I’m interrupting Random Weekends for a day in order to mark a special occasion… the 18th birthday of my daughter, Sophia!
Sophia has been mentioned on the blog quite a few times over the years. Her first appearance during the Song of the Day era came all the way back at Song of the Day #6, when she was just six years old.
My #11 album of the 2010s is the only one on this list that I didn’t hear when it first came out. Jason Isbell’s Here We Rest eluded me for six years.
I discovered Isbell after reading year-end praise of his 2017 album The Nashville Sound (recorded, like this one, with his backing band The 400 Unit). The excellence of that album prompted me to download the rest of his catalog.
Here’s one more track from Jason Isbell’s The Nashville Sound to soundtrack my family trip to Nashville.
Isbell is the rare left-leaning country artist (though refreshingly less rare than even a decade ago). This song, like several tracks on The Nashville Sound, is a reaction to the 2016 election and what it says about the state of America.
My family is in Nashville for the next few days, turning my wife’s work trip into a quick vacation. Some of my favorite artists either live in or have passed through Nashville, but I don’t think we’ll be lucky enough to catch any of them live.
Jason Isbell is a new addition to that stable of favorites. His 2017 album The Nashville Sound is one of the best I’ve heard in recent years.
So far, my greatest streaming success story has to be Jason Isbell. I first discovered the Alabama-born Americana artist through Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll, when his ‘If We Were Vampires’ showed up at #20 and was easily the best song on the list.
I downloaded his most recent album, The Nashville Sound, and was blown away. I got that buzz you feel when you know you’ve stumbled onto something special. That sent me back to Amazon to download the other five albums he’s released either solo or with his backing band the 400 Unit.
