Jason Isbell Quotes

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Jason Isbell

Profession : Musician

Birth : February 1, 1979

A lot of people make records where there are a couple songs worth listening to and you skip through the rest, and I don't want to do that because those records bore me pretty bad.

Jason Isbell

If I could write rock & roll songs on purpose, I'd do it all the time. But most of what I write comes out slow and sad because that's most of what I listen to.

Jason Isbell

I don't start a song with an idea of what ingredients are going to go into a song. It's not like a recipe. I will normally either talk from personal experience or I'll make a character and then try to allow that character to behave the way he or she naturally would.

Jason Isbell

A great story poorly told doesn't do anybody any good at all, and nobody wants to hear it, and nobody wants to read it. The craft of it is really more important than the subject matter.

Jason Isbell

I just try to keep making good records, try to write songs the best way I can and take my job seriously. Like most people take their jobs.

Jason Isbell

I have my own definitions of success. And I have my own definitions of country music that, luckily, I share with more people than I realized before.

Jason Isbell

If I spent my time wondering about what genre I wanted to be in or where I was on the charts, I wouldn't be able to write these kinds of song. I'd be too busy doing other things.

Jason Isbell

I think probably songwriters are gonna be the toughest critics... I think of it as a community. And we all sort of feed off of each other.

Jason Isbell

When I hear somebody like Hayes Carll write a song that's touching and poignant and sad and funny all at the same time, it motivates me to step my game up and try to figure out a way to get more different emotions into one line or one song.

Jason Isbell

I don't write a whole lot about one person that exists in reality; it's usually characteristics of different people that I combine into a character. I tend to think through and try and make characters behave in a natural way. I follow the character and think about what they would do, what decisions they would make.

Jason Isbell

I've tried to be open to what's going on and paying close attention, not letting things that inspire me to pass me by.

Jason Isbell

At some point, I'd like to make a record that's more of a self-serving guitar album, because I really love to play. It's not really something I'd expect a whole lot of people to buy, though.

Jason Isbell

I've spent a lot of time in a rock n' roll band trying to fight off the fact that I was old enough to rent a car. And it's all sort of rushed in at once now. And I like it.

Jason Isbell

When I was playing with the Truckers, a lot of really good things happened. And we had a good trajectory for a long time. For that kind of a band, for the kind of music that I've always made, we had a lot of success, I think.

Jason Isbell

If you're the person whose problems were solved when you were born, your job is to try and help the people who aren't in that situation. It's very easy to say you're tired of political discussion when all of your problems are solved. I keep trying to think of it that way.

Jason Isbell

What having a child - and especially a daughter - has done is lifted more of the veil for me: allowed me to see things on another level compared to how I used to see them.

Jason Isbell

You can be very honest without telling the truth, at least in art.

Jason Isbell

For me, the things like the Confederate flag - I just don't think that it does anybody much good, and it certainly causes a lot of people a lot of pain.

Jason Isbell

I've always known that there are conflicting issues going on where I'm from. It's always been that way.

Jason Isbell

I have a lot of reactions to the outside world that I don't feel like would be appropriate for songs: things I'm not interested in writing about, things I don't want to think about any longer than 15 or 20 seconds.

Jason Isbell