Authentic Cadence
By Web Behrens
“The beautiful thing about songs, as opposed to movies and books, is that they’re not filed based on what’s true and what’s not,” says Jason Isbell, arguably America’s best living troubadour. “First of all, everything is based on a true story, or else we wouldn’t even have a language for telling stories.”
And with that simple declaration, it’s obvious: Here’s an artist who’s done serious internal work—a lot of deep thinking and intense feeling—and then emerged from that process with some profound insights.
Not convinced? Isbell elaborated on his perspective two months ago in a conversation with the Los Angeles Daily News: “You go into a bookstore, and you’ve got fiction over here, nonfiction over there. But songs don’t work that way. And I feel like, as a songwriter, you’re allowed to tell as much or as little of the truth as you want, as long as you’re attempting to be honest throughout.”
The Grammy winner has made his career on bracing honesty, which very much includes being frank about his own personal struggles and inner demons. But more compelling than his biography is how he harnesses his hard-earned compassion into compelling songs about the complexities of living in a cruel world. Without knocking the entrancing melodies or his honey-on-sandpaper vocals, where Isbell truly excels is through his lyrics, which he infuses with bittersweet insight and aching regret.
Exhibit A: “Elephant,” from his 2013 breakthrough album Southeastern, about a friend dying of cancer:
Surrounded by her family, I saw that she was dying alone
So I’d sing her classic country songs
And she’d get high and sing along
She don’t have much voice to sing with now
We burn these joints in effigy and cry about what we used to be
And try to ignore the elephant somehow.
Death wears a different cloak in Exhibit B, “If We Were Vampires.” This Grammy-winning song from 2017’s The Nashville Sound features backing vocals by his wife at the time, Amanda Shires:
It’s knowing that this can’t go on forever
Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone
Maybe we’ll get 40 years together
But one day I’ll be gone
Or one day you’ll be gone
Maybe time running out is a gift
I’ll work hard till the end of my shift
And give you every second I can find
And hope it isn’t me who’s left behind
And his most recent outing, Weathervanes—which brings Isbell and The 400 Unit to Ravinia on September 8—wouldn’t be a Jason Isbell album without a song that takes a piece of home-spun advice, examines it from a new perspective, and lands in an altered place of hard-won wisdom. Honored as the Best Americana Album at this year’s Grammy Awards, it includes his third Best American Roots Song trophy winner, “Cast Iron Skillet,” which contrasts small-town insights about life with some less savory American values:
Jamie found a boyfriend
With smiling eyes and dark skin
And her daddy never spoke another word to her again
He treats her like a queen
But you don’t know ’cause you ain’t seen
Don’t wash the cast iron skillet
This town won’t get no better, will it?
She found love and it was simple as a weather vane
But her own family tried to kill it
Isbell’s determination to confront some of America’s greatest ills—racism and sexism, gun proliferation and opioid addiction—have occasionally put the outspoken star at odds with country music culture, particularly the jingo-driven characters that vilified the Dixie Chicks (as they were then named) during the Bush-Cheney years. Still, Isbell has earned the respect of many for proudly defending his more inclusive values, regardless of the strong conservative streak in his chosen genre.
Jason Isbell and 400 Unit keyboardist Derry deBorja
“If the music is song-driven, lyrically strong, most of the people who make it are gonna be pretty good folks,” Isbell told the British publication The Independent earlier this year. “Not always, but most of the time, if you spend your life with words, trying to tell stories about other people, you’re gonna learn how to empathize a little bit. As soon as you do that, you are no longer a Trumper.”
A musical prodigy who began performing onstage as a scrappy teenager in his native Alabama, 45-year-old Isbell has managed to ride the rock-star roller coaster through its frightening plunges and crazy loop-de-loops, only to emerge as Nashville royalty. He and his band, The 400 Unit, enjoy regular residencies at Music City’s storied Ryman Auditorium, playing an extended series of shows every October. (This fall, they’re also releasing a live album, Live from The Ryman, Volume 2.)
Isbell’s studio recordings have scored six Grammys over the past decade, won in three pairs: for Best Americana Album—Something More Than Free, The Nashville Sound, and Weathervanes—and Best American Roots Song for a track from each record. Isbell and the band have enjoyed a long victory lap this year following their most recent Grammy triumph in February, touring everywhere from Radio City Music Hall to the Hollywood Bowl to Tennessee’s legendary Bonnaroo Festival.
Of course, there’s more to Isbell’s story than stunning success. He was just a 22-year-old English major when he joined the Southern rock outfit Drive-By Truckers. (He left the University of Memphis one credit shy of graduation to go on tour. A generation later, in September 2023, the university awarded him a bachelor’s in English.) While the Truckers were already an established and beloved band, the outfit got even better with Isbell’s songwriting and guitar chops added to the mix. But in 2007, after six years of playing together, his bandmates fired Isbell, unable to continue accommodating his escalating alcoholism.
Flash forward to 2013. Isbell had his own band and, now sober, recorded Southeastern. That’s when guitarist Sadler Vaden enters the picture. Born and raised in the Carolinas, Vaden had gotten in with Drivin N Cryin, which brought him to Nashville, where he could be found hanging out with 400 Unit keyboardist Derry deBorja—a friendship that changed Vaden’s life.
400 Unit guitarist Sadler Vaden and drummer Chad Gamble
“One night, Tracy, Jason’s manager, called me and said, ‘Hey, I hear you want to join our band,’” Vaden said in a recent interview with Ravinia Magazine. He was caught a bit speechless, he recalls: “I was like, ‘Oh my God, wow.’ I was pretty, you know, ‘Really?!’ ”
That stunned reaction wasn’t solely due to excitement that he’d just been invited to join The 400 Unit. Vaden was suddenly faced with a tough choice. “It’s funny,” he explains. “I’d never expressed wanting to join their band. I was really happy at the time. So it was a big decision, for sure—a really hard decision, because I wanted to be part of something more.
“Although Drivin N Cryin is still a great band and still drawing audiences, they kinda took the ride already. I hadn’t taken the ride yet. I was 27, and Jason was 34 or something. I was closer to his age, and I just thought, ‘This is a group that seems like it’s heading upward.’ Kevin [Kinney, from Drivin N Cryin] gave me his blessing. He said, ‘If you get the opportunity to play with a songwriter of that caliber, you should do it.’ ”
The 400 Unit was prepping to tour in support of Southeastern, an acoustic-heavy record. “He’s more than capable of handling the guitar duties,” Vaden notes, “but I think Jason figured he’d need someone to play acoustic and electric to bring this record across live.”
Vaden’s instincts about being “part of something more” proved more accurate than he’d even imagined. “I got Southeastern and I liked it,” he remembers, “but I didn’t think, ‘Oh my god, this is going to change everything.’ For me, it was like, ‘These are some really good songs, and I see what I can bring to the table.’ But then we started playing the shows, and I’m watching the crowds grow, little by little. As months went on, you could see it taking off in real time. It wasn’t Beatlemania, or like The Wonders in That Thing You Do—we were still setting up our own gear, you know?—but you could feel the excitement, and every show was packed.”
The ride never really stopped. One year later, right after their own concert dates overseas, The 400 Unit opened for headliners Willie Nelson and Alison Krauss on that duo’s national tour, which brought them to Ravinia. “That was an amazing experience,” Vaden says with a fond chuckle. “That was one of our first tours with a bus taking us straight to the venues. We were all jacked up, like: We’re playing in front of some legends, so we’ve got to step up!”
Jason Isbell at the time of his Ravinia debut with Southeastern, joining a leg of Willie Nelson and Alison Krauss’s tour
In 2021, Vaden got to experience a full-circle moment that connected his 400 Unit era with his earlier days. The year prior, in the run-up to the presidential election, Isbell tweeted, “If Biden wins Georgia, I’m gonna make a charity covers album of my favorite Georgia songs ... And damn is that gonna be fun.” The 13-track charity album—the proceeds were donated to three orgs: Black Voters Matter, Fair Fight, and Georgia Stand Up—featured Isbell and guest stars such as Brandi Carlile, Béla Fleck, and Chris Thile, all covering songs originally recorded by the Peach State’s musical all-stars, including R.E.M., the Indigo Girls, Gladys Knight & the Pips, James Brown, Otis Redding, and The Black Crowes.
As part of the Georgia Blue album, The 400 Unit recorded “Honeysuckle Blue,” a Drivin N Cryin song. “And I got to sing it,” Vaden says. Better still, “It’s become part of our set these last couple years. That was really fun, and it’s a nice homage to Kevin.”
And now there’s Weathervanes, which the band recorded the summer after Georgia Blue. This marked another evolution for The 400 Unit because Isbell decided to produce it himself.
“Weathervanes was a big change, man. It really does feel more like a band record,” Vaden says. “I feel like everyone was having a good time. We were all adding our own personality to it. I’m not sure if we’d ever really captured that before [in studio]. I think a big thing for Jason was trying to bring across what we do live onto the record—actual guitar jams happening on the record. That was a huge change, and we all have great memories of recording it.”
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When he’s not recording or touring with The 400 Unit, Sadler Vaden has plenty to keep him busy. He lives just south of Nashville with his wife of 10 years and their two kids, a preschool-aged son and an infant. That goes to explain the roots of his latest solo project, an album titled Dad Rock, which dropped in June. While it’s music you can listen to with the whole family, it’s not “kids’ music”—it’s Vaden showcasing his impressive roots-rock chops. Prior to Dad Rock, Vaden’s most recent solo effort happened four years back, which in some ways seems like a lifetime ago. That’s partly because he wrote and recorded those songs before fatherhood—but there’s also the matter of timing, he told Ravinia.
Ironically titled Anybody Out There?, the album came out in March 2020. “That was the week before lockdown happened,” he says with a hint of resignation. “In some ways, that helped—people needed music to listen to. But it was heartbreaking, because it was the best thing I’d done up to that point, and I had a little tour booked. I didn’t really get to do any of those things. I feel like I’m [still carrying baggage] from all that.”
Now in a new era of life, Vaden eventually felt the call to tackle another solo project: “Four years later, after having kids, I had a pile of songs sitting around. I thought: It’s time to do a record. I got some of my favorite musicians on it.” Those buddies might not be household names, but they hail from famous bands. That includes Elliot Easton of The Cars, playing on “Two Balloons,” and pianist Benmont Tench from Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers on the track “The New You.” (Unlike Anybody Out There? and 2016’s eponymous album, Dad Rock does not feature Vaden’s 400 Unit bandmates.)
“It was really a labor of love, you know? I got to put something out into the world that my kids could listen to,” Vaden says. “And someday, they could look back and see that their dad made something for them.”
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Native Chicagoan Web Behrens has spent most of his journalism career covering arts and culture. His work has appeared in the pages of the Chicago Tribune, Time Out Chicago, Crain’s Chicago Business, and The Advocate and Chicago magazines.