What music are you listening to?

[pop_rocks]

 

[armedoldhippy]

i have read quite a bit about each of them lately, but i guarantee there's a lot those interviews didn't cover. "true talent", yeah. can't keep that hidden. it really shows. Billy was out at Willies birthday party/concert the other day, next generation rising...

 

[RobFromTX]

 

[RobFromTX]

 

[pop_rocks]

 

[moose eater]

 

[pop_rocks]

 

[moose eater]

i have read quite a bit about each of them lately, but i guarantee there's a lot those interviews didn't cover. "true talent", yeah. can't keep that hidden. it really shows. Billy was out at Willies birthday party/concert the other day, next generation rising...

They're both very honest people with little they hide, short of incriminating others.

Billy was on the road young with his pop, doing bluegrass, and his dad did some time.

Billy found a guitar that he thought was similar to one his dad had to pawn or sell, and acquired it, only to find out it was THE guitar his dad had been forced to get rid of. Took him a while to pay it off, if I recall correctly, but paid for it, and gave it to his dad.

Billy doesn't hide his having dabbled in substances, to include crank, which is a trigger for many of the more rigid, neo-puritan wannabe dopers and hippies. He talks and has written fairly openly about it. People want him to be ashamed sometimes about his lessons. You can see it at times in live feeds for concerts in the comments. He's not ashamed. He views these things as part of life's journey and lessons.. That bugs some folks.

He's a delightfully Zen guy to listen to when he gets tangential and talks about life.

He's one of those wise-before-his-time folks. The tattoo '33' on his arm is a tat that symbolizes 'wisdom.' My guess is someone put that on him, as his ego seems more under control than to dub himself in such a way.

Jason Isbell joined up with Drive Bye Truckers when he was barely 18, maybe even 17, having met them when they came up short for a guitarist.

They invited him to hit the road, and on the 4th day on the road he wrote a major blockbuster tune, 'Decoration Day' and lifted the party band, Drive-Bye Truckers, into a band that many wanted to hear.

They were a notorious party band, LOTS of heavy drinking and a fair bit of drugging, and he not long after married their bass player, Shonna Tucker after she retrieved him from a cocaine and liquor overdose.

Jason had been getting further and further into the bottle, on and off stage, and getting out of hand, and Patterson had promised Jason's mother they'd take care of him. Massive guilt in light of the coke and liquor OD.

The band, knowing they were slitting their own proverbial throats as Jason put them heavily on the proverbial map, fired him and insisted he get into rehab.

The marriage to Shonna the bassist didn't last long, but his sobriety has, though his current wife and amazingly sweet and astute woman, Amanda Shires, violinist, at least for a while, if not still, drinks some wine and smokes some ganja. A blended sober and mildly intoxicated home takes some effort. Seriously.

Jason had grown up sequestering himself in his bedroom and cranking up his amp in Alabama to drown out his mother and father screaming at each other. They'd gotten married when his mother was 16 or 17, pregnant with him.

A budding rock-n-roller young'un, awkward in most peer settings, trying to fit in in rural Alabama, not into football and sports, and kids throwing stuff at him in the lunchroom at school.

Music as an escape. I guess that's part of why I resonate with his history and music. I hid behind the recliner chair in the living room as a tiny guy with a portable phonograph and listened to John Fogerty and others at age 8, 9, 10, etc., later telling some that in an abstract way, CCR raised me... Gave guidance and codes to live by, thoughts to consider early on, and much more. 'Who'll Stop the Rain'.

Jason's one of the good guys, as it were.. Thoughtful, and talented in ways that are hard to quantify.

It's the humanity in both of their stories, Isbell's and Billy's, that shines so brightly for me.

Do I sound like a groupie yet?

I often cry when I listen to this tune. My wife knows why, and my daughter now listens to this, and thanked me for it.

 

[moose eater]

 

[Dime]

 

[Dime]

 

[pop_rocks]

 

[pop_rocks]

 

[velorex]

 

[moose eater]

 

[moose eater]

Widespread Panic doing a Warren Zevon Cover during the Halloween Shows at the Austin Music Halll in 2009.

 

[moose eater]

Neil & Willie @ Farm Aid, 1995

 

[wild cat]

 

[dramamine]

 

[tobedetermined]

This is the studio version. There is also a pretty incredible version without the bass line - with just him singing with strings live in a studio..