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“I think it’s pretty hard to become a slide guitar player worth your salt if you haven’t spent some time with Duane Allman’s playing.” music, and it’s not hard rock and it’s not soft rock, it’s somewhere in the middle. It’s like The Three Bears. It’s like the Goldilocks story and the Three Bears. It’s just rock.” On the recent Bandcamp release Live From Macon Auditorium, 2016, Isbell got to play Duane Allman’s Gold Top Les Paul. What is the difference in the sound between that and something like the Telecaster? “Oh, well, there’s a huge difference sonically,” he says. “They had that guitar at The Big House, which is the Allman Brothers Museum and Mecca for a long time now. They take really good care of it and bring it out to certain shows and certain musicians and ask if they’d like to play it on stage. It was an honour for me to get to do that because it is a beautiful instrument and obviously carries a lot of history that’s really important to me because a lot of my playing was influenced pretty directly by Duane Allman, especially in slide guitar stuff. “I think it’s pretty hard to become a slide guitar player worth your salt if you haven’t spent some time with Duane Allman’s playing. So, yeah, it was huge. But a Les Paul sounds really thick and really heavy and it’s not a particularly clean sound but it sustains really well. It’s probably equally expressive to the Telecaster, but the Telecaster is more ringing and, I mean, people say twanging. Sometimes ‘twanging’ is the right word if you’re trying to play something that sounds like country music.” On the six-track album Live from Welcome to 1979, released in 2017 for Record Store Day and available again on Bandcamp, Isbell does absolutely slashing versions of the Stones’ songs ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ and ‘Sway.’ “Keith Richards plays a Telecaster,” he says, “and if you go back and listen to the Rolling Stones when Mick Taylor was in the band – Keith playing the Telecaster and Mick Taylor’s playing a Les Paul – you can definitely tell the difference. It’s kind of like the difference between a whiskey and tequila. I mean they wind up with the same effect, but they go down a lot differently.” Isbell says that he takes a dozen guitars with him on tour because he doesn’t like to tune up between songs.
For details on the Jason Isbell Fender Telecaster go to fender.com/AU
ASON ISBELL FENDER
>>> They were my first electric guitars. Well, I had one that my uncle gave me, a Les Paul copy, but really soon after that I got a Strat and then I got another one a few years later. And really my formative years as an electric guitar player were all spent on Fender guitars. So, it was a no brainer for me. “I chose to go with the Telecaster just because I’ve had such a good experience with those instruments on the road. I think the design is probably the best electric guitar design of them all. They’re very reliable and they’re not expensive guitars to make. So, I wanted to do one that was accessible to a lot of people but also versatile enough to where you could cover most styles of music with. And I think we pulled that off.” “I have a custom Sunburst Telecaster that is a little bit darker,” says Isbell when I ask him how he was involved in the design. “But we wanted to do something to sort of differentiate from that 1959, 1960 Tele custom Sunburst finish. So, they lightened up the inside of the finish a little bit. I think it looks great.” For the uninitiated, what’s the difference in playing a Telecaster compared with a Stratocaster? “Well, a Stratocaster usually, not always, but usually they have a bar, a tremolo bar,” explains Isbell. “It’s kind of a misnomer, it doesn’t really do tremolo, but it’s a pitch [bar]. It’s got springs inside it and then it’s a whammy bar. You can make the pitch of the guitar go up and down. A lot of people prefer a hardtail Stratocaster. But the pickups are really the main difference. “The body style’s a little different, the Strat is made to be a little bit more comfortable when you’re sitting and playing it. But the real difference is in the pickups, because a Telecaster has this kind of twang that you hear in a lot of country music, a lot of roots-based rock and roll, like the Rolling Stones or Bruce Springsteen or something. Whereas a Strat is probably traditionally more thought of as a lead instrument or a solo instrument.” Isbell was an early member of the Drive By Truckers, a band with a heavy and distinctive guitar sound. How did he develop his own style after he left to form his own band? “Well, I just stopped writing songs for that band and really it happened naturally,” he responds. “I think for me, developing my own style started out with imitating other songwriters and other musicians and then figuring out which of my mistakes I should leave in. And I think that’s how it happens with a lot of people. I’ve heard that Nirvana was trying to sound like the Beatles, but they missed the mark in the best possible way. I think for me, that was it. I followed a lot of my songwriting influences, and then when I found something that didn’t sound to me like I had hit the mark, I would decide, well, is this better or worse than what I was aiming for? And if you can figure out which of your mistakes work out for the best and follow those, and eventually you’ll sound like yourself.” Back in the ‘80s there was an expression for the kind of sound Isbell has now. They used to call it a high lonesome sound. How would he describe the sound he gets? “That’s a good question. I mean, it’s rock and roll music really,” is the reply. “The good news is you don’t have to describe it as much anymore because you can just look it up on your phone pretty quickly and cheaply for better or worse. It’s rock and roll
“Also, I like to play a bunch of different guitars,” he adds. “It’s fun for me to play a bunch of different guitars through the course of the set. Yeah, it’s tough. I mean, if you’re playing in clubs, you probably don’t have a whole bunch of guitars with you. You don’t have the space in your van for them, and you also probably don’t have stagehands and a guitar tech to take care of that. “Back when I didn’t have a guitar tech and we were driving ourselves around in a van, I travelled with one guitar. It had to be one that would stay in tune – and very often that was a Telecaster. That’s one of my favourite things about a Telecaster, is that they stay in tune really, really well even in extreme weather conditions. I played a show in Austin, Texas, for Willie Nelson’s 4th of July picnic a few years ago, and my pedal board went out right when I started the set, so I had to play the whole set with just one guitar and I didn’t have to tune the thing. It was a Telecaster and it made it through the entire set and stayed in tune. So, I’ll always be impressed with that.” While Isbell has been exceptionally productive in recent months, 2020 was a tough year for him given that he lost his good friends Justin Townes Earle and John Prine. “He loved it over there. He had a lot of friends over there,” says Isbell of Earle. “It was sad. It was really sad. He and I hadn’t been close over the last few years mostly because of his addiction issues. I mean, it’s just tough. It’s tough when you have a friend who struggles with those things. I can’t say that I was surprised when he passed away, but I was very sad. It’s just some people have their demons and sometimes they can’t quite conquer those. I know what happened was not necessarily his fault. I know it was something that he hadn’t planned on, and it was an accidental thing obviously, but he struggled for a long time. And all the years that I knew him, he never got to stay happy for too very long, so at least he’s not having to suffer at this point.” “I think it would have been harder for me if I was doing a job that I didn’t love,” replies Isbell when I mention that he was able to overcome his own demons and turn his life around. “I think if I’d been roofing or painting houses or teaching school or something, then it would have been harder for me because part of what helped me get sober and stay that way was the fact that I wanted to keep making music and being creative. “I was in a worse spot than Justin was when we first came over there together. He was doing a good job keeping himself together at that point in time and I was a mess. A lot of it is due to just good luck on my part. I had people around me who cared enough to call me out on my bullshit and also helped me when I needed help. And when I needed to get sober and were supportive of me when I was trying to stay that way. I got lucky in a whole lot of situations there that Justin might not have been afforded. But, at that point in time, we were really close and we had a lot of fun and I have a lot of good memories from that trip.” “John was a big deal to me and to Amanda, my wife, and our daughter,” says Isbell of John Prine. “We loved John and learned a lot from his music before we ever knew him and then learned even more from him as a person. He was the same onstage as off, and he loved making music. He never looked at it as a chore and he never did it for the money. He was always out there to communicate with people. And I really think that he made the world around him a lot better just through his art and through the way he treated people. He treated everybody with respect and we loved John. That was a big, big loss. And we’re still close with the family and they’re all doing a great job and staying busy and picking up the pieces of their life, but it’s left a big hole in Nashville and certainly in our house. I don’t know what else I could say about him. I mean, he was a beautiful man. One of the greatest things that ever happened to me through music was getting to be John Prine’s friend. As we finish our conversation I suggest that apart from all the other awards he has won he might now be looking at his first Academy Award. “Ooh, I don’t know. I doubt it,” laughs Isbell. “But I don’t think they’re going to let me screw it up too bad. So, I’m just going to trust them to make me the actor I need to be.”
JASON ISBELL SIGNATURE FENDER TELECASTER By Geoff King Guitar choices today are mind-bending. There are about sixty Telecaster models alone listed on the Fender Australia website so the style of music you want to play - and how much you can afford- may just as well be mediated by a signature model if you’re a fan of a guitarist whose style of play you want to emulate. Jason Isbell already has a signature Martin D18 acoustic guitar and, as his star has risen, here’s the Jason Isbell Fender Custom Telecaster. This model is based on a Fender Custom Shop Tele that has been one of Jason’s workhorses: a late 50s body style with nice weight and a solid mid 60s ‘C’-shaped neck that feels really comfortable in the hand. The guitar has specially wound pickups, however, so it’s not identical. It’s made in Fender’s Mexican plant, and while there are slight differences in quality compared to American custom-shop builds at twice the price, this is a well-made, carefully detailed guitar. As you’re aware, Isbell is more a rock guitarist with a country influence than a pure country picker. His playing tends to favour big, clear, rounded tones so while the bridge pickup has some spank and grit it might lack a little twang for a straight country player. The neck pickup is a beauty, full and bluesy, like 50s vintage reissues. The combination of the two is nicely ringing with a lot of natural sustain. The chocolate-sunburst finish with cream double-binding around the edges and a black pick-guard is attractive, but what to make of the ‘distressed’ -aka ‘roadworn’- body, presumably copying the wounds Jason’s original guitar has suffered? From a fandom POV I can dig it but, mostly, I loathe ‘roadworn.’ There are some makers e.g., Nash, who make otherwise excellent guitars but only ‘roadworn’ models meant to simulate years of hard gigging. Up close they always look like they’ve been abused by some guy at the factory using a stack of sandpaper that would make the Australian cricket team proud. Fortunately, the Isbell model has only lightly suffered at the hands of Mr Stab & Rub. (The custom Isbell Telecaster guitar Pickups, designed by in-house Fender tone guru Tim Shaw). Isbell worked with Fender on the design, and his signature Telecaster® comes equipped with all of the same modifications – even his known Road Worn® markings – that the Americana guitarist has sought out for touring and recording throughout the years. It will set you back upward of A$2799 (retail price) which is more expensive than a typical Fender Mexican-made guitar, but this is definitely a Telecaster worthy of Jason Isbell’s endorsement. 51
