As a concept, “An Evening With Jason Isbell” was a simple one.
On Friday, March 14, the singer-songwriter, dressed in a crisp dark suit and silver-tipped boots, walked onto the Walt Disney Concert Hall stage, sat down with his guitar and began to sing and play. Aside from an occasional pause to thank the audience or share a short anecdote, that’s what happened over the next hour and 20 or so minutes.
Isbell dedicated nearly half of his set to new material from his excellent, just-released solo album, “Foxes in the Snow.” Recorded in five days without Isbell’s formidable backing band, the 400 Unit, “Foxes in the Snow,” like the set at Disney Hall, features just Isbell’s voice, guitar and songs.
“I wound up recording a record in New York, and I wanted to walk into a studio in the Village with a single guitar and a notebook and come out of there with an album, like people used to do in the ’60s,” he told NPR about the album.
Let’s be clear: That is more than enough. Isbell’s guitar playing and voice were both in great form, and the songs, all 18 of them (including a cover of Bon Iver’s “Beth/Rest”), sounded fantastic. Typically, a simple voice and guitar approach is described as “spare” or “stripped-down,” but Isbell creates a rich, melodic sound bursting with emotions despite the limited instrumentation.
“When you’re being this open and this vulnerable, there’s something about doing it alone,” Isbell said in a recent SPIN magazine interview about the album. “Even though you know that the results are going to get broadcast to everybody, there’s something about sitting with a guitar and singing a song that makes sense to me when it’s this personal.”
If there was an elephant in the room – if not the song “Elephant,” as he didn’t play that stone-cold classic off “Southeastern” – it was the personal part: Isbell filed for divorce in 2023 from his wife and former bandmate Amanda Shires; some of the new material addresses the breakup (and, according to published reports, a new relationship with artist Anna Weyant who designed the new album cover).
Beyond the music itself, Isbell seemed to address his recent history in an oblique way, if at all. While introducing “Danko/Manuel,” an early song from his time in the band Drive-By Truckers, Isbell explained that as a young songwriter of 22 or 23, he’d felt he hadn’t experienced enough on his own to write about.
“Turns out, that’s not a problem now,” he said with a slightly pained smile.
Then it was back to the songs and his performance, because you didn’t need to know anything about his personal life to understand he delivered a powerhouse set of beautiful, often devastating songs rich with indelible images and heartbreaking melodies.
The performance began with “Bury Me,” which opens the new album with Isbell’s soaring voice and stands among his strongest work, followed by “Middle of the Morning,” off his 2023 album “Weathervanes.”
Next came the melancholic “Only Children,” a song from 2020’s “Reunions” and Isbell offered up a story about that one. A friend’s child, said the singer, had mistaken the lyric, “Hydrocodone in your backpack,” and thought Isbell was singing, “Hide a corn dog in your backpack.”
“If you mishear a lyric, don’t tell the person who wrote the song,” said Isbell, who joked that nowadays he had to think very carefully about singing the correct words because of the child’s snack-based narrative. “It makes a lot of sense.”
Next came “Gravelweed,” one of the new album’s most affecting songs, which includes the line, “I’m sorry the love songs all mean different things today,” and the title song, “Foxes in the Snow,” another deeply personal sounding song on par with his best material.
Two songs about his home state, longtime favorite “Alabama Pines” and an affecting new song, “Crimson and Clay,” followed, The latter begins with what sound like pleasant childhood memories before landing on images of a noose and rebel flags.
“This started out as a love song to my hometown,” said Isbell, adding that good love songs also contain the truth.
Next came “Traveling Alone,” which prompted a story about feeling that a section of the song had unintentionally “ripped off” John Prine, so he confessed to his songwriting hero. He recalls Prine saying that he didn’t think Isbell had stolen from him – on that song – with the unstated implication that perhaps the younger musician had on some other songs.
“I loved him so much,” said Isbell, laughing.
After the previously mentioned “Danko / Manuel,” Isbell did two more strong new pieces, “Good While It Lasted” and “Eileen,” and then commented briefly that things were “a little bit tough” these days for many.
“I thought for a long time I knew this country better than I did,” he said, going on to praise the people he met on tour and at his gigs.
Then it was time for two songs off his 2017 album, “The Nashville Sound.”
“These are my spooky monster songs,” said Isbell, about “Chaos and Clothes” and “If We Were Vampires.” “They’re not really about monsters; they’re about some crazy [stuff.]”
Isbell finished the set with fan-favorites “Cast Iron Skillet” and “If It Takes a Lifetime.” He returned for an encore consisting of a new song, “Ride to Robert’s,” followed by the Bon Iver cover and ended with the searing breakup song, “True Believer,” that, while not a rousing singalong, deftly summed up the themes of the night.
Maybe the strongest indicator of the quality of his new material and Isbell’s gifts as a performer is that he didn’t play some of his best-loved tunes and the night didn’t suffer a bit for it (though it’s doubtful anyone in the Walt Disney Concert Hall would have complained if he’d played longer).
Instead, Isbell just added more keepers to his setlist, and fans can now look forward to hearing how he plays them with a full band.
Because he says he will be back with his band. Isbell said he loved playing with his group and joked that he missed his friends “silently judging” him on stage.