Every nook, cranny and fissure of the House of Blues was filled with footprints as Boston awaited recent Grammy winnner Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. Strolling onto a blackened, stark stage adorned with just three stain glass windows above, Isbell, looking fit and sounding relaxed eased his gold-top Les Paul into “Palmetto Rose”, a groove that bassist Jimbo Hart and drummer Matt Pence would drive all night.
Starting with the breezy, “Flying over Water” and the ditty “Stockholm” some in the audience knew Isbell through his more recent solo career beginning with, Southeastern, however the majority of fans had been there for Isbell’s rise, fall and resurrection as evidenced by the audience’s adoration of the Drive By Truckers’, “Decoration Day”. Likewise the autobiographical, “Cover Me Up”, done largely acoustic and accompanied solely by Isbell’s wife, Amanda Shires, on fiddle and vocals drew overwhelming audience approval.
Their musical interaction throughout the night added an element to the already accomplished 400 Unit. Isbell also pointed out to his wife that she was missing the Garth Brooks show taking place down the road, saying the day he saw Garth Brooks followed by the pot belly pig races all for a dollar at the Oklahoma State Fair was a “great, great day!”
To label Isbell and the 400 Unit anything other than an old school, straight up rock and roll band, is unfair. Sure there’s a country, Telecaster, twang at times, a blues swagger in spots, the angelic, gospel harmonies (as offered by keyboardist, Derry deBorja) and/or sometimes an Americana combination of all three but there is never one to the exclusion of the others. Making an overall sound that could just as well describe the Stones circa “Exile on Main Street”.
The band rollicked through versions of, “Alabama Pines”, “Super 8” and “If it Take a Lifetime” and went solemn and introspective with “Traveling Alone” and “Something More Than Free”. Like William Faulkner with a melody instead of a typewriter some of Isbell’s best songwriting conveys the stories of hard times experienced by harder people; like in “Flagship”, “There’s a few too many years on this hotel/She used to be a beauty you can tell/The Lights down in the lobby they don’t shine/They just flicker while the elevator winds”. Another crowd favorite “Speed Trap Town” paints a memoir in seven verses.
Musically, the set-list interspersed the lighter numbers around three musically larger soundscapes: the aforementioned, “Decoration Day”, “Never Gonna Change” (another DBT cover), and “Children of Children” from the most recent Something More than Free release. While all three allowed Isbell and guitarist Sadler Vaden to show their chops, “Never Gonna Change” came on a bit too heavy at that point, but set closer “Children” was perfectly placed and played, melting the prior two hours of music into a psychedelic array of light and sound.
One Response
Correction: Drummer Chad Gamble not Matt Pence.