The New Yorker Radio Hour - Episode 63: Late-Night Icon David Letterman and Songwriter Jason Isbell

Episode Date: December 30, 2016

David Letterman discusses life after late night and songwriter Jason Isbell talks about songwriting while sober. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Today we've got a special show, two live interviews from the New Yorker Festival. One of the great songwriters working today, Jason Isbell, will talk with John Seabrook about writing songs, about getting sober, and about how much better it is to write songs while sober. And he'll play for us, too. It seems like these days you couldn't run away at all. That's a little later this hour. But first, a king of late night who's now able to sleep a little in the morning. The New Yorker's local authority on comedy is Susan Morrison,

and she's called David Letterman without question the most original television voice of his generation. Letterman was on late night TV for 33 years, and even now, more than a year after his retirement, it's kind of hard to get used to his absence. Here he is with Susan Morrison at the New Yorker Festival. Susan, how are you? Nice to see you. Thank you very much. Thank you folks. Thank you. All right, that's enough. Thank you. Anyway, well, here we go. First of all, thank you very much for thinking of me. It's a great honor, a great privilege, and I can't tell you how nice it is to be out of the house.

Well, we're so, so glad that you're here. We even put on the nice shiny shoes. Thank you. Just beautiful. Yes. New shoes. Well, I'm going to start with a question. that I know every single person in this audience would like to know the answer of, which is, what did you do today? What do you do now? Well, what I did today is different from what I do now. Today I got up at the crack of dawn and very excited about this event. And we have two dogs, yellow labs. One's name is Dutch, one's name is Sully. And I took them for a long run. And that's for a long run. And that's for a

dog owners, you understand that that's a euphemism. And we got that taken care of. And then I myself went for a long run. And that isn't a euphemism, by the way. And then I got on a train and I came to the greatest city in the world. And here I am in this lovely theater talking to you, folks. Thank you again. Okay.

I'm sure the audience would like to hear about this, a program that you're doing that you've done with National Geographic about climate change. It was, yeah, I'd love to talk about it. I, and I'll tell you the origin of my interest in this, I was contacted by these people, and they said, would you like to do a segment? And I said, yeah, because I can remember, I think it was President Obama when he was running to be president, said something that's become a cliche, but it stuck with me and what he said was, what are we going to tell our kids when they say to us, wait a minute, you knew the climate was changing, and you did nothing about it?

And so I thought, holy crap, yes, let's do something about it. And I became converted in a very aggressive way. I thought, by God, I got a kid. And I want to be able to tell him that I did something. So this fit right in that plan of mine. And so we go to India. And the point of our story was the 400 million people in India without electricity, 400 million people.

400 million people. And Prime Minister Modi wants to electrify these people. And the goal he has set, and everything about India is hyperbolic because of the numbers, because of the size. He wants to electrify via solar grid 7,000 homes a day. A day. Try and get the cable guy to come out to your house before Labor Day. And while People like Modi, some people dislike Modi. Everybody is very optimistic that this can be done, but they need help. And my feeling about it is, let's turn India loose, let's do everything we can. If they want to be the leader in renewable energy, the country that is the leader in renewable energy

is the country that will rule the world. And why not? Turn them loose, let's go. I wish I was smarter on this topic, but it's hard. even for a dumb guy to deny. So, yeah, have I answered the question? You have, very well. This is what I'm talking about.

I'll just talk all night. You just stop me. I'm just sitting here with my clipboard. But it's time to go, yeah. Have you kept up with the sea of late night shows? Do you watch them? What do you mean by kept up? Do you watch them?

No, I've not seen them. Okay. Because I'm not... Well, let me amend that. I was a guest years and years ago on the Jimmy Kimmel show. So when I was there, I guess that counts as having watched it. Probably. You probably watched it on the line.

Sort of like I'm watching this show here tonight. Well, because one of the things that's different about the crop of late-night shows out there now is they seem to me. I mean, I never stay up late enough to watch them, and I'm not very good with a DVR. Yeah, that's my excuse now, too. But they seem to exist to create this kind of batch of YouTube clips that everybody watches the next day. And I mean, part of your career as a host was pre-internet, but it strikes me that you never were chasing that kind of viral thing. You're right, Susan.

And people, network people and staff people would say exactly what you said. And I said, great, I don't know how to do that. I just didn't know how to do that. I mean, all I knew was I knew Johnny Carson, I knew Steve Allen, I knew the kind of show they did. And I taught myself how to do those kinds of shows. But to do shows specifically aimed, I don't even know how you get a clip on the Internet. Honest to God.

You got to get a guy or a woman, and they put it on the Internet. And they would say, oh, and you've got to start tweeting. And I said, what? What am I going to tweet? Who's going to see it? But I recognize, and I talked to Biz Stone, Mr. Mr. Twitter years and years and years ago, and I said, describe for me what Twitter is. And he said, it's my gift to mankind.

That's what I thought. But he may be, he may be right. He in fact may be right, because we now have a record of interpersonal communications, not just for me to you, not just for me to these people. of people all over the world. But what I don't care about is Justin Bieber getting a slurpy at 7-Eleven. When you started out,

when late night started out, New York was just kind of coming out of what you could call its fierce city period. You know, when the city was broke and it was dangerous and it was about to turn into the 80s, you know, which is full of insider traders and vulgar, rich guys like Donald Trump. But one of the things that you managed to do that was so great is to create a sense of New York

for the viewers as if it were a small town. And I wonder if that's, is that just a product of your Indiana roots, or was that a conscious strategy to make everything cozy? You know what? I've tried to articulate this in the past. And throughout the years of the show, very little of what was seen or is remembered

was of my doing. I was always lucky to have people who had great vision. I never wanted to be the funniest person in the room and never was. I'm not even the funniest person in this room. And the first head writer that we had was a woman by the name of Merrill Marco. And when you invoke the notion of New York as a small town, She would begin her day with the yellow pages, in the old days when there were yellow pages,

and she would just go through and look for neighborhood establishments. And she'd find a place, hmm, just shades. She's right down just shades. And then she'd just go, oh, I'll be darned, just bald. And so we would go out, and we would turn that into comedy. Well, let's look at a very quick clip that gets a couple. across this wonderful kind of little Mr. Rogers neighborhood feeling, which is about the strong guy, the fat guy, the...

I can guarantee you this was not my idea. What this is, I'd completely forgotten about this. This is insanity. This is, I mean, from where does this idea come? Do you know? No, I have no idea. But yet it was, and we went out and we shot it. We got a bodybuilder.

We're going to look at it. Okay, let's take a look here. It's great. Tell us about it. I'll be in the men's room. We have it? I'd like you to meet three very special friends of mine. You, sir?

A strong guy. And you? I'm a fat guy. And how about you? Genius. You guys ready? Yeah. Let's go.

I, the fat guy. God gave them each a special gift and earth. They break it. They eat it. They solve it. the reason they were put up on his head. Have something for the strong guy to bust? Yeah, he can bust the clock.

Oh, the clock, go ahead. And Rupert, do you have anything for the fat guy to eat? Yeah, we have some big ziti today. Oh, big seedy. And how about a question for the genius? Well, on the periodic chart, what's a symbol for sodium? That would be N.A. Right, he's a genius.

Do you have anything for the strong guy to bust? Yes. What do you got? We got stereo. Cool. And Alex, something for the fat guy to eat? About cream cheese, that's suitable for a bagel star? Oh, yes, sir.

How much sheet is in a rain of regular papers? That's 500 sheets. Lobster. To punch it. Some poor. And munch it. The genius. Man, that guy is smart.

The natural enemy of the penguin is a leopard seal. Mr. Strong guy is still. Genius. We thank you from the bottom of our. Wow, that's remarkable. I can watch that all day. That's delightful. And I will say, without the music, you have nothing.

And Paul Schaefer and the man singing it was Willie, who was our bass player. I believe that they were responsible for that song. And once you have the song, for heaven's sakes, pretty much the piece writes itself. It's pretty great. Well, it's incredibly gracious of you to give a credit to all of the smart, wonderful people on your staff. But clearly, as the patriarch of this whole operation, you were curating it. You were finding these people. You were hiring them.

You were kind of the wellspring of the vision. And talking about your influence, Tina Fey once said, everything about Letterman's show informed not only our country. comedy about our actual human interactions. Do you know what she means by that? Well, she's... I mean, that woman is a comedy genius. I can only presume she was drunk.

I think what she means is that in the years, since you were on the air, I mean, you know, irony has become kind of a default setting in not just on television comedy, but in, you know, ads for life insurance and fraternity parties and your accountant and, you know, and just the way we deal with you. Well, I will. It's pretty, it's an awesome thing. And I'm wondering if you're fully aware of the scope. But you know, it's like working, if you're working in a, let's say, an automotive factory and you're building cars and maybe you build 800 a day, you don't go home and look at all the car. You don't go home and look at all the cars on the highway and say, by God, I built all of these cars.

You just, it's one car at a time. Well, I'd love to talk about Carson for a minute. You've said that the first time you sat down next to Carson on the Tonight Show, you felt like you were sitting down next to Abe Lincoln. You know, he was so familiar. I mean, I can say I feel like I'm the one sitting next to Abe Lincoln today, as you can imagine. I had to say something about the beard. But, you know, and I mean, when you were starting out, you moved to L.A.

Just to be, because that's where Johnny was. And when he died, you did the most moving tribute to him, you know, describing him as a public utility. Was Carson there from the very beginning as a model for you for your career and your business life and everything else? He was the pot at the end of the rainbow. You would sit at home and watch the Tonight Show, and a comedian would come on. And they'd say, ladies and gentlemen, here's Bob Stevens,

and you can see him this week at the Comedy Store. And I thought, The Comedy Store, what are they talking about? And I found out that the Comedy Store was a place people could get up and do nascent comedians and do comedy. And so there was clearly a connection between the Comedy Store and the Tonight Show. So that's what pride me out of the comfort of Indianapolis and moved to California. And it worked exactly the way I thought it would work.

I went to the comedy store. The first week I was there, started working at the comedy store. I moved in 1975, and in 1978 I was on the damn show. So I thought, geez, if somebody had told me three years and you'll be on the Tonight Show, sitting there next to Johnny Carson, and it was remarkable. It really was like you're on a bus and you look over it and he's oh, holy crap, it's Abe Lincoln.

I've seen you on the $5 bill. How you doing, Abe? And he was, there are many people responsible for what success I attained, no one less than Johnny Carson because his stamp of approval was far and wide. After he died when you did this beautiful tribute to him,

you revealed at the end of your monologue that all the jokes that you told that night were written by Carson and it was so beautifully done because it was, you know, no one knew until the end. So had he been sending you jokes for all those years after his retirement?

Yes. Even while he was still active. The first time I was on the show and he did this with a lot of comics. During the commercial he would say, you know, the joke you have there about the casket with the skis on it, He said, why don't you try if you move this and just end with that? So he was constantly tutoring.

And then when we got the CBS show, I think even the NBC show, he was sending us jokes all the time. And he, the thing that is, when you watch Carson, it's so troubling to me because the man is effortless. effortless. And my instinct, when things went south on the show, was to push and try harder. Not Carson.

He was the one, he was the rudder. He was the keel. He was the control of the show. Didn't make any difference what else had happened. You had Johnny. Whereas if the audience is not going for me, I'm out there trying to beat him up to get him to like me. Johnny didn't care because he knew people.

People just loved him. And you look at the first show he did on NBC, you look at the last show he did on NBC, and if you had to chart it on a graph, it would just pretty much be like that. He was so solid. Now, what happened if, I assume that you didn't use all the jokes that he sent?

Were some of them not quite up to it? Or was that all right? Johnny Carson sends you a joke. You're using it. It's, you know, I edit Steve Martin at the magazine, And years ago, when Carson was still alive, he called me, and he said, Johnny Carson would like to submit some humor pieces to the magazine. I thought it would have a heart attack.

I was so excited. And Johnny called himself and talked to me about them, and it was the greatest day in the world. And then when he finally sent the pieces in, oh, my God, it was so beautiful. He sent an envelope with a piece. And then in that envelope was also a little self-addressed stamped envelope. You know, what a 21-year-old college graduate does sending his first unsolicited piece to a magazine, you know, so that if it was a reject,

I would just fold it up and send it back to them. It was the humility of it. It was so beautiful. Well, I think that's him. That is Johnny Carson. Well, just three years after you had your first guest experience on the Tonight Show, my old friend, the wonderful late Peter Kaplan,

called you Carson's heir apparent. I mean, it seemed clear to everybody that this was going to be your next gig. But after the bizarre turn of events that led to Leno, Jay Leno hosting to Tonight Show and you moving to CBS, you were in first place in the ratings for a chunk of time.

Two years. Two years. And then slipped behind Leno. Did that talk? torment you? Yes. Yeah. I was embarrassed by it.

We didn't know exactly what happened. We just knew that we had lost our way. And for a long time, because one of my precepts of life is, always find somebody to blame. And I would blame the network, because I thought the problem was not me. I thought the problem was the network.

And then I gradually began to realize that it's not the network, the problem is me. And then I was able to make peace with that. But it was simply that a larger number of people liked watching Jay more than they liked watching me. But didn't you realize, I mean, always seemed completely clear to me, that you might not have been winning in the ratings, but that really you won. I mean, that you had the audience that I'm sure you would want. But I can imagine that acknowledging that goes against some regular guy part of your psyche. Well, you know, when we got on the air, we thought, oh, my gosh, we know everything that everybody wants to watch on television.

And then we found out that we didn't. And then when Jay started winning, and it was just like one night he. he wasn't, the next night he was. And we thought, oh, well, it's anomalous. Well, it wasn't. It went on like that forever. And so that panicked us. And perhaps me, because I was at the head of the thing,

we did. We lost her way for a while. And it was, I felt bad for the network. I felt bad for my staff. I felt like I was failing the staff. I felt like I was embarrassed for my family. So this was, I got over it, but I still wish that we could have been the number one late night show. You know, the thing with the, and I never really talked about this with anybody,

but I kept thinking that somebody would ask me to host the Tonight Show. I think I sent the message that perhaps I wasn't interested because I had numerous meetings with Brandon Tardikoff over and over and over again, And I can remember one in particular. He said, so anything else? And I said, no, everything's great. And it occurred to me years, years later, that that anything else might have been the opening of,

yeah, I'd like to host the Tonight Show. But I think it worked out all for the better. Let's back up again for a minute. You were talking before about the shows that you watched with your father. Well, the first show that we watched routinely, in the house was the Ed Sullivan show from what is now the Ed Sullivan

Theater. And I can remember my mother used to hate Ed Sullivan. She just hated it. And I kept saying, Mom, it's the Russian bears. It's the acrobatts. How can you possibly hate Ed Sullivan? And she says, I don't like it that he begs the audience for applause. Well, let's

really hear it for him. Come on, everybody. Let's really, come on now. Let's hear it for the bears. And this so offended my mother because she thought live or die by your performance, let the audience decide. Right.

Well, I'm sure this whole audience is familiar with your mother, and I wanted to ask you how she is. My mother is 95 years old. Fantastic. And she still plays handball twice a week. We just had a whole... I'll tell you a story about mom. And God bless mom.

You know, it's mom. And God bless her again. But mom's 95. So we all go to Mom's house for her birthday. Now, she has five grandkids. Her favorite is my son Harry. So we're all there. And one of her grandkids is a woman who has a cooking book in,

like edible Ohio or something. I don't know. She loves food and she's very good at her. So her birthday gift to my birthday gift to my mother, this is in August, is a tub with a lid on it of homemade butter, home churned butter. And I said, holy crap, what are you Amish?

So now everybody is ooing and eyeing over homemade butter. Now another one of her grandkids, Bryn's brother, owns a bakery in Chicago. So he's baked something about the size of this table that's bread. So now I'm thinking, holy crap, let's, here we go, bread and butter. So they hand the tub of homemade butter to mom, and she opens it up, and it becomes clear that she believes it's hand cream. I bet it does the trick.

Yeah. I try to get the dog off her. Now, I know it's not nice to poke fun. at a 95-year-old woman, but then when we got that straightened out and the paper towels and everything, the homemade butter and the homemade bread, well, called the cops. It was fantastic. David Letterman talking with the New Yorker's Susan Morrison at the New Yorker Festival this past fall. In a minute, a lesson in songwriting from a real master. Jason Isbell is up next on the New Yorker Radio Hour. They don't want it.

I've been fighting the second gear 15 miles or so trying to beat the angry snow. I'm David Remnick and this is The New Yorker Radio Hour. John Seabrook is a staff writer at The New Yorker. We go back a long way. He writes a lot about music and he's very broad in his interest.

He's into pop, classic rock and roll, country, but he's a real connoisseur. So when he calls Jason Isbell, One of the best songwriters working today, you've got to take that pretty seriously. He's hard on the run. He keeps a hand on and gone. You can't trust anyone. I was so sure what I needed.

Isbell was born in Alabama into a musical family, and he started writing songs very early on, and by the time he was 21, he had a deal writing for one of the music publishers. He later joined the band Drive-by Truckers. But Jason Isbell really came into his own with two solo records, Southeastern and something more than free. Those songs have really got it all.

Great lyrics, great melodies, great stories. And here's Jason Isbell with the New Yorker's John Seabor. Thank you. All right. How you doing? I'm doing well. Thank you. You got your baby back in the hotel.

The baby's in the hotel. She's not alone. That's good. You were telling me, earlier that when you guys, Jason and his wife are both artists and they're often on the road together and when you guys are on the road together, you usually have the baby. Yeah, if we're, if, if, if, if Amanda's out on her tour and I'm out on my tour, um, I take the baby most of the time, just because I have a safer vehicle for touring. And, uh, it's true,

you know, um, when we can, we all go out together, but she just put a record out a couple weeks ago and she's in a small theater in Louisiana tonight and she's in a van with a bunch of dudes So she sends the baby with me Because I'm in a bus with a nanny. I've got some songs here that I want to have a very sort of Collegy songwriting seminar with you, but Because you know Jason is such a good writer. I thought it'd be actually worthwhile going over some of the words and and I feel like these days it's hard to find songs where the lyrics are really as rich and complex as Jason. But before I do that, I wanted to just sort of go back and set the scene in terms of you

becoming a songwriter, in terms of where you came from, you come from a very musically rich place, and how early experiences that you had might have shaped you as a songwriter or determine the fact that you would become a songwriter. I started out playing different musical instruments with family members. My granddad on my dad's side was a Pentecostal preacher. And every Sunday, you know, we would go and eat dinner at their house and then maybe one Sunday a month, maybe two Sundays a month. His extended family would come. And they all brought instruments.

And, you know, that was just how we passed the time as a family was sitting around playing, and mostly gospel music and old traditional country songs. They were very religious, very like my grandmother had, you know, the long skirts, never wore pants in her life. Oh, wow. You know, never took any kind of medication until she was almost dead. She took some ibuprofen, you know. Oh, she blew it.

I started out learning those songs, and it was like a child care thing. My parents both worked and to keep me occupied. and, you know, also because he just really liked my company for whatever reason, my granddad taught me to play different instruments. And the majority of that was the guitar, because he played banjo, he played fiddle, mandolin, and he called those lead instruments. And then there had to be a rhythm instrument. So I had to play rhythm guitar.

It was like a musical boot camp situation. But there was always a reward at the end of it. If I would go through hours of playing rhythm on these gospel and country songs with him, he would play blues songs for him. You put the guitar in his lap, and he would play slide guitar and open tunings. And I always begged him to do that, but before he would do it, I would have to play the Jesus stuff for a couple hours for me. You got a scholarship to the University of Memphis.

I did, yeah. And while there, you studied creative writing, fiction writing. and you and because because i think one can see the influence of and we can go to this in a second but i feel like in your songs you can see someone that has clearly thought about point of view and and narrative and how to tell stories and all this would it be fair to say that what you learned from fiction writing actually did make a big difference in your songwriting yeah very much that not just not just what i learned from from writing it but just from the habits of reading that I developed, you know, early on and then got really intense about while I was in college.

And I knew I wanted to write better lyrics. So I thought, well, if I study fiction, then I'll be able to write fiction, whether it rhymes or not. Okay. And I didn't want to study poetry because thankfully I knew at that point that a poet is not just a really good songwriter. It's a completely different thing. It's so different than microscope is at a completely different diameter at that point, you know. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, now I just want to jump ahead to one of the other.

the song that you wrote on the album, Northeastern, which came out in 2013. Sorry. We're in the north. I know. It's a windy. Northeastern. Okay. Sorry.

I know this. I know it's called southeastern. I just made a little mistake. And it's very stressful being up here, you know. Anyway, so I'm going to read the first verse. I'm just going to read. I'm not going to sing. and maybe Jason will sing this song later

but this is a song called Different Days. It's so weird when somebody reads the lyrics and doesn't sing them. Do you want to say? No, no, no, no. I would rather you do that. I don't mean it's weird for me. No, it's a...

I'm not going to sing. When I did the NPR interview, Terry Gross did it and you're like wearing headphones because you're at a remote location and it was that moment where like Terry Gross is whispering my lyrics to me right now. Okay, okay. This is like smoking on a plane and made it.

Anyway, okay, different days. This is the first verse of different days. Staring at the pictures of the runways on the wall seems like these days you couldn't run away at all. And even if you did what you got to runaway to, just another drunk daddy with a white man's point of view. So now, staring at the pictures of the runaways on the wall, what's happening in the beginning of this song?

I was, let's see, when I started that song. What's your impulse to write this? How does this song start? I'm standing at the grocery store. I think it was Walmart. Yeah, I lived in Alabama at the time. And I didn't go grocery shopping before 2 a.m. at that point in my life.

So I'm like, they have this big board of missing and runaway children as you come in and out the door. before you get to the door grader, you pass the runaway children. And so I'm standing there staring at it, and it just occurs to me, like, how is it possible that you could even run away? Like, how could, it seems like anybody could keep up with you, especially if you're a teenage kid who's probably extremely active on social media. Like, how could, and I know this is probably kind of insensitive, but if I'm like

a 16-year-old and I'm running away, I'm making it three days before I'm on Instagram. You know what I'm saying? Like somebody's going to find me. I'm going to drop a pin accidentally. Yes. But, you know, I'm thinking that. Like, how is it possible? And then most of the kids who do, you know, they have this idea of I have to get away from these abusive parents or these parents who don't believe the way that I believe.

And in my mind, I'm thinking they probably wound up with something much worse or something just like what they were running away from. you know and that's the ones who really got very lucky and didn't just get picked up and murdered you know so that was uh the songs they're they're they're heavier than i am probably um uh how do you know that's a song how do you know when you are you standing there saying because i thought it was insightful you know like i stood there and i thought well it seems like you seems like you couldn't you couldn't even run away at all and then i thought that rhymes with wall and i'm looking at wall. That's all it takes? Yes. Oh. That's all that part of it takes. It really takes a lot of riding around and killing time. Like traveling alone. I was literally traveling alone.

I was sitting in an airport and I thought, man, I'm tired of traveling alone. And then I thought, why don't I say that 12 times in a row? And so I'm singing into my cell phone, and there's a guy sitting next to me at the gate, and I, like, don't want him to know I'm singing into my cell phone, so I'm like doing this. And then I get home, and I listen to the memo, and it's... And I have to figure out that's the bulk of my work, is trying to figure out what the hell I was saying into my phone. Let me just go to the next verse.

So, because I think the point of view changes a little bit, which is another thing you do in your song. I can see you in my mind's eye catching light, sleep aside the river if we make it out of town tonight. You can strip in Portland from the day you turn 16. You got one thing to sell and benzodiazepine. Yes. Now, rhyming on benzodiazepine is a feat. Well, thank you.

Good for you. That's what we call the Loretta Lynn rhyme when you stumble on one that's just how do these words rhyme? This is unbelievable. But it's the right drug. You got day you turn 16 and benzodiazepine. It falls in there pretty well. I think the day you turn was probably the, that's probably the part that had to be manipulated a little bit to get the meter to land just right, you know, because it would have been more direct to say from 16 or from the age of 16. Okay.

You know, but when you say the day you turn, it drops the meter correctly. And then you also think, well, then this person must be eager to make their own income, even though it may not be the, you know, you start thinking more things about it. You get deeper into it and think more about the character. But it's the right drug. I mean, that's the miracle of it. It's like, that's what this person would be using. Yeah.

And that's not what she has to sale. And I've had people that mistook that. You know, they think I'm saying you have one thing to sell. And that spins her das, but that's not it. That's not the one thing she has to sell. We all know what she has to sell, but the drugs are so she can live with selling it. But what's happened now in these two verses is you've gone from someone who was looking at this poster on the wall in a Walmart to thinking of yourself as another younger person who might have been a Confederate and run away with this person. There's a shifting narrator that sort of becomes a little bit less trustworthy as it moves along.

Yeah. You know, that's what I like about songs as opposed to other kinds of writing. The rules, you can ignore the rules. There's certain rules you can't ignore. But rules of time, rules of tense, rules of point of view are just, they're just out the window. And what's true and what's fiction is also out the window. It doesn't matter. They don't put them on the shelves that way.

So, but I think we as listeners often think that you are telling the truth about your mic and your soul. Yes, always. And people don't think Schwarzenegger's the Terminator, but they think that. I am always talking about myself. Well, part of it is we know that drinking, we know that your story or life story involves stopping drinking and that this was a big thing for you,

not only for you, but for your songwriting and your last two albums have had a lot of songs that seem to be about that. And I would say this song, different days, is also about. Most certainly, yeah. I also about that. Do you find that being public about not drinking, first of all, it kind of cuts out a lot of country songs for you.

Yeah. You're not going to be sending a lot of songs in bars probably. Yeah, no, not a lot. Not a lot. I mean, do you feel that that was a choice that actually might have alienated some of your fans? Or do you feel like you don't care? No, I don't.

I wouldn't have cared. But no, it did. There are people, when I sing cover me up, and I sing the line about swearing off that stuff, meaning alcohol, people throw their damn drinks up in the air. And I love it. I love the irony of it. I love that it's not lost on them, you know. They just have to do that.

They have to like, you know, roll tide however they can. They have to do it, you know, however they can get that out, even if that means, spilling their beer in the name of sobriety on the person standing next to them. And that's the thing. You can't aim. You can't aim songs. You know, you can't aim art,

really. If you're trying to make sense, and my wife said I have to say I'm an artist, so I have to say I'm an artist. But I don't say it enough, really? I just don't want to say it because, you know,

I'm kind of from the school like James McMurtry, where he says, you know, I used to think I was an artist. Turns out I'm a beer salesman. There's a lot of things James McMurtry says that are brilliant. But, yeah, he's one of the best. He's one of the best. Yeah, he is. Anytime I'm talking anybody about drinking and songs,

I always bring up that line where he says, I don't want another drink. I just want that last one again. I think that is the fucking cellar door of alcohol, songwriting. It's perfect, you know? It's perfect. That's the whole problem. You can never have that second or third

drink over and over and over and over and over. And the seventh drink is not just a repeat of the second or third drink. And he made all that go into a line that rhymes and it sounds beautiful. He's a genius. Plus he says the sweetest things and he can't open his mouth all the way. So it sounds like

he hates your fucking guts when he talked to you. You know, if you come off stage and say, that was a beautiful sit. I was really moved for those songs. And he never parts his teeth. Do you think that your songwriter and your music changed

from when you were drinking to when you were when you were not drinking? Can you see differences in your... It got a lot better when I quit drinking. Right. Right. A lot better. Because before I would sit down, I would start You know, I'd get up in the morning, well, not in the morning. I would get up in the afternoon, and I would be hungover, so I would drink like a pot of coffee,

and if I was particularly hungover, I'd take a swig out of the bottle, maybe a couple swigs, maybe more than that. And then I would sit down and start to write a song. So you're looking at probably 2.30 before I actually have a pen in my hand, you know, and I'm sitting down, I'm writing a song. And so from 2.30 to 4.30, you know, I'm dealing with my hangover, and I'm trying to come up with good lyrics and then it's six o'clock and this is the time when everybody gets off work and they're going to be in the bar and you know I was living above a bar and pool hall in Sheffield Alabama for a long time when I up until I got sober that's that's where I moved out of and

went to rehab and then stayed with some friends and then went to Australia with Ryan Adams of all things to do when you just got sober it turned out to be really good because he He had been sober for a few years at that point, and he knew how to occupy your time. But how do you do that? He's like a 15-year-old, you know. I think a lot of him went back to the person he was when he started doing drugs and drinking in the first place. So, I mean, he's renting out laser tag facilities. And, like, we're going heavy metal record shopping to find the most satanic records we can possibly find.

Yes. Pinball. all the time. Penball and cats and pinball and cats and pinball and cats. That works. Yeah. And he had on that tour, he ordered us some key tars.

And so we set up on the bus at night, rather than going out to a bar, we would sit and we would jam on keytars. Like we were Herbie Hancock in their minds, you know. And this is the kind of stuff he does. It's like, I don't know, it's like like he's a kid and you're like,

shit, I'll be a kid with you, dude. Let's do that instead of speedballs, you know. But yeah, by the time the sun went down, I was done writing for the day. So I would go to the bar and I would drink for 10 hours and then it would all start over. And when I quit drinking, it doesn't really matter what you start with. As long as you've got time to edit, you know, and I'm sure you know this, as long as you put the time into it, you're going to wind it right in something good. You don't have to wait to be inspired.

All that is bullshit. Like Chuck Close says, inspirations for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work. Yeah, I like that. And so when I got sober, I just started showing up and getting to work. And then instead of going down to the bar

when the sun went down, I stayed there with my song. I kept my ass in the chair, and the songs got better. Rather than having two or three great songs and some filler on a record, I had two really, really solid records from starting to finish.

Absolutely. Yeah, thank you. The New Yorker's John Seabrook talking with Jason Isbell who's going to be back in a minute playing a couple of those songs from a live show at the New Yorker Festival in October. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, more to come. I'm David Remnick, and next week I'm going to have a pretty surprising conversation with Newt Gingrich about the number one cause of accidental death in the country,

opioids. We'll talk about federal support for addiction treatment, which is not the kind of thing you'd necessarily associate with Newt Gingrich. and we'll discuss his concerns about the Trump administration. Right now, we'll go back to the New Yorker Festival. We just heard a conversation with Jason Isbell, formerly of the band Drive-By Truckers. Isbell has made a name for himself as one of the great songwriters working today in the tradition of someone like Guy Clark coming out of Texas or Merle Haggard.

And Isbell's going to perform two of his songs now, different days and how to forget. days you couldn't run away at all. Even if you did what you got to run away. Just another drunk daddy with a white man's point of view. I can see you in my mind's eye catching a light. We'll sleep beside the river if we may get out of town tonight. You can strip in Portland on the day you turn 16. You've got one thing to sell in Benzo.

I said I pain Ten years ago I might Seeing you dancing in a different life And offered up my help in a different way But those were different days A woman we shared her a single bed I whispered in her ear She believed every word I said

If she didn't believe she didn't dare give me slack. Rick was, baby, I love you. Get off of my goddamn back. Then time went by and I left and I left again. Guess Jesus loves a sinner, but the highway loves the sin. My daddy told me, I believe he told me true. That the right thing's always the hardest thing to do.

Ten years ago. Stuck around. for another night used her in a thousand different way but those were different days, those were different day, and the story's

only mine to live and die with and the answer is only mine to come across but the ghost that I got scared and I got looked a little law. Ten years ago I might

thought I'd You never to say the things an outlaw wouldn't say Different day Those were different day Those were different Day Thank you Is there a way to turn my microphone up

can we turn my microphone up I feel like I'm in a Sprite commercial Can we turn my microphone up? I'll just go ahead and start And if it gets louder I'll just be a be happier later. Give her space, give her speed, give her anything she needs,

get her out of here. Give her weed, give her wine, give her anything but time, get her out of here. She won't stop telling story, and most of them are true before

I fell for you. I was straight, I was sad, didn't realize what I had, it was years ago. I was sick, I was scared, I was socially impaired. It was years ago. My past a scary movie, I watched and fell asleep. Now I'm dreaming up these creatures from the deep. Replace the character, said,

me a lesson. Because I ain't sorry just yet. Lesson. Jason Isbell performing different days and how to forget at the New Yorker Festival this fall. That's it for today. Next week, I'll talk with Newt Gingrich about politics and science.

And for a little experiment of our own, we'll put staff writer Patricia Marks in a sensory deprivation pod. That's called entertainment, folks. Don't miss it. Till then, follow us on Twitter. at New Yorker Radio, and you can hear the show anytime at new yorkeradio.org, or on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us, and see you next week.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced with special assistance. from Sarah Edwards, Bradley G., Alexis Goldberg, David O'Hanna, and Rhonda Sherman. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund. Thank you.