Jason Isbell Trivia

1. "The Nashville Sound" is what number studio album for Jason Isbell?

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "The Nashville Sound"

Answer: 6

The album was released June 16, 2017. It was Jason Isbell's sixth album after "Something More Than Free," which was released in 2015. "The Nashville Sound" won a Grammy for Best Americana Album in 2018. At the Third Annual U.K. Americana Music Association Awards, Jason Isbell won International Album of the Year for "The Nashville Sound."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Southeastern"

Answer: Americana Music Honors & Awards

At the 2014 Americana Music Honors & Awards, Jason Isbell won all three of these awards. His Song of the Year award was for "Cover Me Up." In 2018, he won a Grammy for Best Americana Album for "The Nashville Sound," which was also nominated for the Country Music Association Awards. He won a Daytime Emmy Award in 2018 for his performance of "Cumberland Gap" and "If We Were Vampires" on "CBS This Morning." "Americana" is a term used to describe a type of music that draws from a variety of American musical roots, including folk, country, R&B, gospel, blues, and rock and roll, but which is not properly classified as any of those. It is the label most often affixed to Jason Isbell's music, though his songs have also at times been labeled alternative country, southern rock, and folk.

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Here We Rest"

Answer: Jimbo Hart

Amanda Shires supplies fiddle and vocals and Chad Gamble is on drums. Derry deBorja plays keyboards, while Jason Isbell supplies lead vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, piano, and organ. Browan Lollar also plays lead and rhythm guitar on the album.

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "The Nashville Sound"

Answer: chaos and clothes

"Chaos and Clothes" is a song about the angst that often follows in the wake of a romantic break-up and the little things that remind one of the loss: "Lovers leave chaos and clothes In quiet corners where you rarely ever go One day you find proof she was real Despite your struggle to forget Oh yes."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Something More Than Free"

Answer: wine

The singer wants her "out of here" because "she won't stop telling stories, and most of them are true. / She knew me back before I fell for you." When discussing this song with "Stereogum," Jason Isbell said that he's changed since becoming sober and is closer to who he was as a kid: "I am different now [. . . ] That's not me anymore. The only thing that truly matters is who I am now."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Southeastern"

Answer: 23

On the US Independent Albums Billboard it hit number five. The album was released on June 11, 2013, and is Isbell's fourth studio album, after "Here We Rest" and before "Something More Than Free." Jason Isbell played with the Drive By Truckers and contributed original songs to three of their albums. He split with the band in 2007, and released his first solo album, "Sirens of the Ditch," that same year.

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Sirens of the Ditch"

Answer: FAME Studios

FAME stands for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises and is located in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, away from the hustle and bustle of most of the music recording industry. Despite its remote location, FAME has produced a number of well-known records and is the home of what musicians refer to as the "Muscle Shoals sound." The studio was started in the 1950s by Rick Hall, a songwriter and record producer known as the "Father of Muscle Shoals" music. Sun Studios is in Memphis, Capitol Studios is in Hollywood, and Sound City Studios is in Los Angeles.

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Here We Rest"

Answer: oysters

The song is about a soldier who has returned home after serving his tour of duty. He's "been eating like I'm out on bail / collard greens and chicken wings, oysters by the pail." The song's peppy beat and surface optimism belies the hints of masked pain. The narrator says he's taught himself "to tolerate the pain" and promises not to dwell on the horrors he might have seen in war, or at least to pretend not to: "I promise not to bore you with my stories I promise not to scare you with my tears I never would exaggerate the glory I'll seem so satisfied here."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "The Nashville Sound"

Answer: the one and the three

"I couldn't be happy in the city at night You can't see the stars for the neon light Sidewalk's dirty and the river's worse The underground trains all run in reverse Nobody here can dance like me Everybody's clapping on the one and the three Am I the last of my kind?" According to the artist Andrew Christie, who was a part of an art exhibition titled "Everybody's Clapping on the One and the Three," in typical 4/4 music, "the one and the three beats are the band's beats. The musicians use the one and three for time keeping and for communicating with each other about what happens next. The two and the four beats are for the audience to respond [. . . ] When the audience unintentionally clap on the one and the three, it throws things out."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Something More Than Free"

Answer: 2015

The album was released on July 17, 2015 by Southeastern and was produced by Dave Cobb. It followed Isbell's 2013 album "Southeastern" and preceded his 2017 album "The Nashville Sound."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Southeastern"

Answer: cancer

"Elephant" is a haunting song that depicts a man dealing with a lover dying of cancer and how they avoid discussing the issue of her impending death. "There's one thing that's real clear to me," the narrator sings, "No one dies with dignity / We just try to ignore the elephant somehow."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Sirens of the Ditch"

Answer: permeates

These lyrics come from the song "Razor Town." Permeate means to spread throughout or pervade something. Jason Isbell often uses unique word choices and multi-syllabic words in his lyrics. Long drug names such as "benzodiazepine" can be found in his songs. Isbell told "Rolling Stone" magazine: "A lot of people in Nashville think that the best song is the catchiest, or the one that sells the most copies. They're editing songs in a way that make them seem more consumable, I guess. I'm trying to edit them in a way that makes them more honest."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Here We Rest"

Answer: Sons of Anarchy

"Sons of Anarchy" premiered on FX in September of 2008. Isbell's song "Go it Alone" appeared in season 2, episode 4, "Booster." The song opens: "Are you lonely tonight? Are you out on the road? I'm headed home to go it alone again. Are you dreaming out loud? Scared of the crowds? I'm headed home to go it alone again."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "The Nashville Sound"

Answer: The Country Music Association Awards

"If We Were Vampires" won Song of the Year at the 2018 Americana Music & Honors Awards and Best American Roots Song at the 2018 Grammy Awards. Isbell also won a 2018 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program for his performance of "If We Were Vampires" on "CBS This Morning." While "The Nashville Sound" was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2017 Country Music Association Awards, it did not win, and "If We Were Vampires" received no nomination as an individual song. Isbell was surprised by his nomination for a CMA, because, as he told "Men's Journal," he doesn't consider himself a country singer. To "Rolling Stone Country," he said, "I don't like that kind of music at all. Sometimes I'll hear a song that I really like that's in that world [. . .] But most of that stuff is just real bad music to me."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Something More Than Free"

Answer: 24

The title "24 frames" alludes to the 24 frames per second that pass before a camera in video technology. The chorus to this song is: "You thought God was an architect Now you know he's something like a pipe bomb Ready to blow." Caiitlin White writes in a review of this song on "Stereogum": "Do I even need to explain to you that most people can't write songs like this?"

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Sirens of the Ditch"

Answer: feet

These lyrics are also from the song "Razor Town," which, much like Isbell's later song "Speed Trap Town," hauntingly describes the confines of small town life. "Razor Town" depicts a bad but necessary breakup with a small town woman who is holding a man back. The description of the town as a "razor" creates an image of a place with rough edges, where people wound themselves.

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Here We Rest"

Answer: Wayne's

"If we pass through on a Sunday, better make a stop at Wayne's. It's the only open liquor store north, and I can't stand the pain of being by myself without a little help on a Sunday afternoon." The song paints a picture of loneliness, isolation, and stagnation, a world where the singer hardly even knows his name anymore: "When no one calls it out, it kinda vanishes away." He wants to escape back home "through those Alabama pines."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "The Nashville Sound"

Answer: dark

This striking image can be found in "If We Were Vampires." The song suggests that mortality lends a special value to love: an awareness of "time running out" makes moments together all the more precious. "If we were vampires," and thus immortal, we wouldn't feel the need to savor special moments together (i.e. "I wouldn't feel the need to hold your hand"), but the fact of our mortality gives us the impetus to seize the moment: "It's knowing that this can't go on forever Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone Maybe we'll get forty years together But one day I'll be gone Or one day you'll be gone."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Something More Than Free"

Answer: heart

Isbell paints a striking picture of this distant couple, continuing, "And they're sitting there a thousand miles apart." The signer doesn't want to "ever get that way." Instead, he swears, "I'll say whatever words I need to say." On October 19, 2017, Isbell released a version of this song recorded live from the Ryman at his sold-out show in Nashville.

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Southeastern"

Answer: He got in a fight at a bar

The narrator starts a fight in a bar by insulting another bar goer. It's apparently not unusual behavior for him, because it's the final straw for his lover: "And in the car / Headed home / She asked if I had considered the prospect of living alone. / With a steak / Held to my eye / I had to summon the confidence needed to hear her goodbye / And another brief chapter without any answers blew by." It's a custom to hold a cold steak to one's eye to help with swelling when one is hit. The efficacy of this home remedy is a subject for debate.

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Sirens of the Ditch"

Answer: scriptures

These lyrics come from the song "Dress Blues," which is about the death of Corporal Matthew Conley, a U.S. Marine from Isbell's home town, in the Iraq War. The song opens with a portrait of the landscape of the simple southern town from which the soldier comes, where scripture adorns grocery store signs and he has left behind a pregnant wife: "Your wife said this all would be funny When you got back home in a week Turn twenty two and we'd celebrate you In a bar or a tent by the creek. Your baby would just about be here And your very last tour would be up..." But unfortunately that doesn't happen for this young man: "You never planned on the bombs in the sand Or sleepin' in your dress blues."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Here We Rest"

Answer: The parking lot's so loud and bright

"I can't get to sleep at night. The parking lot's so loud and bright. The A.C. hasn't worked in twenty years. Probably never made a single person cold, but I can't say the same for me. I've done it many times." For some non-disclosed reason, which may involve the woman he needed "like a dream needs gasoline," the narrator of this song has been "stuck here in this town, if you could call it that, for about a year or two."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "The Nashville Sound"

Answer: fiddle

She also supplied harmony vocals for the album and shot the photography. Amanda Shire has previously played in the Texas Playboys and the Thrift Store Cowboys. She and Jason Isbell married in February of 2013. She won the Emerging Artist of the Year at the 2017 Americana Music Honors & Awards.

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Something More Than Free"

Answer: disappear

The chorus of this song runs: "I got too far from my raising, I forgot where I come from, And the line between right and wrong was so fine. Well I thought the highway loved me, But she beat me like a drum. My day will come, if it takes a lifetime." Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit recorded "It Takes A Lifetime" for "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" in February of 2016.

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Southeastern"

Answer: Weatherby

"I might not be a man yet, / but that bastard will never be, / so I'm cleaning my Weatherby, / my sight and my scope, / and I hope against hope." Later he says, "I load up my Weatherby." In the end, it's implied the narrator has killed, or is about to kill, his classmate's father: "Saw your father last night; in the window the light made a silhouette. / Saw him hold you that way; he won't hold you that way anymore, Yvette."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Sirens of the Ditch"

Answer: In the high school gymnasium

In a "bar or a tent by the creek" is where they might have celebrated the return of the solider had he come back alive. Instead, they end up mourning him at a memorial in the high school gymnasium: "The high school gymnasium's ready Full of flowers and old Legionnaires Nobody showed up to protest Just sniffle and stare There's red, white and blue in the rafters And there's silent old men from the Corps..." "American Songwriter" magazine writes that in this song, Isbell "deftly manages to both honor and question." While he pays tribute to the fallen soldier ("Nobody here could forget you / You showed us what we had to lose"), he also asks, "What did they say when they shipped you away / To fight somebody's Hollywood war?" "Dress Blues" was covered by the Zac Brown Band on their 2015 album "Jekyll + Hyde."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Here We Rest"

Answer: Castles Made of Sand

"If there's one thing I can't stand It's this bar and this cover band Trying to fake their way through 'Castles Made of Sand'. That's one thing I can't stand." "Castles Made of Sand" was recorded on the second album of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, which was released in 1967. The song is based on Jimi Hendrix's own childhood. Dwight Garner of "The New York Times" calls "Codeine" one of Isbell's "finest songs, a kind of fiddle-strewn anti-waltz."

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "The Nashville Sound"

Answer: anxiety

In the song "Anxiety," the narrator vividly describes the psychological experience of anxiety. "Even with my lover sleeping close to me," he sings, "I'm wide awake and I'm in pain." He recognizes his blessings of wife, child, and a successful career but still experiences apprehension: "And oh, I'm a lucky man today But so afraid that time will take it all from me Anxiety How do you always get the best of me?"

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Something More Than Free"

Answer: Children of Children

The song opens with stark imagery that paints a picture of a young mother: "Pictures of the farm before us, Old men in a gospel chorus, sepia And saddle horses, easy on the reins. Eighty-one a motor and your mama's seventeen again, She's squinting at the dusty wind, The anger of the plains." Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit closed out their live performance with an extended version of this song at Bonnaroo in June of 2016.

From Quiz Jason Isbell's "Southeastern"

Answer: An ashtray

"Are you having a long day / Everyone you meet rubs you the wrong way / Dirty city streets smell like an ashtray / Morning bells are ringing in your ear." The upbeat tempo and soft singing in this song belies its dark, heavy lyrics.

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