Jason Isbell’s Acoustic Tour Comes Through Loud and Clear: Live Review

“I’ve grown tired of traveling alone,” Jason Isbell once sang, in a number that remains a favorite for fans in a lonesome mood. But that’s one of his old songs that means something different today. He’s traveling alone and loving it, at least in the sense that he is hitting the road as a solo artist for a first-time national acoustic tour, reflecting the formal aloneness of his just-released album “Foxes in the Snow.” Or maybe the reflection goes the other way: Isbell has suggested that he was booking the tour dates first last year and the idea of recording a full record with no band was an outgrowth of that impulse. Whichever came first, the chicken or the egg, the album and tour arriving in tandem are making for a terrific chicken-omelette dinner.

Playing a mid-tour show at Oakland’s Calvin Simmons Theatre (a juke joint as high-class as L.A.’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, where he also played this weekend), Isbell mentioned how he is coincidentally sharing a circuit with some musician friends right now, even if they, too, are more or less traveling alone. “I appreciate you guys not going to Sacramento to see Dave and Gil this evening, because I know that Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are basically at the same places that I’m at on this tour,” he told the Oakland crowd. “We’re going back and forth. We were texting before the show because I love them, they’re my favorite, and it struck us that you people love a flat-picked guitar out here. I think it’s because it’s hard to carry a whole bunch of gear when the towns are real far apart. … I have this theory that the guitar is the best instrument of all the instruments. I think it’s because you can carry it with you and still play a full chord,” he noted — throwing in a joke about the challenge of accompanying yourself singing “Wonderwall” on the flute at a party.

The most obvious point of reference for the “Foxes in the Snow” album has been Bruce Springsteen’s completely solo “Nebraska,” and it’s apt, as far as thinking about making a virtue out of starkness on the edge of town. One difference is that some Springsteen fans still, to this day, debate whether his record would have worked better as an E Street album and hunger to hear the scrapped band tracks released from the vaults. It’s possible there are some Isbell fans who’ll put their imaginations to work imagining how “Foxes” would have sounded as a band record, too — and possibly we’ll find out if these songs turn up on his next tour with the 400 Unit —but his new album doesn’t work as well as it does just because it’s a mood piece. It’s true that the transparently autobiographical nature of most of the songs, at a time when people are taking an extra interest in Isbell’s personal life, lends itself to the stripped-down format. But unlike the Springsteen record of yore, there is a level of acoustic guitar virtuosity here that is a big part of the appeal.

In other words, Isbell wasn’t lying, or exaggerating, with his half-joking aside about audiences loving a flat-picked guitar. You may think you’re coming for the “divorce album,” or the newly minted love songs, with someone who is as much a master of personal lyricism as Isbell is. But whether you’re as cognizant of his tastefully subtle acoustic guitar shredding as you are of his songwriting, it’s true, instinctively, what they say: Every girl crazy ‘bout a sharp-picked Martin.

Isbell’s solo shows on this tour are coming in at what “Succession” fans might call a “tight 90.” He’s been doing eight of the new album’s 11 songs just about every night (abeit not always the same eight), and then bolstering those with 10 more selections from the catalog… making for a satisfying hour-and-a-half that you might wish was just a little longer, if you harbor the desire, as diehards will, to find out what every band song sounds like in this format. Setlists passed along from previous stops along the way indicate that there’s a real lottery as to which oldies you’ll get on any given night. In Oakland, he opened the show with the rueful rocker “Overseas” and closed the main portion of the set with the tender “Something to Love”; these are songs that don’t even show up in his performances most nights. But Isbell likes playing roulette with key setlist slots that might be set in stone for most other touring acts.

Isbell went into storytelling mode for a bare handful of the songs, albeit not the most personal ones. If one case, he made it crystal-clear he is not always in memoir mode, suggesting that some listeners don’t believe that no matter how obvious the hints. Following “The Life You Chose,” he noted, “A lot of times people think that if you write a song and you say ‘I’ or ‘me,’ then everything in that song happened to you. For that last one, I tried to make it pretty obvious that that’s not me in their song. And still people will ask those questions, and sometimes I just hold up my fingers.” (In other words, “Lost three fingers to a faulty tool / Settled out of court, I’m no one’s fool” may have been a giveaway.) 

After singing “Elephant,” his famously harrowing song about being partnered with a woman dying of terminal cancer, he said that “the first time I played that song, people were upset. You know, everybody got really quiet. Nobody clapped or anything.” Finally, he said, “This one guy in the back of the crowd yells out, ‘Play a sad song.’”

Well, after playing “Elephant” at this particular show, Isbell did play a damned sad song, although it’s debatable whether it was sadder than the one that came before. Next up for him was “Gravelweed,” one of several tracks from the new record that seem to deal quite outrightly with a recent divorce that has been a subject of endless fan speculation. Isbell was not about to give this one a spoken introduction or outro, nor did he offer any annotation for the similarly biting “True Believer,” which closed the show. At least when it came to explaining any of the most confessional new material, which tends to come close to being self-explanatory, Isbell was content to let the subjects of his real-life split or subsequent love be the elephants in the room.

But Isbell fans are the type that like to read between the lines anyway, and they weren’t likely to feel like the singer-songwriter was in avoidance mode, not in a show in which he opened with one number about a separation (“Overseas”) and closed the encore portion with another (“True Believer”). It says something about how loaded some of those new songs about his split are — in an album that has been compared not just to “Nebraska,” but to “Blood on the Tracks” — that they are right in competition with “Elephant” and “Live Oak” — an actual murder ballad! — for the title of heaviest song of the night.

This is a mostly light-spirited show, nonetheless, despite those weighty anchor songs. That’s partly due to the jocularity of the handful of stories he tells. And it’s partly due to how “Foxes in the Snow” has several extremely romantic songs, seemingly inspired by new love in Isbell’s life. (As far as the old love songs that have different meanings now, to quote “Gravelweed,” signature song “Cover Me Up” was not on the playlist on this particular night, although “If We Were Vampires” remains a staple.) “Good While It Lasted,” “Ride to Robert’s” and the title track of “Foxes in the Snow” all stood as rare and fresh examples of how Isbell can write a great crush song when he sets his mind to it. Regardless of how much of his personal goings-on you read into these freshly penned numbers, they are ebullient set-lifters that came just in time, deliberately or coincidently, to ensure that his first solo tour doesn’t get bogged down in breakups or missing digits.

There is one moony love song from the new album he did some explaining about … because it’s not about him. Although “Wind Behind the Rain” was identified in some album reviews (including ours) as a lovestruck paean to his new partner, Isbell explained its exegesis here: “My little brother got married a few months ago, and his fiance came up to me and said… ‘Will you write a song for our wedding?’ I said, ‘That is a bold request, so yes, I’ll do it.’ And oh my God… I have played in front of all kinds of folks and not been as nervous as I was standing up for their first dance with a guitar with this song taped to the microphone stand on a piece of notebook paper, wearing a cheap suit.” Isbell has not lacked for songs before that at least carried the romantic intensity of a wedding song, but now he’s got one that doesn’t mention vampirism or staying in bed for a week, so it may move quickly up the list of his nuptials-ready numbers.

Even if you’re a fan of the 400 Unit sound, as presumably every extant devotee of his is, this solo show felt like optimal Isbell, at least in the moment, with the clarity of music and lyrics that the honed-down, zoned-in solo format allowed. It seems unlikely that he’ll stay in this mode indefinitely, though. So one question is, will these new songs translate well to him going electric again? The 8-bill augurs for a favorable outcome, there; the chorus hooks of “Eileen” and “Gravelweed,” especially, are too strong not to be heard loud and clear over the blare of a band. But this probably fleeting solo turn is something fans will remember as good while it lasted, to say the least.

Setlist for Jason Isbell at the Calvin Simmons Theatre, Oakland, Calif., March 13, 2025:

Overseas
Bury Me
Foxes in the Snow
The Life You Chose
Last of My Kind
Good While It Lasted
Live Oak
Alabama Pines
Elephant
Gravelweed
Wind Behind the Rain
If We Were Vampires
Cast Iron Skillet
Eileen
Something to Love

(encore)
Ride to Robert’s
King of Oklahoma
True Believer