Arguably the headmaster of this underclass since his arrival on the scene as an underage and overserved backup guitarist is Jason Isbell, just lately known as “The Poet Laureate of The New South.” When Isbell joined the well-established and well-lubricated southern rock act Drive-By Truckers in 2002, the band was searching for to interchange the latest departure of guitarist Rob Malone. In addition to gaining a hotshot guitar slinger, the band nearly unwittingly acquired among the finest songwriters of a technology, penning the songs “Decoration Day,” “Danko/Manuel,” “The Day John Henry Died,” “Goddamn Lonely Love” and a handful of different gems recorded by the band.
While lots of Isbell’s compositions are up to date Faulknerian tales of unhappy sacks in Southeastern bars, considering leaving city to flee an overbearing invalid father, or planning an ill-advised heist of copper at a job web site that goes awry, lots of the deeper songs revolve round love, whether or not the youthful ardour of “Cover Me Up” or the mature longing of “If We Were Vampires,” and a few of the greatest contain delicate life classes like “If It Takes a Lifetime” or the thinly-veiled recommendation to his daughter in “Something to Love.” Over the course of his recordings, Isbell has been engaged on a music cycle of “Don’t” songs–three songs that explicitly element the knowledge incurred by a life strongly lived, with various ranges of applicability.
“Don’t name what you are carrying an outfit”
When Jason Isbell joined Drive-By Truckers, they have been a fully-functioning unit coming off of the unimaginable double album Southern Rock Opera which established the band as not solely a viable touring act with a Skynyrd-level tie to the duality of the Southern factor. While Isbell could have been initially considered a six-string stand-in, his depth as a songwriter was rapidly acknowledged and appreciated alongside the regular pens of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. Of his early work, none of Isbell’s songs are as beloved by followers as “Outfit” from 2003’s Decoration Day.
Told from the angle of a doubtlessly reluctant father, “Outfit” reads nearly like a goodbye word handed ashamedly to a son. In it, the narrator presents a life story concerning the decisions he made (promoting his Mustang for a marriage ring after getting his lady knocked up, working dead-end manufacturing unit jobs earlier than settling for a distinct dead-end job portray homes for his father’s portray firm). Embedded on this autobiography are some heartfelt truisms. Don’t inform individuals your automobile is “broke”–not for the grammatical mis-step, however as a result of both you need to know the precise motive (alternator or transmission is shot), or that as a Southern man, your automobile would by no means be damaged within the first place. Don’t be faux and lose your accent, and keep near your loved ones by calling your sister on her birthday. Don’t do laborious medication.
Written when Isbell was solely 21, the music belies a worldliness that he could not presumably have earned however in some way succinctly defines. The snapshot of his narrator’s universe is small and simply-defined. Family, work, accountability, and in some way attempting to combat your means out of your station to create a greater life. The music is gorgeous in its heavy-handed broad-brush portray of a fictional however wizened smalltown father who has recommendation that he is aware of his son most likely will not take. It is heartening and heartbreaking unexpectedly.
“Don’t wash the forged iron skillet”
Over the next twenty years, Isbell has dropped nuggets of knowledge in to his songs all alongside. “I hope you discover one thing to like/Something to do whenever you really feel like giving up” and “Just discover what makes you content lady and do it ’til you are gone” in 2017’s “Something to Love” and “Be afraid, be very afraid/But do it anyway” on 2020’s Reunions, however they have been laid most naked on the 2023 monitor “Cast Iron Skillet” on Weathervanes
The music has some quite simple bits of recommendation that may very well be present in a well-thumbed toilet copy of Reader’s Digest or a Bazooka Joe comedian. “Don’t wash the forged iron skillet/Don’t drink and drive, you will spill it” and “Don’t stroll whеre you’ll be able to’t see your toes.” Alongside these platitudes is a narrative of a Southern lady who finds real love with somebody who’s a distinct colour than she is and her racist smalltown father by no means speaks to her once more. In each “Outfit” and “Skillet” Isbell intertwines a fictional and difficult life story with fragments of recommendation he has picked up and desires to impart on his viewers.
“Don’t be powerful till you need to/Let love knock you in your ass”
On his 2025 album Foxes within the Snow, Isbell put aside the total band and determined to make his most John Prine-esque document but. Just him and his voice and his guitar, telling the identical tall tales of misplaced love, new romance, laborious luck tales of damaged males and dusty barrooms. The songs on the album really feel extra private than his earlier releases, partially due to the intimacy of the recording surroundings, and partially due to his real-life life story influencing the subject material. Tucked into within the tracklist is a 3rd “Don’t” music referred to as “Don’t Be Tough” which rounds out our trilogy.
While the principle character of “Outfit” confirmed a presumably undeserving maturity, the lecturer in “Don’t Be Tough” is a bit more simplified. Somehow rising older has rounded a few of Isbell’s edges, providing recommendation like “Don’t be shitty to the waiter/He’s had a more durable day than you” and “Don’t make infants keep up later/Just as a result of they’re so rattling cute” and even “And should you get to feeling lonely/Read out loud should you can learn” or (oof) “Take a nap should you get sleepy/If you are hungry, attempt to eat” which all really feel a bit of extra Hallmark Card or “Chicken Soup for the Poet Laureate of the New South’s Soul” than his earlier strains about avoiding needle medication, damaged blades, or threatening to shoot a canine if it bites his child.
At the identical time, Isbell offsets these sweetly trite soundbites with extra succinct and thought-out classes like “Don’t be powerful till you need to” and “Don’t neglect the shit you went by.” Even extra tellingly, recommendation like “Life will kill you should you let it/So whenever you’re down, then say you are down” really feel easy, however require loads of self-awareness and fragility that the proprietor of the 302 Mach 1 Mustang could by no means have discovered.
What recommendation will probably be supplied in future “Don’t” songs? Does this want to impart knowledge proceed on future albums? Will the octogenarian Isbell give recommendations on hoverboards or oatmeal within the yr 2059? My suspicion is that followers will nonetheless be keen to hear, even when it takes a lifetime.