April 2020 | Rolling Stone | 33
ALYSSE GAFKJEN
‘I
T’S ALL based on a
true story,” says Jason
Isbell, “and it’s all
fiction.” The roots-drenched
singer-songwriter’s excellent
new album, Reunions, is filled
with tales of lost friends and
other melancholy memories,
but don’t let his gift for
novelistic detail fool you:
The people he’s mourning
didn’t necessarily exist, just
as it turns out that the meth-
fueled college misadventures
he detailed in 2017’s “Last of
My Kind” never actually hap-
pened. The onetime Drive-By
Trucker’s imaginative gifts
served him well in 2018,
when he wrote the utterly
convincing “Maybe It’s Time”
for Bradley Cooper’s charac-
ter in A Star Is Born. “I’m sure
that’s the biggest project I’ll
ever be part of,” says Isbell.On “It Gets Easier,” you
write about the challenges
of staying sober after many
years — a unique angle on
the subject. How did you
come to write it?
I’m always looking for ways
to come at subject matter that
haven’t been explored before.
People will write a lot about
the first stages of love or re-
covery or life-changing events.
You write about the funeral;
you don’t write about 30 years
later, when Dad’s been gone.
I’ve been sober for eight
years, and the fact of it is, you
still wish that you had that
crutch sometimes.... I do
still have those “slip dreams,”
as David Crosby calls them,
where I’ll dream that I just
had a drink. And I’m like,
“What the hell did I just do?”
Crosby is a fan of yours,
and he sang backup on this
album. What’s your relation-
ship like?
David is like your granddad,
if your granddad was really
stoned all the time. He’ll call
at one o’clock in the morning
and he’s really high and he
wants to tell you about an
idea, and they’re usually
good ideas. His voice is still so
powerful, and that surprised
me because he’s not always
taken the best care of himself.
I asked him, “How are you
still able to sing like that?”
He said, “I tried everything
I could to kill it, but it just
won’t die.”The other new song that
seems drawn from your life
is “Letting You Go,” where
you imagine your four-year-
old daughter getting mar-
ried, many years from now.
That is a terrifying thing for
a father to imagine. When
my father-in-law was walking
my wife [singer-songwriter
Amanda Shires] down the
aisle, when he got up to
me, he stopped and would
not hand her over [laughs].
And now I think, “Man, I’d
probably do the same thing.”I have this theory about
raising a daughter. If she does
wind up with a man, and if
I’ve misbehaved, she’s gonna
think, “This is not so bad,”
and tolerate more from guys.
So if I don’t want to deal with
an asshole showing up in the
driveway to pick her up to go
to prom, then I can’t be an
asshole myself.
“Letting You Go” is one of
your many, many tear-jerk-
ing songs, from the cancer
tale “Elephant” to “If We
Were Vampires,” where amarried couple grapples
with the idea that one of
them will inevitably die
first. Do you, on some level,
enjoy making listeners cry?
Well, that or making them
laugh — if you make some-
body make some type of
noise unintentionally, you’re
doing a pretty good job as
a songwriter. But there’s
something about the sad
songs where it’s not just sad,
there’s a resilience, and I
think that’s what really affects
people. When you’re paintinga picture of people who insist
on pushing through and sur-
viving, that’s where people
really get moved, because
that is at the heart of the
human experience.
When you met Bruce
Springsteen a few years
ago, he sang one of your
songs to you, right?
He goes, “My son brought
your record home, and I real-
ly liked that song — and then
he started singing — “Travel-
ing Alone.” And I’m standing
there thinking, “He’s singing
my song in Bruce Springsteen
voice!” And then I was like,
“Yeah, ’cause that’s just
what comes out of his face
naturally, you know?” But he
was supersweet. And I was
beside myself. I mean, it’s
Bruce Springsteen. He really
lived up to all the hype. And
he comes from a time when
it was possible for people to
write those kind of songs and
sell millions of records and
sell out arenas.
Do you yearn for that era
at all?
If I’d come along in the
Seventies, I probably would
have been a much bigger star,
and I would’ve had a lot more
money. And I would be dead.
It would not have turned out
well. I mean, more is not
always better.
You almost turned down
the offer to write for A Star
Is Born. Why?
Before I read the script or
anything, I thought it sound-
ed like a terrible idea — the
one with Barbra Streisand
and Kris Kristofferson, as
much as I love both of them,
was not a great movie. And I
had been writing a lot, and I
just didn’t feel up to it.
And of course my wife,
Amanda, was like, “You’re an
idiot! You’ve got all these
songs laying around, just
finish one up.” That’s what I
did, and it turned out great.
Bradley came to some shows,
and we hung out a bit. He’s a
good guy and a good director.
Then Gaga called me while I
was feeding my daughter one
afternoon. For some reason, I
thought it would be hilarious
to put them on the phone
with each other. So I handed
my two-year-old the phone
— and of course she could say
“Gaga” really well.The singer-songwriter on his new LP, ‘A Star Is Born,’
and hanging with Springsteen and CrosbyBy BRIAN HIATTJason Isbell
Q&A