Jason Isbell never hit rock bottom. But the singer-songwriter saw the bottom clearly enough to stop himself short. In February of 2012, with the support of his manager, friend/musician Ryan Adams, and girlfriend (now wife), singer-songwriter Amanda Shires, the former member of the Drive-By Truckers – Isbell joined the band at 22 and penned some of its greatest tunes, including “Goddamn Lonely Love” – was ready to give up his longstanding fifth of Jack Daniel’s a day.
“I’m not in a job where I’m going to get fired for drinking too much,” Isbell says. “You can drink yourself to death before you drink yourself out of work if you do what I do for a living.”
Following rehab, Isbell began work on the 12 songs that would become his recently released Southeastern – the follow-up to his acclaimed 2011 Here We Rest featuring the Americana Music Honors & Awards Song of the Year “Alabama Pines.” Last week, the record debuted at Number 3 on the Americana Music Association chart.
“There’s more of me on this record, subject wise, than there’s ever been on any other record I’ve done,” Isbell says.
Southeastern is awash with realism, tension and poignancy. It has a conversational language akin to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and Townes Van Zandt’s work from the early ’70s. From alcoholism and death to alienation, Isbell doesn’t withhold anything. The result is a potent collection of epiphanies, nuances of everyday life and heaps of humility.
The soul-bearing ballad “Traveling Alone,” for instance, reveals a period of spiritual bankruptcy: “Pain in the outside lane, I’m tired of answering to myself/ Heart like a rebuilt part, I don’t know how much it’s got left.”
Elsewhere, Isbell revisits relationships in peril on the quaint soundscape heavy with shaker “Songs That She Sang In The Shower”: “In a room by myself, looks like I’m here with the guy that I judge worse than anyone else/ So I pace, and I pray, and I repeat the mantras that might keep me clean for the day.”
“It’s difficult to open up about some things, but I think you really have to overcome your own ego and admit you had problems in the past,” Isbell says. “I feel like when I quit drinking, I became an adult in some ways, which is something I was probably running from all through my 20s.”
On Saturday, Isbell will headline the Monterey Americana Festival at the Fairgrounds. Grammy Award-winner Jim Lauderdale, fiddler Carrie Rodriguez, multi-instrumentalist Ashley Raines and Americana rebels Stryder Callison and The Jackwagons will also be on hand.
Sunday’s lineup is equally impressive, including renowned storyteller and favorite of John Prine and Kris Kristofferson, Todd Snider; revered genre-jumping Texan Joe Ely; The Voice contestant Midas Whale, Camper Van Beethoven founding member Victor Krummenacher; and Ray and The Forget-Me-Nots, whose frontman may be a familiar face in this neck of the woods.
Ray Bertolino was a founding member/lead singer/guitarist in one of Monterey’s most beloved groups, Lover and Strangers, who disbanded in 2002. But don’t expect anything resembling the dancey Roxy Music-meets-punk rock Bertolino churned out around the Peninsula in the ’80s and ’90s. Ray and The Forget-Me-Nots – featuring drummer Mike Fouts, keyboard player Mik Shaffer, bassist Mike Avila and guitarist Mike Harris – provides an opportunity for him to explore new musical territory.
“I certainly wrote some songs that had longevity and meant a lot to some people, but this stuff means a lot more to me and it goes in a different direction than I’ve ever gone in before,” he says. “It’s exciting.”
Bertolino wears his heart on his sleeve on the outfits’ debut Re-Creation. He even gives a “Ballad of John and Yoko”-kissed shoutout to his wife on the bluesy, Clapton-esque “My Wife.”
“I look at Lovers and Strangers as a wonderful experience, but it cornered us in a way because we wanted people to get up on their feet and dance and we favored upbeat songs,” Bertolino says. “That’s what our fans wanted to hear, so we kind of wrote in that vein.”
One of Re-Creation’s highlights is “Let it Go,” originally written by Bertolino several years ago for Lovers and Strangers, but the tune hadn’t found fruition before the band split up. Complete with gospel-spirited backup singers and organ, the anthemic tune is both eruptive and unobtrusively down to earth – think Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers’ “Refugee.”
Fresh off performing the first Bottle Rock Festival in Napa with the likes of The Black Keys, the Flaming Lips and Jane’s Addiction, Bertolino plans to continue riding the wave that is Ray and The Forget-Me-Nots until the songs stop coming. In the meantime, he already has a batch of new material to debut in Monterey and will head back into the studio some time this summer.
MONTEREY AMERICANA FESTIVAL happens 11am-7pm Saturday and Sunday, June 22-23, at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, 2004 Fairgrounds Road, Monterey. $45 per day or $80 2-day pass; $20 children 8-17; free for children 7 and under; $350 2-person VIP.www.montereyamericanafestival.com/
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