The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Jason Isbell

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Jason Isbell tells Andy about growing up liberal in Alabama, how addiction led to “getting divorced on a bus in front of friends” (and his subsequent departure from Drive-By Truckers), and Isbell's fear of creatively cashing in on those negative experiences. Nothing hurts harder than having to learn something, and sometimes you need to wait a decade for your songs to find their audience. Isbell has hard earned advice for creatives and humans everywhere!

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the three questions. I'm very lucky today, A, that I got my computer shit worked out because we just sat here for 10 minutes trying to figure out why I couldn't hear anyone. But I'm very excited because I get to talk to one of, I think, the most important artists in music today, if I can be so expansive. Jason Isbell, how are you? I'm good, Andy. Thank you very much. Sure. That was quite the compliment. I'm happy to be here talking with you. Yeah. Well, I mean, I love your music. I mean, I love country music anyway, and especially, although I am a snob about, like, you know, like now, country music. And everybody, you know, so many people say it, but, like, so much country music now to me is just like Bon Jovi, somebody singing with an accent, you know, with like a corn pone accent to Bon Jovi stuff.

And I can't hear any more songs about driving my truck down to the river with my girl. Yeah, you know, they hit the button. They found a button and they just kept hitting it over and over and over. And yeah, they won't stop to try. They won't even stop to try a different button. There might even be more money that comes out if you hit a different button. I know, I know. Well, but, I mean, that's big business.

I mean, it's like try and get something made, a movie made, that doesn't have a superhero in it, and they'll laugh at you. But was that – I mean, we'll get more into it, but was that daunting to you growing up in the South and wanting to be a musician and just being dissatisfied with the state of country music? I mean, it's only been going on since the 70s like that. I mean. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you know, I never really thought about it, you know, because I never really considered what genre I belong to. So, you know, I know a lot of kids grow up dreaming of being a country singer, but that wasn't really the thing for me. I just wanted to play and sing. And so I went after any opportunity that I had to play or to get better instruments or to get with a better band or to figure out how to write better songs. You know, I was lucky enough that that's what I went for, and that's what made me happy. You know, so there's very little frustration when that's your goal. You know, I figured everybody would catch up at some point, and I would just keep on doing my thing, you know, and it's still that way.

Like, I still, right before I got on this call with you, I was just sitting in the floor playing the guitar, because that's what I've always done when I don't have something else I have to be doing. Right. And you got plenty of time for it now. Yeah, I do. In quarantine. Yeah. Now you're from Alabama, correct? I am. Yeah. North Alabama. And do you have one other sibling. I know you have some step siblings. Yeah, I've got well, I've got a half sister and a half brother. So my parents split up when I was 12 and they both got remarried and had kids. But my half sister is 20 and my half brother is 24. Yeah. So you're almost you're like an uncle more than a big brother. Very much so.

Yeah. I was out of the house pretty much when they, when they were, you know, born and growing up and stuff. So. Yeah. I have cousins that have cousins on their other side where one, where they had, they had an uncle on the other side that was younger than them, like a little uncle, you know? And so it just, you know, that's what happens when old people have kids. It's true. And it's also like it's, you know, my parents sort of did everything twice because when I was born, they were super young. My mom was 17.

My dad was 19 when I was born. Can you even imagine? No, no, no. Can you even imagine? I think about that and I just can't even imagine it. Yeah, it took me 35 years to figure out how to wipe my own ass properly, much less somebody else's. Yeah, I mean, when I had my first kid, I was 34, yeah. And even then, I was scared shitless.

Until you got this baby in your arm, it's not real. And all of a sudden, it's like, oh, shit, I got to take care of this thing. your arm it's not real and you all of a sudden you it's like oh shit i gotta i gotta take care of this thing yeah it's up to us and that's it and if we drop the ball the ball is dropped there's no safety net for it um yeah and also it's like i know a lot of people who are real fucked up you know so looking at this baby i'm like it is possible to fuck this up. Like, this is not real bad. You're not guaranteed you're going to pull this off. You could ruin this person's life. and then while also avoiding the new ones that you are going to do to them

through your own selfishness or neuroses or whatever. It's scary stuff, but it's the best work on earth, I know. It is. It's been, you know, everybody has to show their hand in a lot of ways. Yeah. You know, like the parents have to show their hand to each other and the grandparents and the aunts and the uncles and everybody in this kid's life, you know, all of a sudden we were

all just kind of sitting back and letting each other be for the most part. And now shit gets serious and like, you know, who you really are, you have to put it on the table because if you're doing a good job as a parent, you're going to want the right influences around your kid. That's right. But, yeah, it's been great. It's been great. When you were little, did you happen, like, did your parents' youth, like, were there times when you were a kid when you could kind of feel like these were young, like they wanted, you know, they still had some young people stuff to get out of their system when you were little? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. You know, it was I mean, there were challenges for me and for them.

And there were a lot of positives, too. I mean, there were times when like after my parents split up, you know, I felt like for a long time, I felt like my mom was was doing a lot of things to try to sort of get back the time that she lost when I was a little kid. And, you know, I was resentful of that for quite a while. You know, we've dealt with those things now and moved on and I understand more of what she was doing and what she was dealing with at that point in time. But, yeah, there was a lot of that. You know, there were times when I had wished for parents who were more mature. But I'll tell you, at this point in my life, knowing as many people as I know who have older parents who are from somewhere like Alabama and are white people, I am very, very glad my parents of the age that they are, because I think that's one of the reasons why I don't have to sit at the dinner table and argue with them over over our essential beliefs that people like to call politics.

Because, you know, my parents aren'ter parents like some of my buddies have. the time too like it was like it was always you know the the cliche joke was political arguments at the dinner table but man it's been turned up to like it's like a comic book now it's like professional wrestling now you know it's heavy it is it is a blessing to not have to worry about that to not have to fight about that shit very very Like I even, I've called my parents on numerous occasions just to say, thank you for not being like so-and-so's dad, you know, people I'll be working with in the studio or something, and they'll come in and I can tell something's wrong with them. And they're just grieving the relationship that they used to have with their parents or with their siblings. Yeah. Because it's, it's, you know, it's sort of come down to the real nitty gritty of it now. You can't just

pretend that it's not a big deal anymore. And there are reasons, people on both sides have reasons to be vocal about how they believe. Now, I'm not saying there are good people on both sides. I'm saying everybody is broadcasting their beliefs right now. And it kind of has to be that way because we're in one of those little growth spurts, hopefully. Yeah, I hope so, too. And I mean, and I hope it changes something because like what happened on January 6th, it changed the things for everybody because I think even within the propaganda machine of the Republican Party say they've been saying shit like Joe Biden's dangerous, radical socialist agenda, which is like, yeah, that's Joe Biden. You're talking about.

Right. Exactly. So there's that level of bullshit that you just get used to. And, you know, and then Trump was such a liar. They kind of got used to that. But then when it came down to the real thing of attacking the Capitol and even then I'm programmed with the white think. And when I saw them, I thought, oh, Jesus Christ, you know, Troy and Loretta get back in the fucking SUV and drive back home without realizing it until I find out later. No, no.

They had fucking plans. They were going to overthrow the government. And they broke it. They had this, like, great, like I say again, professional wrestling thing going on. And they could have dealt in hyperbole and half facts. And they broke it. They went beyond the pale. But, you know, I think it's interesting when I saw a couple of days after the seizure of

the Capitol that, you know, the FBI was trying to decide whether or not it had been planned. I thought, wow, how bad can you fuck up a plan if it's two days later and they still don't know if you had any plan at all? That's a bad fucking plan. Yeah. And also, while you're doing it, you've got 8,000 people live streaming the plan. Oh, yeah. They're taking pictures.

There's selfies. Oh, my God. Yeah. Luckily, it was a bumblefuck of an effort, but it was still a really low point for our country. And the way it was handled, I think, was a low point. You know, the hypocrisy was a low point for race relations, you know. Absolutely. Because, you know, and we all know what would have happened if they would have been black people. Give me a fucking break. Hell, yeah. Give me a fucking break. Yeah, they would have been mowed down. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've I've always like one thing.

One facet of the Trump thing is that there's so much racial underpinning to everything that happened in the last four years. It you know, Trump was a reaction to Obama and, you know, Hillary Clinton. People hate Hillary Clinton for so many reasons. I mean, OK. Yeah. All right. I mean, OK. Yeah. All right. But but I always was struck by the fact that and you know, and how much the literal Ku Klux Klan embrace and and celebrated him. I thought this is the white ubermensch that they've picked. And he's a fucking fraud. That's the best they can do. He can't get shit done. And it's the same thing with their big smart white person, let whitey handle it kind of revolution.

They fucked it all up. It was terrible. Yeah, I mean, the people they have in mind don't exist, you know. They try to project this greatness on somebody like Trump. And, you know, really, he's a pretty good example of an asshole white man. He's completely full of shit, completely narcissistic, thinks the world should just bow down to him. And when you finally get him to that point where he's in the corner and on either side of him is the truth, he loses his absolute shit. And, you know, his followers and supporters are doing the same thing right now.

It's, you know, nothing sucks worse than having to fucking learn something, man. And it hurts. Now, that's a full quote if I remember. It hurts. They're hurting right now so bad because they were wrong. And the party's over. Yeah. And their party's over, too.

It's like, oh, shit, that was fun while it lasted. Yeah, we can't even pretend we're right anymore. It's, man, they get so mad. Yeah. Well, now, growing up, like, as I imagine, it's pretty conservative. You're surrounded by pretty conservative people. And do you start becoming aware, like, oh, I got different, I got a lot of different attitudes than the people I'm surrounded by. Yeah, I felt super weird.

I got a lot of different attitudes than the people I'm surrounded by. Yeah, I felt super weird. And for a long time there, when I was a kid, I adopted some of their attitudes, and I I met when I was learning how to play and sing and write, I started realizing that, oh, these folks don't know what they're talking about, you know. And so the things that had always been a little different about me got much, much louder and much more obviously different. And it was tough. But it's also there a, there's a sort of, um, you know, I, I've got, I got some friends who, who, uh, I've known for a long, long time who, who come from a small town in Georgia. And, uh, um, one of, one of my buddies from there is, is just a, he's, he's a homosexual and, and, and he's, um, you know, unapologetic about it. and he always has been that way. And I remember him talking about how, you know, you have to choose his family.

And there's a thing about when you come from those kind of places and you're different, you know, when you gravitate to people who are like you, you bond in a way that's really special because that's, you know, that's all you have. That's what you have to do. And it also, you know that's all you have. That's what you have to do. And it also makes you tough. Like we were on the road with Dan Baird many years ago. Dan, who used to have the Georgia Satellites. He'd keep your hands to yourself. You know, Dan, incredible musician and just a really great guy. And, you know, we were talking to Dan about the B-52s,

and Dan said, I want to tell you something right now. Fred Schneider will whoop your goddamn ass. And I said, really? He said, yeah, could you imagine being Fred Schneider in the 1980s and playing frat parties in Athens, Georgia, and behaving like Fred Schneider at those frat parties? Can you imagine how many rooms he had to fight his way out of? There is nobody tougher on this earth than Fred fucking Schneider.

And I was like, all right, Dan. Absolutely. All right, I understand that. My ex-wife and I, one time when we were driving cross country, we stopped in Fort Smith, Arkansas to have dinner. And our waiter was obviously gay.

And we just were both like, we just thought how the, to be gay in Fort Smith Arkansas is a real particular kind of yeah yeah no kidding because yeah it's just a hostile environment and you know and for kids that are you know there are kids that are like what are they what do you expect them to do and I guess what they expect them to do is squash themselves into some little box. Yeah. Open up a florist shop and come to Jesus. And I know a lot. I mean, there are people back home who are going to hear that and think I'm talking about them, you know, because there were a ton of those kids.

And I was lucky enough to where, you know, yeah, I was I was heteronormative and white and I looked like everybody else, and I could blend in if I needed to. But also, when I got home, you know, my parents were cool, and their parents were cool. And we sat around and played music and listened to records and read books and loved each other. And so I really, you know, I won the lottery. Yeah. Were there – I mean, I know you learned from your grandparents. Was it your paternal or maternal grandparents' music? Paternal, mostly.

Now, both sides played. My grandfather on both sides played. But my dad's dad was a Pentecostal preacher and played in church, and they had like the big rock band church band. They had a bass and drums and electric instruments and all that. And so I mostly learned from him and then from my dad's younger brother, who played in cover bands and stuff, played, you know, classic rock and country bands and things. So those two were my primary early influences. I remember I read a book, a Willie Nelson biography, and they mentioned, you know, when they go through, you know, it's granular in the detail about some of his touring. And there was a Isbell that he played with at some point who was maybe like a Cherokee cowboy or something.

Well, there were a couple of session players. There's one drummer here in town who's an Isbell who is really, really good. And it might be the same person, but he's in Nashville. And Jim, I think, is his name. Yeah, old guy. Really, really, really good musician. But, you know, we'd have to be cousins. Yeah, yeah.

That just made me wonder if there were professional musicians. Well, like you said, you had an uncle. Yeah, yeah. But I didn't have any. Like Izzy Stradlin from Guns N' Roses, he's at Isbell. Jeff Isbell was his real name. Oh, really? Yeah, and then Al Bell from Stax was Albertus Isbell.

Oh, wow. Yeah, of course, you know, he's not the same shade as me, so it would have been harder for me to find out if I was related to him or not. But I assume that I am. I assume that I am. Yeah, yeah. Now, when you get to teenage years, is the rebellion in you externalized? Not yet, no. Not in my teenage years.

It took me until my 20s to really start letting off steam in an unhealthy way. Because I just had a bunch of books, and I a guitar and I got through my teen years that way, you know, hanging out with my family and my small group of friends and then went to college in Memphis. University of Memphis used to be Memphis State. And, you know, I had a good experience there. I left when my scholarship ran out after my senior year, so I'm a few hours short of my degree. What was the scholarship for? Academic.

For academic, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then I got the, like, Pell Grant and the federal loans and all that stuff because my parents didn't make a lot of money. Yeah. I'm one screenplay and one term paper short of my college degree, and then I just kind of realized I'm not going to need that. F film school. Yeah.

You know, like nobody's like, well, we'd love to hire you to pull cable on our commercial, but we see you don't have a degree, you know. Yeah. Yeah. pull cable on our commercial but we see you don't have a degree yeah yeah yeah i wish i never i never would have come on you guys a show if i'd known you didn't finish finish college and this is bullshit well for me at the time it felt like because all my i think all my mother's siblings got all you know like just a hair's breadth away from graduating. And they all kind of struggled. And so I was like, oh, shit, am I keeping up with the family tradition?

But evidently not. I mean, look at me now. Yeah. I've got a podcast. You've got a podcast and everything. And everything. So what made you choose that school? Was it because of the scholarship or had you looked around at different places?

I didn't want to go anywhere where I knew anybody. So that ruled out like Alabama and Auburn and North – that ruled out all the in-state schools. And I applied to a bunch of different places and got good scholarships from pretty much all of them because I did well on the standardized tests and did my homework and all that kind of shit. Yeah. And I picked Memphis because one thing that really made me want to go there was that Jeff Buckley was there, you know, performing every week. And then, like, right after I got accepted, he fucking drowned. So I never saw him. Yeah. But, you know, there was just music.

Yeah. What an asshole. There was music. Yeah, there was music happening in Memphis. And, you know, and I thought maybe I'll go there and be able to find other people like me. And that didn't necessarily pan out musically, but I did have a good experience in school. And I learned a lot. I learned a whole lot.

Like my first semester there, I didn't have a lot of social skills at that point. I didn't have a lot of social skills at that point, so I kind of ran my roommate off after a couple days and wound up just keeping the whole dorm room to myself. What? Yeah. Elaborate a little bit. I don't remember why he didn't like me. I don't know if it was my weird old music or what, because this was like 1997, and it wasn't really hip to like listen to old records and and i see you know i was i was pretty weird for 1997 in memphis and uh and so my roommate moved out his name was albert i remember albert and he looked i think he was a pre-law albert

you know it just tucked his shirt in and stuff so it wasn't going to work out with us. But he moved out, and I kept the room, and I had my guitar amp in the room. And my neighbor next door would play really, really loud music, so I would just play guitar really loud because there's no home stereo that can compete with a Fender tube amplifier. So he started turning his music down. But one day, like, you got to understand, where I went to school in Alabama, it was only white kids, like lower middle class white kids. That's it.

You know, there was a few like real dirt poor white kids, but that was all we had there. Yeah. And I was in the dorm that housed the academic scholars and the athletic scholars. So, you know, we had the basketball team was on a floor over me. And, you know, the football team was in that all. And we're in Memphis, you know, so there's a bunch of black kids in that dorm. And one day I was playing my guitar and this kid starts banging on the door and i open it up and he's like seven feet tall you know um and uh just i mean it looked like you know michael wilson or penny hardaway or something like gigantic and i was terrified because i thought i'm playing too

loud this guy's about to beat the shit out of me and he said is that you playing the guitar in there it's like yeah that's me i can turn it down. He's like, no, no. Can I bring my voice? And I was like, well, yeah. So he went and got like four or five other guys. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. What are you about to do? But he went and got like four or five other guys. And they came and sat in my little cramped dorm room

and rolled blunts and put on, like, I remember they put on the first Roots record. Oh, wow. And like three or four different records that were really popular at the time. And I just played along to those records because, I mean, I'd already been doing some session work and stuff at that point. That was easy for me. But to them, it was unbelievable that anybody could do that. So I made some friends that way, you know. Memphis is one of those towns where, you towns where one day can be so beautiful and so enlightening

from a perspective of racial unity, and then the next day can be just hell from the 1950s. You see it immediately. And so it was like that. Some days were beautiful like that, and then some days I would walk past a sedan in 1997. Yeah. It was wild, but it was a good introduction for me to the rest of the world, that's for sure. Can't you tell my love's a-growing? At what age do you start really seriously writing songs? Probably about 19 or 20, I guess.

I'd been doing it before just because I enjoyed it. But the first time I wrote any songs that I thought anybody would hear, I was 19 or 20. And I was waiting tables in Germantown across from this huge church that we called Six Flags Over Jesus, great big Baptist church in Memphis. So I was waiting tables. Of course, I wasn't any good at it. So I would get the Sunday and Wednesday shifts when all the people would come in from the Baptist church and not tip for shit. Not tip at all. Oh, they didn't ever tip. Worst, worst days to possibly work at a fucking Applebee's.

Brunch shifts are punishment. Yeah, it was rough. And they were not nice. But there was one guy that was working there with me who told me he wrote songs. And we started talking about it. And he booked a show at a little coffee shop downtown. And he asked if I wanted to come and open the show for him. And I said, well, yeah. And I think I can do that. And he said, you'll need like half an hour of your

own material. And I was like, oh, yeah, I've got plenty of my own songs just lying around. I did not have any of my own songs lying around. So I just went home and stayed up all night. I remember I was drinking Gatorade and Everclear and typing on like a 2E. Yeah, because I had goals and I knew how to fucking achieve. But I was typing on like a fucking Apple IIc or some shit, and I stayed up all night and wrote 30 minutes worth of songs, and I went and played them the next day opening my set for this guy.

And then when school was out and I went back home for the summer, me and some of my friends got together and recorded those songs in a basement studio, and I took them into Fame, the studio there in Muscle Shoals that kind of started the whole Muscle Shoals sound thing. I took it into those folks, Rick Hall and his son Rodney, and, you know, thinking that maybe they would want to record my band and make a record on us. And they didn't want to record the band, but they wanted to know who had written the songs. And it was me. So they signed me to a publishing deal, you know,

where I got a draw of like 800 bucks a month. And I was able to quit waiting tables and just be a songwriter for a living. Wow. And you're like 20, 21 at this point? Yeah, I was 21. And then just a couple months after that was when I joined the drive-by truckers and went on the road with them. Wow, that all happened real fast.

Very, very fast. Yeah, very fast. That first night, how'd it go? How'd the crowd like the songs? It went very well. You know, the place, what was it called? The Map Room, I think. And it was this little coffee shop down.

There's a little shoe store there now. coffee shop down there's a little shoe store there now and matter of fact the shoes i have on right now that i bought in that place because last time i was in memphis i was walking around downtown i thought i wonder where that place was and i googled it on my phone and i was standing right in front of the door when i did that it was amazing so i was like i gotta go in and talk to this guy and it was a black owned shoe store and i went in and bought a pair of shoes and told the guy that, you know, I played my first songs in public at that place. And I got a bunch of Grammys and shit. He was super excited. And it was really neat.

Did he know who you were? No, I don't know. Yeah, it's not his kind of music. Right, right. But he was super cool about it, you know. But it went well, you know. This was the same place they would have poetry readings every, like, Wednesday night. And I went in one night and took my notebook and signed up and got up and read a couple of my poems. And I was wearing, like, a polo shirt and khaki pants and, like, a braided belt, you know, like 1998.

Yeah, like you're going to brunch. I was going out belt, you know, like 1998. You know, like you're going to brunch. I was going out somewhere, you know, so I put on my nice shirt, my nice pants, and I tucked my shirt in and I sent out, I read these poems and about halfway through the first one, the lady who ran the place came out from the back and she said, hold on now, you know, people are reading poems that they wrote, not just poems that they like. And I said, well, have you heard this one before? Because I just wrote it yesterday. And she said, no, continue.

And then after that, I was welcome. I was welcome at the hippie coffee shop after that. You know, because I certainly didn't look the part. I did not look like a creative person at all. I just looked like some redneck who decided to tuck his shirt in that night. But that place, I have fond memories of that place. It went well, and then I got home and got a job just writing songs. So that was great.

Now, when you were writing those songs, when you get that first contract to write songs, I mean, they're hiring you because they think these songs are songs that will sell. How much of that pressure, you know, just the balance of expression versus commerce, are you aware of right away? You know, I'm aware of it, but I've always made it a point to try to ignore it. And, you know, honestly, like I saw yesterday or the day before yesterday where like the Billboard Hot 100 songwriters, you know, they do like they do the Hot 100 singles and the Hot 100 albums and the Hot 100 artists and the Hot 100 songwriters. And I was number 13 this week on their Hot 100 songwriters.

And it was like Bieber and Phineas, Billie Eilish's brother, and all these people that are like actual popular musicians. And the reason I was there is because this guy, Morgan Wallen, just put out a country record that has one of my songs on it. And the song is called Cover Me Up. And I put it on Southeastern. I wrote it when I got sober years ago, you know, with no inclination whatsoever of trying to make a hit song. I just, that song is the most visceral expression of what my life was like and what kind of changes I was going through and, you know, my love for my wife and just, it was completely from the heart. There's no way that song would ever be a hit.

And now, all these years later, you know, that song's on a record that sold a whole bunch of copies and I'm a popular songwriter this week. Did that song, was that song a single off the album and did it chart? It was, you know, he did. I don't think they released it as a single yet. Yeah. You know, it might be a follow up. But he recorded that song before he put his debut album out.

recorded that song before he put his debut album out, and it blew up online, like on TikTok and his YouTube video. All this was like the thing that, the first thing that he did that was a real success popularity-wise, and it was him covering that song. And, of course, a bunch of purists got angry about it, you know, and the whole time I'm over here going, this is a good thing for me, you guys. I didn't have to do anything.

I already wrote this. All I got to do is go to the mailbox. Everybody be cool, you know. Let the kids sing my song, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, it was really interesting. And honestly, I feel like, you know, for me, and there's a lot of luck that comes with this, too. I'm a very, very fortunate person in a whole lot of ways.

But what has served me best is just, you know, getting as far into the process as possible and writing as honestly and openly. And, you know, working as hard to make everything honest and true and natural. Working as hard to make everything honest and true and natural, you know, that's wound up serving me really well as far as, you know, success, commercial success goes. It just, that's what people want from me and that's what I want to do. And as long as I don't fight it and just do my very best to be honest in the songs, they'll find their way to people eventually, even if it takes a decade like this one has. Yeah. How much of like your own personal catharsis is your writing process? Like, are you like, does it just a kind of a complicated idea come to you like a relationship thing or and then how much are you trying to kind of like, I need to figure this thing out in my life, so I think I'm going to write a song about it? The idea, the initial idea is usually not complicated. And I try for that. Like,

I try to keep the original idea simple, because I feel like if I tell the story right, and if I create the characters right, then they will behave in complex ways. You know, like if you're writing a book, you know, usually people who write great novels, they don't know how it's going to end when they start it. You know, and they don't start out with a story. They start out with people and with relationships and with dynamics. Yeah. Or even a place. Yeah, just a place, just a room.

yeah um and that's even a place yeah it's just a place just a room and and if you're open and and you're working hard and you stay focused then the stories will make themselves obvious to you um and that's that's how it's always worked best for me i start out i start out with something that sounds nice usually you know i'll sit and sing something over and over and i think that sounds nice and maybe that has some meaning in it you you know, and then I just start working. Do words or music come first in any regular way or is it both? It's both, you know. Yeah. You know, usually a piece of music will come first.

If I sit down with the intention of writing a song, I'll usually just start playing first. And then when I get to something that sounds cool, I'll repeat it, and then I'll start writing a lyric. But, yeah, it's not really this kind of thing where they come first. It's kind of like does your setting come before your dialogue, you know? Yeah, yeah. They feed each other, you know? Yeah.

feed each other you know yeah well now you go from you are uh get on a rocket ship from from college and waiting tables to within like a year being on with a you know a serious touring band yeah and and what is that like and whenever i hear about a young person getting successful in show business i just get scared for them. It's like that Amanda, I can't remember her last name, that read the poem at the inauguration. She's so amazing. And there's part of me that feels like, oh, no, she's getting all this attention now. Yeah, protect her. And I know that's a good thing, but, oh, there's so much about that that's destructive.

Yeah, yeah. And I wonder, you know, what that was like. I think about, and I mean, in between the Tonight Show and the TBS show, we did a tour, which was like maybe three months. So I got a taste of what that was like and a nice taste. It was like it wasn't, we weren't in a van. We were traveling nice. But I just felt like if I do this, I'm going to be 350 pounds and just basically 80 percent liquor. I just couldn't imagine what it would be like.

Yeah, it was rough. But I was really young, you know, so the physical the physical toll, I mean, I was pretty much made out of rubber at that point. It was really difficult to hurt me. If I if I went out in that fashion nowadays, I would die after about three or four days. I would just lay down in the middle of a fucking Stucky's parking lot and cease to exist. But at that point, it's like, yeah, we can ride eight hours and, you know, do a couple bumps and drink a half a fucking fifth of whiskey and get on stage. That'll be great. Let's do that 300 times next year.

Is it fun when it starts or does the kind of the drudgery of it get to you right away? No, it was fun. It was super fun. Because I'd never been anywhere. I'd been to Philadelphia. That was the only, you know, northern, like anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line that I had ever been. I'd never been on a plane.

My first flight was from Atlanta to Amsterdam on tour. Wow. You know, I was. Atlanta to Amsterdam. That's a trip, too. That was a trip. And then you get there, and you're in Amsterdam. And it's Amsterdam.

Oh, no. Yeah. It was wild, you know. And, yeah, it took a toll on me. But it took a good 15 years for me to really see the cost of that and, you know, what that had done. And, yeah, I mean, I'm grateful for all of it. I mean, there are things now that I would wonder about if I hadn't already done them, you know, at least three times. And at this point in my life, I don't have to wonder what any of that stuff is like, you know.

I'm all right just hanging out at home on a Saturday because I know what all that other shit feels like. Right, right. And I won't ask for the particulars. You saved that for the book. Oh, yeah. You can make some money off those, yeah. I mean, it was a blast.

Everybody in the band was older than me, you know, by like almost a generation. Really? Yeah, they were all, you know, a good, I guess, 15 to 18 years older than me. But I'm going to go on a hunch and say that you liked being around older people. I did. I did. And musically, I fit in well with them.

Socially, I did not necessarily fit in well with older folks because I was a kid and I was also, you know, a kid from, I was a hayseed rolling around, you know. But it felt like I was in a gang, you know, and it felt like, I mean, there were just, there were people coming to the shows and watching us play music. And that was my job. And I was on the road and, you know, wearing fucking Pearl Snap T-shirts and growing my hair out long and drinking whiskey. And my amp was so loud. It was great. You know, it was great. Do you get to have any kind of like home life or are you just living there?

At that point, yeah, I didn't have a home life really. No. Where were you staying or would you just stay at your folks when you were not touring? Well, I had for a while there I was staying at this house that was, you know, a lot of – I know southern towns have these. I'm sure a lot of towns have them. But, you know, a house where like there's a couple of cool people in town that have a big place and the rock and roll kids come and stay there. I know there was one in Knoxville where Johnny Knoxville and all those kids would crash. Yeah.

There was one in Muscle Shoals where we would all crash, and that's where I met Patterson. I'd sleep on the couch at this house, and a fellow, Dick Cooper, who was managing the band at that time, and then his roommate, Scott Boyer, who had been in a band called Cowboy in the 70s, part of the Macon, Georgia scene down there. And he played in Greg Allman's band, part of the Capricorn Records family. So they were living in that house, both older single guys. And we just crashed there. So I stayed there, and when I got back from college, that's where I stayed

because I didn't want to go deal with anybody's rules, and that's how I met Patterson, and that's where I was staying for the first year or so when I was with the band. And then me and Sean, I got a place and moved in together. Yeah, you got married along in that place too. I got married, and then she wound up in the band, and then we got a divorce, you know, on a bus in front of our only friends. It was amazing. Wait, what do you mean you got a divorce? You had the fight that led to the divorce, or you actually signed the papers? Well, we never went home, you know. We had all

the fights in front of everybody. Yeah. And it was awful. And they were all so sad for us. And we were so angry at each other. And I was angry. You know, she was probably angry, too. But yeah, but she was a bit more grown than I was at that point in time. And, you know, it was it was a hard, hard time. Yeah. And you would have thought it would have been enough to get me to clean my act up. But it took quite a few years after that, you know, but I had to bounce on the bottom for a while. Yeah, yeah. Was the substance abuse, was that like probably the main cause of the friction between you and your first wife? Probably. Well, I mean, you know, the things that caused the substance abuse were the main cause of friction.

I got you. But the substance abuse certainly exacerbated all those issues. I mean, I just had a bunch of shit that I hadn't even looked in those rooms yet, much less started to arrange the furniture, you know. Do you have depression? Do you suffer from depression? No, no, I don't. Not in any kind of clinical sense. Yeah. Do you have depression? Do you suffer from depression? No, no, I don't. Not in any kind of clinical sense. Yeah. And like I had with playing the guitar, I took the same sort of obsession to drinking as I did to learning to play the guitar.

And I was determined to be the best fucking competitive drinker. Yeah, whatever that means. Yeah, yeah. So it was like everything I did, I did as hard as I possibly could. And yeah, I was not a good husband for anybody. I shouldn't have got married, you know. I should have just not gotten married. But also I had a lot of like religious baggage from growing up back home. And she helped me. She was there for me when I was, you know, ODing or just dangerously getting close to the edge of drinking myself to death.

And I felt like I owed it to her. I thought she wanted to get married, and I thought, you know, this is the right thing to do, you know. Yeah. And it was not, you know. That was where some of that raisin had served me wrong. Now, is the end of Drive-By Truckers when you decide to go into rehab or recovery? No, I kept rocking for a while after that. Yeah. No, I was far far far stupider than

even we could assume somebody would be so you broke up on your own but still kept all the same bad patterns i did well and you know i they they told me to leave the band like they they suggested that i take a leave of absence and get my shit together and uh you know and and come back later was the original thing and i was like well you guys can't go out and fucking tour as this band if i'm not with you and so they fired me which is what i would have done you know yeah was it affecting the playing or was it just affecting living with you i'm sure it was affecting the playing i didn't think it was i thought i was nailing it every night but i can go back and watch some videos now. And I was definitely not nailing it every night.

Well, that sounds like a fun video viewing party. Hey, everybody, let's watch me underperform. I've been in situations where I've had to watch it with other people around. And that's not a whole lot of fun. But there's definitely something that was like a replacement show about it. And that was one of the show about it, you know. And that was one of the bands that we sort of idolized. You wind up being a really big replacements fan if you're in a band and you got substance abuse issues.

Because you're like, these guys did it. See, these guys did it. You know, not to mention they're puking in their hands and throwing it on the fucking ceiling of the recording studio. All that fun stuff. Yeah, all the fun. You just take the good parts. Yeah. So I think there's a lot of audience members that had a great time,

whether I was nailing it or not. But, yeah, for a few years after that with my own band and my own personal life, you know, I was still bouncing on the bottom pretty hard for quite a while. It wasn't until I really, when I started hanging out with Amanda, who's my wife now, I realized that she wasn't going to put up with that. And I thought, well, then I've got to do something because I can't lose this woman, you know. Yeah. In hindsight, even that was not the right thing to do, but it worked and we've made it work.

And I explain why that wasn't the right thing. Well, because it's not her fucking responsibility to save my life, you know. And basically what I did was I was like, I'm going to reward you for for being a good person with boundaries and for being an adult. I'm going to reward you by putting this responsibility on you forever. You know, let me beg you to start a life with me now that you see that I'm broken. You know, had I had any kind of real adult boundaries at that point and understood the dynamics between men and women, I don't think I would have love-bombed her in the way that I did. But lucky for both of us, I was given some opportunities to learn and to grow after that.

And so it's, you know, today we're great. Yesterday we were great. Tomorrow we'll probably be great. But yeah, it was not fair. What I did initially was not fair. What I did initially was not fair. And then I wrote a bunch of songs about it and they became the most popular songs of my career. And my career took off and we're up on stage and I'm singing these songs, you know, and people are cheering and holding up their fucking whiskey glasses. And she's up there with

me remembering, you know, the real, the real truth of what happened. And me remembering, you know, the real truth of what happened. And, you know, no matter how good a songwriter you are, you're never going to write as well as the memory of the person who had to put up with you that night. Right, right. So does she just stand there while you're singing these heartfelt songs rolling her eyes? She's not, you know, she's not that kind of person. She just stood there and she smiled and she played. But on the inside, she was certainly rolling. Something was rolling. Yeah.

And so it is kind of like that. It's like it took me a long time to realize just what I had asked of her and how unfair that was. But when I did realize that, it helped our relationship a whole lot, you know. From basically cleaning yourself up, whatever you want to call it, and to have that turn into, as you say, the most success that you've experienced. I mean, what did that do to you? Like, what did that tell you? Like, did you think like, oh, I should have gotten smart earlier or? Not really. Like, I felt like people were rooting for me, you know, and it was a very positive thing all the way around. Like, it made me feel great because I thought these people want me to survive. You know, I think sometimes some members of the audience, they learn vicariously

through artists, you know, and I think that's part of the reason why drug abuse, alcoholism, and hard living gets romanticized. I think we want to know what, you know, Keith Richards has learned from being Keith Richards. Like, please, write a song and tell me what it's like to be that much of a fucking disaster. And to do that, you have to survive it. So I felt like there was an accountability there, you know, and the more I talked about it, the more open I was about it, the more I wrote about it, the more I felt like, you know, I had another reason not to not to fuck up again. Yeah. And it's still that way. And there's always a rub, you know, that you weigh the options and you think, well, am I am I capitalizing on my own mistakes or, you know, am I somehow manipulating these people?

And, you know, am I am I making money off being an asshole? Yeah, that's I was going to say, am I like am I turning my fuck ups into content and am I you know did you ever worry about running out of fuck ups yeah right well there's a big transition that's so hard for songwriters to make sometimes and you know Dylan

did it the opposite he started out writing about the world and then wound up honing in on writing about Bob Dylan. But he's the exception to all of our songwriter rules. Everybody else, they started out writing about themselves. And then at some point, they either got their shit together or they decided that this is who I'm going to be. And they started writing about broader subjects. And that's a hard one because to write about big, broad things

without being vague is a challenge. You know, you have to really stay aware and continue to pay attention to the kind of people you knew before you were a famous singer. Now, when you had a child, does that in any way affect the worry about the about your process or that, you know, because being an artist, too, can be a very consuming thing. I mean, you're you're kind of, you know, you're you're exploring yourself. You're putting yourself through paces. You're you know, it's all about you and this little factory of you. Does having a child, is there any sort of like, uh-oh, is this going to hurt the songwriting?

No, I thought, is the songwriting going to hurt her, you know, because I know myself pretty well at this point. And I know that the songwriting is going to happen, you know, and I really think it's always going to be the best I can possibly do. I don't ever think there'll be a time when I can devote part of that energy to anything else. So it's about navigating. You know, I got better at this. The switch became faster, you know, switching between being an artist and being a father or being a regular person, you know, that on and off switch, I got a lot quicker with it, you know. And I think that was the challenge for me was figuring out, you know, how can I just be her dad? And then when I need to be an artist, how can I just be an artist? And that's an ongoing thing.

It's just something I always work on. But I think as long as you're trying to stay aware of it, it's very possible to pull both of those things off. You know, Springsteen's kids fucking love him. Like Bruce's son, he looks just like Bruce and he fucking loves Bruce. And Bruce is a great dad and he's such a sweet kid. And I'm like, OK, all right, we can do this. It's possible. Yeah, yeah. kid and I'm like, okay, all right, we can do this. It's possible. Yeah, yeah. When you look forward in your life, is it just kind of building on the progress that you've made and continuing to write

albums and songs? Or is there some other thing that you're, you know, that you kind of are looking for a bigger, you know, when you look down the road, what do you see, I guess? I don't have these specific goals anymore that are like, you know, play on this show or win this award or whatever. But I do have goals. And the way I see it is kind of like when I'm writing a song, you know, and I'm in that editing phase. And, you know, I want first and foremost to be able to enjoy and be satisfied with the editing phase of my life. And I think that's, you know, I'm my happiest and my most productive. I'm just the best version of myself when I'm satisfied with the process.

And so I think the older I get, the more I try to live in the moment and it's part of my recovery and it's part of my philosophy and it's part of my music and it's part of my parenting and, you know, just try to show up and just really clock in and be here every single day. And then as I get older, I think I want to get better at editing, you know, the things that I believe in and the things that I'm passionate about. And, you know, I was thinking about this and about the questions that you were asking about what I was going to say. And especially in the last year, I think I've learned that, you know, there's nothing more worthy of pride than being able to let go of something that you believed to be true

and reach out to learn something new, you know, have to actually shift your perspective and think I was wrong for all this time. And, you know, I actually get excited about that. And I know that's weird because, man, it is not encouraged in America. It's, you know, you're supposed to stand firm in your beliefs and defend your beliefs and use that First Amendment. And if that don't work, use the second one, you know? But to me, it's so rewarding to like see the light, you know, and figure out, oh, man, I've been wrong. Like, I remember when the Dixie Chicks

thing happened, you know, thinking, well, they got that way because they're too different from their audience, you know. Personally, they have this one set of beliefs and their audience has another. And I thought that for a long time. And then we were playing the Roundhouse in London, that same venue where that happened, where Natalie said what she said. And I was walking around the venue before the show, and I thought, no, no, no, that happened because they were women. And then I started looking up some things that other people, other country singers had said, and I was like, oh, yeah,

that's because they were women. That's what getting Dixie-chicked means. Yeah, yeah. And those moments to me, like I feel so alive when I realize, oh, I've been wrong for all these years. Isn't it beautiful to have been wrong, you know, and not be wrong anymore? It's the places that I really notice it is like when my kids got to an age where they would point out something to me that would make me question what i did and i would have to say oh honey i'm sorry i was wrong about that or like you know like and

just the feeling like i i feel it as a kid who didn't feel like he ever got apologized to yeah or ever got or was just kind of expected you know you you come along and you shut up and you put up with it and because i said so that's why whereas if you if you actually think about no this kid deserves the best me he doesn't deserve the asshole me just because i can get away with it he deserves the best me or she deserves the best me as i can get. And like you said, it doesn't feel good. But it's like, as I understood it, as I always understood it, the way to build muscle is that you stress the muscle. It breaks it down. It creates scar tissue.

And then the next time you break up that scar tissue. And it's painful, but it makes its growth. And it's the same thing. It's the same thing in you know in in your relationships with your significant others but also you know with everybody but still the ability to say i'm sorry i'm fucked up and then and then you also get to feel good about the fact like well look at me yeah i'm a big i'm a big man today. I'm doing what you're supposed to be doing here, which is learning and progressing. And then the things that you know are true, like the rock that you hold on to gets a lot more solid because you're like, no, I've tested this motherfucker.

I have the ability. Yes, I have the ability to test my own beliefs, so I know that that's right, and you don't have to feel this kind of like, like I think so many people in America have this issue right now, and it's been

taken advantage of, you know, by shifty politicians and businessmen who see, okay, these people are a little unstable, you know, so I can use this to my advantage. Like, America's not getting the mental health treatment that they need. We all know that. And then you're like, oh, I bet I could get this group of people to vote for me.

These people who are on a subreddit talking about how there's kids being sold out of the basement of a pizza shop. I bet I could get them, maybe I could convince them that I'm the person who's going to fix all this, you know? Yeah. And then they capitalize on it. And it's because those people are drifting, you know? And this isn't, I'm not making excuses for them. I mean, crazy or not, you're still responsible for your own actions.

However, you know, when you have that foundation that's built on you questioning it over and over all the time and testing every little spot to make sure that it's just as tight as a string, you know, then you know. No, I believe that this is wrong. I believe that you're trying to take advantage of me. And they can't fool you anymore. Yeah. I believe that you're trying to take advantage of me and I can't fool you anymore. And it comes from being big enough to apologize and to question your own beliefs and know when you're wrong. Yeah.

What do you want people to take away from your story and your work and your life? Like what do you what's kind of like what do you hope is the main moral of your story? Not only that it's possible to change, but that it's fun. You know, that you can be more satisfied by trying to grow and be a good person. It's worth it. It's worth the work. That's it for me. It's worth the work.

Yeah. Well, that's a pretty good one. I might cross-stitch that. Yeah, please. And when I – Please do, on a hat. I was going to say when I get a mantelpiece, I'll put it above it. Put it on top of a hat so only Conan can read it. Well, Jason, thank you so much for taking the time and talking to me.

I really appreciate it. Thank you, Andy. I enjoyed talking with you. Love to you and yours. And thanks again. And thanks to all of you out there for listening. And we will be back at you next week. I've got a big, big love for you.

The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco and Earwolf production. It's produced by me, Kevin Bartelt, executive produced by Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Chris Bannon and Colin Anderson at Earwolf. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, associate produced by Jen Samples and Galit Zahayek, and engineered by Will Beckton. And if you haven't already, make sure to rate and review

The Three Questions with Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts. Make sure to rate and review The Three Questions with Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.