan, I love the way new baseball stadiums look. If they build a pretty new stadium, I think it’d be fun to go see them there.
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