Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit @ Òran Mór, Glasgow - Saturday 17 May 2014

The petite Erin McKeown, all the way from Fredricksburg, Virginia, walked on stage, plugged her electric guitar in and kicked off her set whilst many of the audience were still chatting and trying to get a drink at the bar at the rear of the venue. However, by halfway through the first song many had hushed and were making their way to the stage to hear her 'stuff'. Looking a little like Imelda May (it was the hair that did it!) Erin powered through her support set and played some fascinating, fuzzed up guitar accompanying her singing and the songs were interesting lyrically. Although a multi-instrumentalist, tonight Erin stuck to her guitar and sang some great songs, I especially liked the one about Judy Garland (one of the many she has written about the lady), The Jailer and the humorous one about American cities Rhode Island Is Famous For You on which she played some cool jazz style guitar! 

Check out Erin's web site @ www.erinmckeown.com and you can download a copy of her album Civics.

Jason and the lads where up next and there was a real feeling of anticipation around us, I for one was psyched up for the show as Òran Mór is one of my favourite Glasgow venues and I hadn't seen Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit before. I was not to be disappointed, let me tell you! Incidentally, the venue's name Òran Mór is Gaelic for 'great melody of life' or 'big song' and so was very appropriate.

On stage tonight we had (from our left to right) Sadler Vaden (guitar), Jimbo Hart (bass), Chad Gamble (drums), Jason Isbell (guitar & vocals) & Derry DeBorja (keyboards). The stage at Òran Mór is small and it helped the band connect and play some fine stuff. They were so tight that one would have struggled to get a rizla paper between them! Throughout the set Sadler played so gratifyingly good solos and backed up Jason's guitar work to wonderful effect. And so, at the end of the opener Flying Over Water there was a well deserved explosion of cheering, hollering and general bonhomie and so the band knew that they were in for a great night too.

Jason, looking a tad like a young Orson Welles, sang some superb vocals and played some top notch solos on both electric and acoustic guitars. It is no wonder that (for me) he was a seminal member of the Drive-By Truckers (2001-2007) and tonight he was to perform a number of DBT/JI songs which come from that band's most fertile period. Perhaps my favourite on the night was Goddamn Lonely Love on which Jason played out the song with a great guitar solo and the audience went 'bat shit'! Many of the other songs came from Jason's 2013 album Southeastern and credit to the 400 Unit that they were note perfect throughout, well to my ears anyway! 

Talking of the 400 Unit, the name comes the "400 Unit" a former colloquial name of a psychiatric ward in Florence, Alabama. Appropriate? You may think so but I couldn't possibly comment! The band state that their influences include "Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Prince, Led Zeppelin, Free, The Faces, Neutral Milk Hotel, Beatles, Stones, Crowded House, Merle Haggard, Queen, Nirvana, Derek and the Dominos etc", (I've checked out Neutral Milk Hotel and enjoyed them!) so quite an international background and their songs certainly travel well beyond the boundaries of the Southern States. In fact so good are many of the songs that Jason was nominated for best song, best album and best artist of the year for 2014 in the Americana Music Associations honours awards. Yip he is that good and perhaps much credit should also go to Mrs Isbell - Amanda Shires, the Texan singer and violin player who help Jason back onto the 'righteous path'. Behind every great man......

Writing about the song Decoration Day, based on a story about Jason's family members, Nick Rynerson attests that Isbell has "done what a long line of storytellers have done before him: giving us tangible truth in a beautiful, unquantifiable parable". (You can see Nick Rynerson's article about the song @ www.patheos.com....) Certainly the lyrics make one think about the human condition:

It’s Decoration Day 

and I’ve got a family in Mobile Bay 

and they’ve never seen my Daddy’s grave. 

But that don’t bother me, it ain’t marked anyway. 

Cause I got dead brothers in Lauderdale south 

and I got dead brothers in east Tennessee. 

My Daddy got shot right in front of his house 

he had no one to fall on but me. 

In addition to the music we also saw a humorous side to Jason Isbell, for example when he recounted a story about Chet Atkins being praised for the fabulous music his guitar produced to which he retorted on placing the guitar back in a stand "So, how's it doing now?"! And on another occasion thanking us for enjoying the new songs so much, he likened it to the feeling one gets when the neighbours meet the youngest kids, and thinking what if they don't like them? Well no fears on that score, as neighbours - albeit on the other side of a rather large pond - we loved the new kids and we would love him to brings them around again! 

On a musical note, the 5 guys on stage all contributed greatly to a grand night. From Sadler's fine solos on Decoration Day, Heart On A String and some smooth slide guitar on Cover Me Up, to Jimbo Hart's studied playing on the heart rending Elephant and his pounding and pulsating playing on Never Gonna Change, to Chad Gamble's subtle brush work on Stockholm, Travelling Alone & Codeine and his general drumming on the likes of 

Different Days and Derry Deborja's sympathetic keyboards on Relatively Easy, Songs That She Sang In The Shower and his "gypsy typewriter" (accordion) on New South Wales. Then finally, we had Jason Isbell whose singing was especially powerful on Cover Me Up and his guitar playing ranged from delicate on Goddamn Lonely Love to grunge on Never Gonna Change.

I mentioned earlier that I consider Jason Isbell to have been an integral part of the DBTs and tonight he showed just how well he plays guitar and sings superbly written songs. Perhaps the best song of the night was the emotive, moving and desperately sad Elephant from his current album. It is another example of how he is able, like Springsteen, to tell a deep and meaningful story in a few short verses.

She said Andy you crack me up,

Seagrams in a coffee cup,

sharecropper eyes and her hair almost all gone.

When she was drunk she made cancer jokes,

she made up her own doctor's notes,

surrounded by her family, I saw that she was dying alone.

It brings to mind some of the songs on Ryan Adams' Love Is Hell album which deals with the same tragic, personal loss. On a lighter note, Super 8 could have been written by Adams and was a great song to end the show on, being as it is, a great rock n' roll song with a catchy sing-a-long chorus. The audience danced and sang along as the show came to a rocking finale. Indeed, Jason explained that due to the curfew they would forgo the usual leaving stage, wait, return and play an encore part of the show and they blasted straight into Super 8 after the last song I wish to highlight, the wonderful Outfit. This is another autobiographical number and was written for Jason's dad who was a house painter to trade.

You wanna grow up to paint houses like me

With a trailer in my yard till you're 23

You wanna feel old after 42 years

Keep dropping the hammer and grinding the gear

The song is packed full of good advice and gives a nod to John Lennon with the line "Don't tell them you're bigger than Jesus" and advises one "Don't worry about losing your accent, cause a Southern Man tells better jokes"! And so the curtain came down metaphorically on another cracking gig. We had danced and sang. We had laughed and been brought near to tears and as we left the crypt of the former Kelvinside Parish Church, and spilled out onto Great Western Road we had a new musical experience to look back on with joy and delight.

 

ªThank you and good nightª

If the video link above doesn't work listen to Elephant here:

Set List

21:00

Flying Over Water

Stockholm
Tour Of Duty 
Decoration Day (Drive-By Truckers cover) 
Goddamn Lonely Love (Drive-By Truckers cover)
Heart On A String (Candi Staton cover)
Different Days
Live Oak
Alabama Pines
Cover Me Up
Relatively Easy
Songs That She Sang In The Shower 
New South Wales
Codeine 
Travelling Alone
Elephant 
Never Gonna Change (Drive-By Truckers cover)
Outfit (Drive-By Truckers cover)

(pretend) Encore 

21:55
Super 8