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Podcast Notes: Broken Record - Jason Isbell Episode
Episode Overview Title: Jason Isbell Hosts: Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam, Justin Richmond Description: The episode features singer-songwriter Jason Isbell discussing his career, recent achievements, and personal life, particularly in light of his latest album *Weathervanes* and his role in Martin Scorsese's film *Killers of the Flower Moon*.
Key Themes and Discussions
Jason Isbell’s Recent Achievements
- Grammy Win: Isbell’s album *Weathervanes* has won the Grammy for Best Americana Album.
- Film Role: He plays a significant role in *Killers of the Flower Moon*, which is nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars.
- Documentary: An HBO documentary about the making of his previous album *Reunions* was released, delving into his personal life.
Experience in Film Acting
- Preparation for Acting: Isbell described the process of preparing for his role, especially acting alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. He had no formal acting training and relied on guidance from other actors on set.
- Character Depth: Discusses the complexity of his character, Bill Smith, and how uncertainty in motivations can enhance storytelling.
- Emotional Scenes: Isbell shares the challenges of acting in distressing scenes, especially a pivotal death scene, where he had to convey authentic emotions.
Insights on Songwriting
- Writing Process: Isbell talks about writing during the filming of *Killers of the Flower Moon* and how the environment and character could influence his songwriting.
- Challenges of Rock Songs: He expresses difficulty in writing traditional rock songs, feeling that introspective and emotional songwriting comes more naturally to him.
- Allegory in Writing: He emphasizes the use of allegory, conveying complex emotions through metaphorical content in his songs.
Personal Life and Transparency
- Divorce and Honesty: Isbell reflects on his marital separation and how he intends to navigate that experience through his songwriting while maintaining honesty.
- Influence of Grandfather: Shares stories about his grandfather's honest nature and how it shaped his own values and approach to transparency in storytelling.
- Audience Connection: Discusses the importance of being specific in songwriting, allowing listeners to connect with the emotional truths expressed in his work.
Cultural Observations
- Commentary on Historical Context: Isbell comments on the representation of Native American narratives in *Killers of the Flower Moon* and how it challenges historical portrayals in cinema.
- Cultural Responsiveness: He reflects on the importance of understanding different perspectives when discussing sensitive topics, particularly in storytelling and representation.
Highlights and Quotations
- On Acting: "I thought I could really screw this all up, you know, and they could send me home."
- On Character Development: "Uncertainty is a lot more interesting to me."
- On Transparency in Music: "With the bigger risks come the bigger rewards."
- On Songwriting: "You don't need to write about the thing that feels necessarily most pressing in your life."
Conclusion In this episode, Jason Isbell shares profound insights about his journey as an artist, his experiences in acting, and the intricacies of songwriting. His commitment to honesty and emotional depth resonates throughout the discussion, offering listeners a glimpse into his creative process and personal life. The conversation not only highlights his achievements but also his perspective on culture, storytelling, and the shared human experience.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:06Pushkin. This is an iHeart Podcast. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speedtest. And they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.
0:48where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ukla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025. Every great music conversation goes beyond the surface. The influence that shaped an artist's sound. The moment that changed their creative direction. The story behind the story that fans never hear. Claude helps you discover those deeper connections. Upload interviews, liner notes, or music journalism, and Claude reveals patterns across an artist's entire journey, showing how influences become innovations. Whether you're a music journalist, passionate fan, or someone who loves understanding creative processes, Claude matches your curiosity about what really drives great artists.
1:29Try Claude for free at claude.ai slash brokenrecord. This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Traveling is one of life's greatest joys. Honestly, can anything be more exhilarating? Well, actually, yeah, with Chase Sapphire Reserve. It's your gateway to the world's most captivating destinations. First, you will earn eight times points on all purchases through Chase Travel. And the card gets you into Sapphire Lounge by the club at select airports nationwide and access to one-of-a-kind experiences. Whether you are booking a once-in-a-lifetime trip or your next weekend escape, Discover more with Chase Sapphire Reserve at chase.com slash sapphire reserve.
2:11Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval, terms apply. The last couple of years have been huge for Jason Isbell. The Alabama-born singer-songwriter's latest album, Weather Veins, won the Grammy for Best Americana album this year. he also snagged a role in Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, which is up for Best Picture at this year's Oscars. Then there was a critically acclaimed HBO documentary released last year about the making of Isbell's previous album, Reunions, that also put his personal life on display, warts and all. On today's episode, I talked to Jason Isbell about the exhilarating experience of filming Killers of the Flower Moon and how he prepared to act in scenes opposite Leonardo DiCaprio.
2:58Heads up, if you haven't seen the movie yet, one, you should, and two, there's definitely major spoilers in our conversation, so just know that going in. Jason also contemplates how he'll write about the dissolution of his marriage and why he struggles to write a balls-out rock song. This is Broken Record. Line of notes for the digital age. I'm Justin Richman. Here's my conversation with Jason Isbell. Hey, how are you, man? I'm doing well, thanks. Having a good day. How about yourself? Yeah, having a good day. Having a good day. Great. We met at Shangri-La with your manager, Tracy and Rick, like 2020.
3:38Yeah, it's been a little while. Yeah, it's been a little while. It's been a long time. That was a good day, though, once I got out of the car. I know that takes a long time to get out there from L.A. It's a long drive, and I think you had been rehearsing with Mavis Staples, maybe, or to do something with Mavis that day? Yes, it was. it was Mavis's 80th birthday. And yeah, I did all three of those. I did one in LA, one in Chicago, and one in New York that year. That's amazing. Yeah. That's amazing. You gotta, you know, it's Mavis. Whatever Mavis says, you just say yes and you go do it. Yeah, time is flying, man.
4:13But I'm glad we still have some legends like her around. Yeah, no doubt. So, no doubt. Burn Willie. I know, I know, really. Willie is still kicking, man. Still out doing shows. This is unbelievable. I think Willie, the thing that gets me about him is like, you know, people always say when you talk about like political stuff that you're going to run off half of your audience. But I think unless you're Willie Nelson, you don't have an audience that is made up of every different type of person. Why do you think that? I mean, is it just because the decades he's been at it? I think it's part of a part of what he does.
4:49I think it's the way he writes songs and the way he performs. And yeah, also it's the fact that he's been doing this for nearly eight decades now. Because then people sort of see you as more of an institution than just a personality. And they figure that Willie's weathered a whole lot of different kinds of storms. Right, yeah, because I guess certainly early in his career, he alienated the traditional country establishment early. So I guess he's gone through those various times of alienating this potential fan base and that one to arrive at the place. I guess not too unlike Snoop where it's kind of like...
5:28Right, that's true. Yeah, that's true. Probably why they get along so well. That and one other reason. But yeah, I think you're right. At a certain point, you know, when you're that much of a legend, you're just kind of like, you know, more of a piece of the fabric of cultural society rather than just an individual trying to do a job. Yeah, not to butter you up, but it seems like you're inching the way your career has gone from being a really incredible guitarist, great songwriter, to probably an even better songwriter and actor. It's a lot. It's been a lot. It's been really nice. The opportunities have been good ones.
6:10And I felt like I've gotten to do it at a pace, for the most part, at a pace that I'm comfortable with. And I'm 45 now, so it's not like all of a sudden I'm going to be shocked by the pitfalls of celebrity. It's just like, it's not really going to bother me much at this point, you know. So I'm happy that things are going the way they are. It's been a really nice few years. Yeah. I want to talk about music before we talk about that. Killers of the Flower Moon floored me. The script, the acting, the way it was assembled. and your acting was like, who knew? I didn't know that was what was going to happen.
6:50I thought when I got there, I thought I could really screw this all up, you know, and they could send me home. But I do feel like at every stage, people were working on that movie in a way that I think they were more invested with telling that story than they would have been in just entertaining people. And you could sense that from, you know, craft services to hair and makeup all the way up to Marty and his ADs. It's like everybody there had a purpose that was beyond just making a good movie. And that kind of atmosphere really helped me do something that I didn't know if I could do or not. And then the other actors on set were so gracious with their time.
7:35I would just say, what do I do here? You know, and they would tell me, well, here's what I would do. So you would just ask. Oh yeah. Yeah. Straight up. And I told him that from the start, I was like, I don't have any training with this. I've never acted in anything before. I've done some voiceover stuff and played myself in a couple of things, but never really acted. And I said, I'm just going to go ask people what to do. And then I will try my best to do that. And I think that was kind of refreshing for, you know, Ellen, the casting director and some of the producers and stuff. Cause they're like, all right, well, we can work with that.
8:06Coachable. Yeah, very highly, highly coachable. That was my MO for that whole process. But the four women who were playing the Osage sisters were extremely helpful to me because they would come up and say, who do we know in this room? What did we do this morning before this scene started? How was our night last night? And just kind of things that would get me in the headspace of character rather than think about the details of, oh my God, did I do my bow tie right? You know, that was super helpful. And there was a high standard of expectation, I think. But at the same time, everybody understood that, you know, I was not a professional actor and they sort of helped me get to the point where I felt comfortable.
8:52Your role literally, quite literally changed from the one that you were offered to the one that you wound up playing, which was Bill Smith. Yeah. So what point did you realize you were going to have a scene basically going head to head with Leonardo DiCaprio? Well, I had to read that scene as part of my audition because at first, you know, I had been offered some like smaller cameo roles and I just went back and studied as hard as I could, got as much information on the story and from David's book, the source material, and then went back and watched all of his like Library of Congress readings and Q &As and found all the public record documentation on everybody after the end of the movie that they were telling, you know.
9:34And then finally, I'm just on this laptop in my room, and there's Leo and Marty. On Zoom? On Zoom, yeah, because it was the height of the pandemic. And, you know, I'm just there. And I kind of slicked my hair back and put on a brown shirt that looked like it could have existed 100 years ago. I think it was VisVim was what I was wearing because it was the closest I had to a 100-year-old Oklahoma shirt, you know. and just wound up doing that like at home on my, what was it, 41st, 42nd birthday, I think. Wow. Yeah, so I was terrified. I was terrified. But I was also determined, you know. I didn't want to get that close to it and then not get it, you know.
10:20Yeah. Having a Zoom audition that's you and Martin Scorsese and DeCat, I mean, that's heady. Yeah, it was a lot, man. It was a lot. Does he walk you through it? Not really. You just start reading. That was that. And I sort of, I thought to myself, I need to just do things and not be anything. And that was what helped me more once I got on the set. You know, somehow through the process of trying to figure out what to do, I landed on the idea that self-awareness was the enemy. And if you spend any time or any energy thinking, does this look right? What do I look like? What do I sound like? Then that's going to take you out of the moment.
11:06So I was there thinking, don't focus on anything except the conversation that you're having with Ernest. Not with Leo. It doesn't matter that it's Leo. It's Ernest right now. And you're not Jason. You're Bill. And that's what's happening. And so that's what I did. I just tried to do that. I think the accent helped me a whole lot. I think the fact that I had sort of adopted certain mannerisms of people that I grew up around in Alabama. In my mind, Bill was kind of like a building contractor, somebody who wanted to look like a big deal, but necessarily wasn't the most confident person on the inside.
11:49Yeah. And I just played it like that. I just thought, you know, I'm this guy that my dad didn't like when I was eight years old because he was, you know, wearing a fur coat at the football field. I'm that, you know, I'm a peacock. Yeah. Bill wasn't quite trying to fit in with what was going on around him, anything going on around him. No, no. Ultimately, in the best way, I mean, more in terms of, you know, clearly had the moral high ground. Probably. But we don't know, you know, we don't know because I think that's another point that the movie makes is that, you know, You're given the evidence that Ernest and Hale, these people are bad people doing bad things.
12:28But with some of the tertiary characters, especially like Bill, you don't ever really know if he's there purely out of good motivations or if he's there to do the same thing that they're doing. And I sort of started seeing this as a real gift because uncertain is a lot more interesting to me. As an entertainer, performer, artist, whatever, I like to figure out what I'm talking about as I'm going, when I'm writing a song or anything or playing a solo or whatever. So with Bill, I kind of thought to myself, well, the audience is not going to know exactly if my motivations are pure or not. So I don't have to know that either.
13:14You know, if I deliver a shadowy character to them, then that's what they're going to take from it. And at the end of the movie, I had so many people that watched the movie saying, you know, was Bill a good guy or a bad guy? Did he murder his first wife and marry her sister or did bad things just happen to him? And I don't know. I didn't even consider that as a possibility that he murdered the first wife. Yeah, I saw the same movie you did. Maybe, maybe not, you know. Yeah. But wasting illness, that didn't hold up for very long. You know, you don't hear people dying of wasting illness now. So it's kind of like if I had to bet money on it, I would say that, yeah, Bill probably did kill his first wife and then marry her sister to keep those same land rights in his name.
14:02Wow. And that's probably why his character and Ernest were so at odds. You know, it was in my mind, the way I was playing it, was because we're both con, man. We're just not working together. And nobody hates more than that dynamic, you know? Yes. What was it like to play the scene where you're dying? That was tough. That was tough. I tried to, like, get out of having to go full on, you know? And, like, right before we started to shoot, I was like, so I'm in shock, right? You know, I'm talking to Adam, the assistant director. And I'm like, I'm playing this like I'm in shock. I'm not feeling all of this.
14:39I just got blown up. I don't really know what's going on. And Adam was like, yeah, sure, whatever. And then it occurred to me, Adam doesn't give a fuck. Adam's trying to get everybody where they're supposed to be. He doesn't care. So I get down there, and the first time, I'm kind of like taking it easy. And then I hear Marty over the fucking walkie-talkies. Like, you're on a 10. You are on a 10. You're feeling every bit of this. And I was like, shit, now I have to really embarrass myself, you know. So I did about three more takes where I was just screaming my head off. And, you know, luckily I was uncomfortable because I had played a show in Salt Lake City on Friday night.
15:15And then I flew on a private right after I got off stage to Oklahoma to rehearse Saturday morning at 8 a.m. And then after the rehearsal, I got back on that jet and went to Red Rocks and played two nights at Red Rocks in Colorado. And then came back to Oklahoma to shoot the scene. So I had been up all weekend. I'd played three shows and rehearsed that scene. And then, you know, it's late at night and the makeup just took forever. So much makeup. And you can't touch your face. Like I accidentally scratched my forehead. You know, everything was itching. And I did this one time and, oh, my God, the Swiss makeup guy was all over me.
15:57He's like, you cannot touch your face. You cannot touch your face. You know, I was like, shit, I'm just going to have to itch, you know. And it had taken him hours to put it on. And then at one point, he says, okay, so in other movies, the blood goes around the eye. But in Marty's movies, the blood goes in the eye. And I was like, all right, let's fucking do it, you know. So I just held my eye open and he squirted it right on the eyeball, you know. Do you even know what this stuff's made of? No, no clue. No idea, you know. and I'm laying down like in the house, you know, which was the house that we had filmed in.
16:33The house had been there for 100 years and then they took it down. But I'm laying there, they're sticking all this stuff in me and piling more like wood on top of my body. And the shot is one of those Scorsese tracking shots, you know, where it just comes in and weaves around the house until it gets to the side of my face. Beautiful shot. I mean, one of his real signature moves. You know, when I found out it was that kind of shot, I was like, holy shit, and I get to be the focal point of one of those shots. It was amazing, but... A shot that goes back to mean streets. Exactly, yeah. Something that he started doing at the beginning of his career and perfected early, and that's how you feel like you're in his universe, you know?
17:12Yeah. But it was super humid, and it was late, and summertime in Oklahoma, and between takes, if I closed my eye, it would stay shut because that fake blood would kind of coagulate a little bit. And so I couldn't move my arms because they were under all that wood and debris. And so when they would call action, I would have to sort of start the process of peeling my eye open without using my hands at all because my eyes had to be open when the camera got to me. So I was laying there screaming while I was trying to open my eye, And I wound up not having to act necessarily as much because it was so uncomfortable that it was a little bit easier to just scream like you're in pain and pissed off and terrified, you know.
18:03Wow, man. It was hard. It was really hard because I'd never done anything like that. And it was like, I think it took us four takes, which I was pretty happy about. It didn't take all night. I don't know that that's a predicament too many actors have really been in to have been blown up. I mean, you know, like sure in a action flick in the 80s, like plenty of people got blown up, but you get blown up off the shot and you're just kind of not seen again. But then to have to act like you're blown up and then you have to act. I don't know who else is really I'm sure it's happened. Yeah, it happens, but not a lot.
18:34Yeah, not a lot, especially in a movie that's worth a shit. You know, there's a lot of people in Robocop that are that way. But in a Scorsese movie and, you know, I had to really do it. But there's something about the way he handled the death scenes in that movie. He's done this in a lot of other ones too. It's very brief. And while it's really graphic and really disturbing, he doesn't wallow in it. It's not pandering. He's not using that to manipulate the audience. It's like, pop, somebody's dead. They fall down. That's the scene. I want you to have that information. I gave you that information.
19:12Let's move on. you know yeah and there were so many things i noticed watching the movie a couple times after it was all done you know where he was sort of untangling the cliches and the myths of how native people have been treated in westerns in the past you know and and like if you notice almost all the women that are being murdered in this movie something happens with their scalp their scalp comes off or they get it cut off in a field autopsy or which to me was like a very clear nod to, you know, saying that the natives would scalp us white people in all of those John Wayne movies and forward westerns and everything.
19:52And then like the first scene where they're smoking the death pipe and they're smoking their way of life, you know, they're giving like basically a funeral for their way of life once they found the oil. You know, that's also kind of a reversal of the whole idea of the peace pipe and what you would normally expect a Native burial ceremony to be like. It's like they're burying their era and their way of existing. There's so many of those beautiful things where I'm like, oh, I see what he's doing. He's just reversing the script and showing you a little bit more of what it was really like. We're going to take a quick break and then come back with more of my conversation with Jason Isbell.
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24:30Right, right. I can see it if you're triggered, if you have like generational trauma and watching these things happen to indigenous people is triggering to you, that makes total sense to me. It's not a criticism that I would levy at the movie because I would have no reason to. But when somebody does, I can't argue with that. I'm like, yeah, that makes sense to me. It would be really hard to see, especially the way a lot of Native cultures handle ancestry and their forebears and sort of take spiritually that weight on in a way that the rest of us might not. I understand. But as far as from a storytelling perspective, it's hard for me to see any flaws.
25:16And I met more people who were calling the storytelling like woke. Oh, yeah. I don't know about it. If you use that word and I turn off, I'm clocked out. You know, if you're using that in that way, if you're not Donald Glover and you're talking about being woke that I am not paying attention to you anymore. That is pretty incredible to me to imagine how somebody can see something that's so historically accurate and handled with such respect for what actually happened. But there's a reason we didn't already know this story. And it had to be intentional. That had to be done intentionally, or we would have all learned it in the sixth grade.
25:57And even people out there in Oklahoma, they didn't know this stuff had happened. And I mean, you know, with what was going on in Tulsa, with black businesses in Tulsa, you know, is this all happened at the same time? So there were black folks coming from Tulsa to Bartlesville, Paul Huska to get away from, you know, the massacre that was happening over there. And they were hiding out around the Osage who had their own shit to deal with. And I thought that was beautiful. Some people thought that the part where King Hale sees the newsreel for film about the Tulsa massacre, that it was ham-fisted.
26:32Ham-fisted by God, because that's what happened, you know. That's what happened. That's what happened. And it was right next door. And I mean, Tulsa was an hour away, you know, I'd drive over to Tulsa to get dinner. And then at the same time, when we got there, when we showed up on set, we were looking at photos from the era, you know, in the costume department trying to get everything right. And they were wearing masks, you know, because the flu that started in Kansas that everybody called the Spanish flu was then. It was 1918, 1919. Yeah. And we were all standing there in our masks looking at the pictures of people wearing bandanas around their face like, what the fuck, man?
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27:12And 100 years later, exactly 100 years later. That's wild. Yeah, so history clearly repeats itself if you don't pay attention to it, and sometimes if you do. But yeah, I heard a lot of people talking about how like Molly's character, why did she stay around so long? Why did she stay with it? Why did she try to work it out for so long? And that's one that really bothered me because I think that shows a really huge lack of understanding of her perspective, you know, and the circumstances that had led her to that point in her life and what her options were. It's like, well, maybe if she didn't have to have a legal guardian to take her own money out of the bank, she wouldn't have been so motivated to stay with this asshole, you know.
28:00Yeah. But there was a lot of like real, you know, people who just weren't willing to take one extra step to think, Well, maybe that person's experience is a little bit different than mine. Well, yeah. And also just people who, you know, put themselves in a hypothetical situation. They know exactly. I mean, yeah. Armchair quarterbacks. Turns out it's complicated what we do. You know, it's not it's not simple. There are a lot of different variables that go into every choice that we make. And she wore those all on her face. You could see all of the complications. What do I do? Right. Her acting was just beautiful.
28:34Yeah, she's unbelievable, man. And that last scene with the two of them where all she really wanted him to do was tell her the truth. And he couldn't, even after all that, he couldn't, you know, she's basically just saying, do you love me more than your fear? You know, and he couldn't do it. And that was that. And yeah, Lily is really like nobody I've ever known. I mean, we stay in touch, you know, and I saw her when I played in Oklahoma a few weeks ago. And it's nuts because, you know, There have been some people like Chris Stapleton opened for us right before his thing just went nuts. And Casey Musgraves and Sturgill, there have been people that I've been around who were on a real pretty steep upward trajectory, but I've never seen it like with Lily right now.
29:23Cause she's just taken over the world all of a sudden. And I honestly don't think it's gonna change the person that she is. And that is like, that's rare, man. That's unicorn shit right there. It just seems like she keeps settling more into herself as all this beautiful chaos happens around her right now. And I think she's just going to use whatever sort of recognition she gets to do cool things for other people, which is really a gift to everybody. Well, it's great. I mean, it seems like she's in, not that I can be a judge of this, I don't act, but she seems like she's an actor in the mold of a real actor, like a De Niro or DiCaprio or Pacino or the people who it's a craft.
30:06It's not, I'm not into be famous. I'm not into be a movie star or celebrity. It's like, so what I do and it's just going to get better and better. Yeah, it's serious. And the work itself is the reward, you know, and that was something that surprised me about Leo because I mean, dude is very, very famous and he has been since he was a little kid. And that man works hard. He was out there all day, every day, first call, usually last to leave. It's 95 degrees, and we're all in tweed suits, and he's out there all day. And if he gets half an hour, he runs back to his trailer, takes a nap, and comes back out there and gets back to work.
30:45I was very impressed. It can't be the money that's motivating him at this point because you don't have enough time left to count it. Yeah, that's right. Well, I could talk to you about this film forever because it's so good, but we should talk about music and maybe we can listen to something real quick before we make a switch.
31:13Where the fuck did this come from, man? This is Kevin Kenny. We did this tribute to Kevin Kenny, the songwriter, one of my favorite people on earth. But the thing that Kevin does that I love so much is, like, he had a band Driving and Crying in the 80s and 90s, and they still tour, they still do stuff. But he's a folk songwriter, and he writes folk songs, but this band would play big old boneheaded rock riffs. And it was a combination that's so hard to pull off, but Kevin has pulled it off so well for so long. They had a pretty big hit with Straight to Hell. It was on college radio. I'm going straight to hell.
31:54That was their big one. But so many good songs where it's like, you know, the riff sounds like ACDC, but then what he's singing over the top is like Woody Guthrie. It's amazing. And when I first started touring solo, I was still with the Drive-By Truckers. Some of the first solo shows that I did were with Kevin. I was opening for it. He would go to the Goodwill and buy a lamp, and that would be his stage show. He would put the Goodwill lamp on stage and turn it on. That would be his light show, you know. And then after a few shows, after the end of the tour, he gave me the lamp. I was so honored.
32:25It's a horribly ugly lamp. Like I've never been with a woman that would allow it in the house. So there's a lamp in storage that I got from Kevin Kenny. But that was sort of a rite of passage for Southern folk songwriters, was if you got a lamp from Kevin Kenny, you know. That's amazing. You sound incredible on that. Yeah, thank you. I love singing rock songs. It's hard to write a rock song for me. I know for some people it works differently, but I do better with these introspective, quiet, sad sort of jams. And then when it's time to write a balls-out rock song, it's just too many options. I overthink it.
33:04So when I get a chance to sing one, I really enjoy it. Is it too many options in terms of the guitar playing or the songwriting? Lyrics, I think. That's what's hard for me. Because I'm not going to write a song where I'm like, what's the thin Lizzy line in Jailbreak where it says, hey, you good-looking female, come here. I can't write that down on a piece of paper and not mark it out. I'd be like, man, no, I can't let that slide. But I can't think of anything that would be more perfect from Phil Linut than that. It's a craft. It's really tough. And, of course, Bon Scott and Brian Johnson, they were really good at that kind of thing.
33:45A song like Big Balls. Yeah, it's so dumb, but I would not want it to be different at all. And I'd never get tired of it. It never gets boring. Thunderstruck, for Christ's sakes. Like, who's going to write that down as a songwriter and say, this is my song today? But if it had been different, it would have sucked, you know? So, yeah, that's a tough call to write a rock and roll song. It's really hard. Do you have riffs stored away somewhere? Oh, yeah. Like from failed rock and roll songs? Yeah, tons, tons. I haven't accepted that they're failed yet. One day, you know, it'll be when I'm 80, I'll put out the Bonehead ACDC sounding record.
34:22But why can't you do like the Kevin Kinney thing of like, just put like, you know, the lyrics you would normally write over the bombastic? I do sometimes. I do two or three songs on a record. I do that. But that's tough because, you know, at a certain point, it becomes lipstick on a pig. At a certain point, you're like, this doesn't sound right. The music is not going with the words that I'm hearing. And then you've made a production mistake. If I was singing the lyrics to Elephant over the music to You Shook Me All Night Long, people would be pissed. People would be like, man, this is terrible.
35:02You didn't take this seriously at all. So you've got to be careful. It's got to be congruous in some way. you know it's got to feel like one piece of work so to do it right you got to just walk that line where the lyric just barely scoots into dumb enough and the riff just barely scoots into smart enough to where they kind of line up but if you get too smart with the riff then you're making prog rock and if you get too dumb with the lyric then you're just writing an acdc song so you've got to like really skirt that line that's a great point you don't want to venture into prog rock Unless that's what you make, if you're good at that.
35:39But if you dip your toe in frog rock, that's going to be really bad because they take that shit real seriously. Super serious. Yeah. Tell me about Strawberry Woman, man. That line, this young man crying in a cowboy hat, he's got square boots, so he ain't for real. Yeah. Well, you know, there's a lot of argument over which sort of cowboy boots you should wear. My little brother wears square-toed boots. And I bought him a pair of pointier-toed boots for Christmas, so I'm hoping to move him over into that. but that's also kind of an inside joke about playing the pedal steel guitar because if you'll notice the pedals are so small and they're so close together that if you don't wear the right kind of shoes you'll accidentally hit more than one pedal at a time so this is why the pedal steel is a true cowboy instrument because cowboy boots are what you wear in order to be able to pull to hit just one pedal at a time fascinating so that's why the next line wouldn't last five minutes on a pedal steel.
36:36Right. Because he'd start hitting the wrong. I thought they were disconnected. It seems like it. But if you're a musician, you go, oh, I see what he means. Because a lot of steel players, if they don't wear cowboy boots, they'll play in their socks. Because you just got to be able to hit a very narrow pedal there and not hit the ones next to it. But also, I like this image of the naivete of having your heart broken. And a cowboy, like a real cowboy, is a very specific type of naive. Like they have chosen to spend their time around animals rather than around people. So they don't learn these worldly things.
37:14And then by the time they're old, they become wise before they become worldly, which is a really interesting combination. They make for very stubborn, very interesting old men. But when they're kids and they're still in the shape that you have to be to break horses and things like that, they're basically frozen. as 12 or 13-year-olds for a good long while because they just don't spend time around human people. They become wise before they become worldly. Yeah, so their wisdom comes from nature. It comes from work, and it comes from finding things out on their own. They don't get a whole lot of advice, cowboys.
37:51They find things out the hard way. Yeah. Cowboys never cease to be fertile songwriting territory. Yeah, for Willie Nelson or for Phil Lyon, they all write about him. Or Jason Isbell, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's just a really different type of person. And it doesn't necessarily have to be an American cowboy. You know, there's a bunch of them in Manitoba and Alberta and Spain, you know. And they got smaller horses in Spain, but it's the same basic principle. But yeah, it's interesting because it's like you're making this conscious decision to not participate in modern civilization. So there's a naivete and kind of an innocence about it that's really beautiful.
38:32But at the same time, on the rare occasion that they wander into town, hilarity ensues, you know. How did your brother take that line, by the way? Oh, he got a kick out of it. He got a big kick out of it. He is definitely more a cowboy. He's a real redneck, you know. Like somebody asked me the other day, like, what would you do in the apocalypse? I find my little brother. You know, we would go out in the woods and come back fatter than we were when we left, you know, because he could actually just wander off and survive just fine. He's one of the only people I know that could really do that. Man, you got to take him on tour with you then.
39:05I know. See, that's the opposite. Forget going to find him. Just keep him with you. You take him on tour and then you ruin it because that is not where he wants to be. You don't want to be in a tour bus in New York City. You know, he wants to be out in the woods somewhere. A cowboy on a tour bus in New York City would be. Yeah. I mean, it's happened. I guess that happened a lot early on. You know, George Strait had to get everywhere somehow, but I don't think he would enjoy it as much as I would. Speaking of George Strait, man, I was thinking about him recently. His music is phenomenal. Yeah. But he feels like, I don't know, I guess he feels now, oddly, like a part of the fabric of country now more than an artist.
39:45He really is like an elder of the music. I don't mean to put it that way or an insulting way. He's a legend. And he got it from not really writing his own songs. He was an interpreter of songs. which kind of like, to me, is the part of country music that relates to what like Sinatra was doing or some of the old jazz singers, you know, who weren't composers. And I think that there can be an art in writing songs. There can be art in delivering songs, interpreting songs as well, you know. And I think you don't have to be a songwriter to be an artist. But if you call yourself a songwriter or if you're not a great singer, then, you know, you're going to have to write some of your own songs for Step Things.
40:28up a little bit, but George Strait had such a wonderful quality to his voice and delivery of those songs. You know, sometimes it's not something you can learn. Sometimes it's just about where your voice sits and the resonance of your voice, especially in country music or, you know, show tunes. I mean, it's like Sinatra would just go in and start singing. You know, you better have the tape rolling because you might get one take because he knew that what people wanted was the quality of his voice. And I think it was that way with George Strait. Now you get to somebody like George Jones, and then that's a whole different thing.
41:05Because George Jones had that sort of country quality to his voice, but he could control it in a way that was just unbelievable. Every once in a while on Instagram or TikTok or something, a clip will come up of him just sitting around drinking a beer and singing a song. And it sounds like the best possible performance anybody I know could pull off on a stage at a football stadium, and it's just him sitting in a chair, smoking, drinking, you know, not even paying attention to what he's doing. George Jones really had a beautiful gift, but it doesn't take all that, you know. I think if you're good at delivering somebody else's words in a way that makes people believe it, and you have that natural quality to your voice that sits in just the right place, which is what George Strait had, I think you can get yourself into the fabric of country music that way.
41:56Is it weird now for your songs to sort of start becoming part of the songbook? It's all weird. Everything is so fucking weird to me. But I like hearing my songs out in the wild, even if other people are singing them. Now, stuff happened with Morgan that I wasn't a fan of after that. But at the time, when he covered the song, I thought, man, this is great. Bunch of young people are going to hear the song. And it gave me some reassurance that when you're being specific with these songs, that's when people really have a close connection to them because they think he knew a secret about me. How did this songwriter know this very specific, very detailed feeling that I was having?
42:41I thought I was alone. And to me, that's the best thing that art can do is when somebody says, I thought I was alone until I heard this. Now I know there's at least one other person out there that feels exactly the same way. I think to do that, you have to try not to be too vague. You can't really write with a target in mind, like a specific audience that you're trying to nail. You have to just make yourself the target and write the kind of music that speaks to a very detailed account of your own experience. And then you just wait. You just do your best job with it and you wait for somebody a thousand miles away to pop up and say, that exact same thing happened to me.
43:25And that's a really beautiful thing because then you're reminded of what we have in common rather than our differences. We're pausing for one last quick break and then we'll be back with Jason Isbell. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Oocla Speedtest, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.
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47:14Your ability to not only to write so personally, but it seems like you have a commitment to living your life openly and honestly. You know, like similar to the way like Howard Stern, you know, let's say. Yeah, yeah. Like seems to have no qualms putting any of his follies on display for the world. Yeah, yeah. It seems like you have had no qualms doing that. And it's helpful for one, I think to other people, because just like a song that's so personal to you can be heard by somebody else and they can sense that they're not alone, feel that they're not alone, feel seen, feel heard by something that relates only to you.
47:55But now is not only personal, but it's like being a married person myself that went through the pandemic, watching your HBO film was like, Jesus fucking Christ. We weren't the only ones. Right, right. And that was tough, man. that was tough. And there are qualms because I sit back and think, why do I have to do this shit again? Why I got to tell everybody what's going on once again? But with the bigger risks come the bigger rewards as far as that goes. And there's a certain level of accountability. Like if I know that my thing is to be honest with people about how I live my life, that I'm going to try really hard to live my life the right way in a way that I'd be proud of.
48:35But also I sort of see it as most of the risks to me are negligible. I'm a person from a protected class, and I have been blessed with the encouragement and the gifts that I need to climb out of Trailer Park, Alabama, and get to a place where I'm really comfortable. And in that way, I kind of feel like I'm one of the people with the armor on. You know what I'm saying? And those people should go to the front of the line because they have the armor on. So if I can say something that somebody else would be afraid to say, you know, and then they can resonate with that, they're going to get more out of it because it's not necessarily possible for them to say, hey, hands up, here's what's going wrong with my life or here are the mistakes that I've made or here are the things that have been difficult for me.
49:25They might not be able to start that conversation, but they might be able to chime in if you start that conversation. Was there anyone like that for you growing up? That's a good question. You know, I felt like my grandfather was pretty good about being open and honest with everybody. And when I was a kid, he was a Pentecostal preacher in Alabama, and he didn't know how to write until he started preaching. My grandmother taught him how to write so he could write down his sermons and give them insurance. And, you know, he'd grown up share proper and basically got to the point where, you know, he could go to the grocery store and get what he wanted.
50:02And so the worst thing you could do would be send him to the grocery store because he would come back with all kinds of like old fashioned candy, you know. So when I was a kid, I was like, I want to go to the grocery store with him, you know, because it's all the stuff that he never had when he was a kid, couldn't afford when he was a kid. But he was a very honest person. And And I noticed that when there was a deal, when he was buying a car or trading a guitar or trading a horse or an animal or something, he usually got beat. Almost all the time, he would get beat in those deals. And at one point, I thought, man, this sucks.
50:38My granddad always gets beaten these days. But then after a while, I thought, you know what? That actually is what you want to be. You want to be the guy that is honest. Because when he would go in, he would say, well, this horse has had too much sweet feed. and it's foundered. So it's not worth much. But somebody else he was trading with would doctor things up and make it look really... And by the end of his life, I sort of figured out he didn't have any regrets really. And I thought that's because he'd been honest. You don't look back on your deathbed and say, I wish I'd gotten more for that truck.
51:12But you might look back and say, I feel bad for cheating so many people out of something. Yeah, because you don't know what you're cheating the other person out of. Yeah, you don't know how they came by their money. You don't know how they got that horse. You don't know. And you're not interested in it because you're just trying to get yours. And I was lucky enough to grow up around people who took that stuff seriously and realized that what might seem like a loss at the time, it was a win in the long run by being more honest. Yeah, that's interesting, man. At what point did you realize that that was actually an asset of your grandfather's?
51:47In my late teens, probably, when he was getting on in years and didn't have a whole lot of time left, I thought. Because I did that with all my grandparents, really, when they were close to the end of their life. I just kind of found myself not on purpose, but just sort of looking back and thinking, well, how would I feel if I was in that spot? Would I have enemies or regrets or people that I wanted to settle up with or apologize to? And he really didn't. He wasn't afraid. He was a religious man, faithful man, and he thought, well, this is going to be a relief. I'm going to go on to somewhere beautiful.
52:24He didn't have anybody to apologize to. He asked my dad at the end, he's like, you need any money? Before I go, you need any money? My dad was like, no, I got my own family and my own job, and I'm all right. But that's what he was thinking about still was taking care of other people. And I think that's a pretty good way to go out. It's a great way to go out. That seems like, you know, he knew the meaning of life. I think so. I think that's true. If you can leave with your tab all settled up, but it seems like that'll do. Do you think you need to live your life as honest as you do to be as honest in yourself?
53:00Like, in other words, can you, I'm thinking about like a Dylan maybe who, well, maybe he's a bad example. Because I don't know how honest he is in his life. No, yeah, he's not. I mean, I think he's honest in everything, but I don't think he's truthful. I think he's honestly lying about 90 % of the time. But that's what he's committed himself to. And it's like, if I wanted to be Bob Dylan, that's what I would do too. But I don't want to be Bob Dylan. I love Bob Dylan, but that's not what I want to be. I want to be me, you know. And my path, the way that I have found is most rewarding for me and gives me an individual voice is to reveal these things in an honest way.
53:38Also, I kind of like somewhere along the line, I committed myself to this idea of unraveling the bullshit and the mystery of all of it. This idea that you can be a rock and roll star and not behave like a terrible man, and you can be a songwriter and not have to mythologize everything. I think part of that came from when I was 13, 14, 14, a Pearl Jam hit. And I thought, man, these dudes are dressed like me. They look like me and they're not trying to dress it up. They just walk on stage and they play these songs and it's amazing. It's just as entertaining as David Bowie to me at the time. Not that there's more value in one way or the other, but it just made more sense for me as a person to just continue being who I was and then just take that on stage and keep doing it yeah you announced you're separating also from amanda how are you going to navigate that publicly in your songwriting life i don't know what do you think i should do i don't know help what do i do um yeah i think i'm just going to try to be honest you know all the ways that i legally can i mean there's certain things that we've agreed not to talk about but i think i can still manage to tell people who i am and what the truth is, from my perspective, you know, it's one of those things where not everything that ends was a failure.
55:07I think we did a lot of really beautiful things together, and I have really fond memories of all of that, and I don't regret any of it, you know, even the hard stuff. It's like when I got into recovery, you know, I wound up after a few years looking back and thinking I don't regret even the worst parts of that because it all kind of goes into making me who I am. And the time will come when the wounds aren't still fresh. The time will come when I'm able to take all this and put it into my work in a way that is honest and true but makes sense for me. I'm going to be patient. And in the meantime, I got plenty of other shit to write about.
55:48That's one thing I think a lot of songwriters miss is the inspiration. You don't need it, and you don't need it. It's everywhere. If you can't just look out your window and find 20 things to write a song about, then you're not a real serious songwriter yet because it's all over the place. Meaning you don't need to write about the thing that feels necessarily most pressing in your life. Right. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. You might not be ready for that right now. You might need to get there through other means, work yourself up to it. There might be steps. And then somewhere along the way, you could discover the beauty of allegory.
56:26I'm sure I have been writing about the things that are going on right now in my life for quite a while. I'm currently writing about those things. But on the page, it might look like I'm writing about a butterfly or a car accident. That's the beauty of allegory. You don't have to know what you're talking about all the time. You don't have to know what the overarching idea. Your brain will work on that level. If you just focus on details and rhyme and making something beautiful happen, eventually by the end of it, very often I look down and go, oh, I just wrote a song about my marriage or I just wrote a song about my child.
57:04This whole time I thought I was writing about football or something, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. I forgot to ask, you wrote Weather Veins on set of Killers of the Flatiron Moon, right? Yeah. Almost all of it. But yeah, a good chunk of that record I wrote on the set. Did the character you were playing influence your point of view as a songwriter at that moment? Or was it easy to keep that separate? I don't know that Bill influenced that. But I definitely know that the work that I was doing influenced it. Because on one hand, the most obvious way was just watching Marty conduct the whole orchestra.
57:44and the fact that he was open to hearing ideas from other people. When I went out there, I thought either he's going to be a micromanager and he's going to be in on every decision or he's just not going to be there that much. I did not expect him to have that kind of perfect mix of those things where he was active, he was on set every day, working out in the heat even at 80 years old. He would make the L's with his fingers and look at the shot and say, I want it to look like this. you know amazing amazing crazy it's like a movie about a movie about a movie but you know there was one night where it was just me in the scene and so it was marty and then the ad and all the crew and i had the pistols when they throw the dog on my front step the dead dog right before i get blown up and i walk out it's part of that montage and i walk out the front door and i see the dog and I've got my pistol in my hand.
58:40And, you know, I thought, man, I got to do this. So first I said, I think we need to load this pistol because, you know, the weight's going to need to look right. And if they see it from the end of the barrel for any reason, you're going to want to see slugs. And, you know, so the prop master did the thing where they had taken each shell casing, they had pried the lead out, and then they had swabbed the inside out, dropped one BB inside the shell, and then pressed the lead back in. then they would shake it. Every time they would load one end, they would shake it by my ear and I would have to verbally confirm I hear the BB and then they would put it into the pistol and shake it and put it into the pistol and just to make sure.
59:20So that's what like when that accidental shooting happened on the rust set, I was like, something's way off here because I could not have shot anybody if I had tried. But after that, I thought, you know, this is a single action pistol and BBing from Alabama, I used to have a pistol very similar to the one that I was holding in in a movie. And I thought, these Yankees don't know about single action. I'm gonna have to say something, you know. And if I walk out on my step, I see the dog. I'm not sure that it's dead yet. I don't know if the people are still in the yard. I'm cocking the pistol because with a single action, if you don't cock it, you can't fire it.
59:55That's why in the old Westerns, they would hold the trigger down and fan the hammer like this. Oh, yeah. Because it's the hammer that does the firing like with double action when you start to pull the the trigger the pressure causes the hammer to come back and then go forward but with single action you have to pull the hammer back first the trigger all that does is release it so the hammer goes forward so that means every time you fire you've got to cock and fire cock and fire and so i just tapped marty on the shoulder and i was like i think i would cock the pistol and marty said you think you'd cock it i was like yeah and i explained why and he said all right let's shoot it so they shot and it took another three or four hours, they shot the scene of me cocking the pistol.
1:00:34And then when I saw the movie, it was in the movie. It was the most satisfying click. But taking away from that, you know, I went in to produce weather vanes that I'd written mostly out there. And I thought, man, there's a way to do this where you can retain your vision and still hear what everybody around you has to say. And And you can let them enjoy participating and making the project a better thing. And still, this is your movie or this is your record. Because nobody had any question by the end of it who had directed that movie. That was really sort of inspiring for me. That's an incredible thing, yeah.
1:01:13Because making music can be such a singular, lonely, solitary thing. and making a film by necessity involves so many more people beyond the director or the writer or the auteur or the actor. There were hundreds of people, hundreds of people on that set. But he was listening to people, and it made for a better movie, and it was still Marty's movie, so that was a good thing to see. Was your band grateful? Oh, yeah, yeah. We had a great time. We had a blast because it was like, I would say, why don't you go mess with this for a while, see what you come up with. I said, man, there's nothing that a musician likes to hear more than that when you're in the studio.
1:01:51They're like, hell yeah, I'll go turn some knobs and push some buttons. I'm glad they had a great arc. I was so sad to see them in the movie. Yeah. I wanted to be on tour of reunions and just mowing the lawn. Like, damn, I want to get out there. I know, man. I don't know. They've had a fulfilling studio time and they can get out there with you now. Knock on wood. The quarantine is behind us. I hope so. Yeah. Yeah, same. Yeah. Hey, man, well, thanks for taking the time to chat, man. It's like, I wish I could. Thank you. I want to do a damn documentary on that movie. It's so good. A documentary on it.
1:02:20Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. Good to talk to you, Justin. I appreciate your time.
1:02:46Twitter at Broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tallade. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.
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From the publisher
The last couple of years have been huge for Jason Isbell. The Alabama-born singer-songwriter’s latest album Weathervanes won the Grammy for Best Americana album this year. He also snagged a role in Martin Scorsese's film, Killers Of The Flower Moon, which is up for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars.
There was also a critically acclaimed HBO documentary released last year about the making of Isbell’s previous album with the 400 Unit, Reunions, that put his personal life on full display.
On today’s episode I talk to Jason Isbell about his exhilarating experience filming Killers of the Flower Moon and how he prepared to act in scenes opposite Leonardo DiCaprio (heads up—there are some major spoilers in this conversation). Jason also contemplates how he will write about the dissolution of his marriage, and why he struggles to write a balls-out rock song.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Jason Isbell songs HERE.
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