Jason Isbell's "Sirens of the Ditch" Quiz

Answer: True

Released on July 10, 2007, "Sirens of the Ditch" was Isbell's first solo album after parting with his former band, Drive-By Truckers, for whom he'd been the lead guitarist and written several songs. Patterson Hood, a co-founder of Drive-By Truckers, played acoustic and electric guitar on the album.

While Drive-By Truckers tended more toward southern rock, Jason Isbell's "Sirens of the Ditch" had a more bluesy sound to it.

Answer: Pedal steel guitar

Pedal steel guitar was played by John Neff on the album, though Jason Isbell played bass guitar, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, banjo, and piano. He also played both Hammond and Wurlitzer organs. Additionally, he supplied lead vocals.

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.

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."

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.

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."

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."

Answer: The devil

The song is "The Devil Is My Running Mate."

"The devil is my running mate,
and this here is his favorite state.
There ain't no other candidate.
It wouldn't matter anyway.
The devil is my running mate."

In "Pitchfork," Stephen M. Deusner calls this song "dark and too heavy-handed, suggesting that political commentary isn't Isbell's forte."

The song has been covered live by American blues and folk singer Shawn James of The Shapeshifters.

Answer: The magician

These lyrics come from the song "The Magician," which begins:

"You watch every move
And call it sleight of hand
You know, it's what I do
But never who I am, never who I am."

In "Pitchfork," Stephen M. Deusner writes that these lyrics are "both sad and funny" and that the song "strums along at a front-porch clip that underscores the ache of the lyrics."

Answer: drought

This stanza continues:

"With a dirty white suit, a big white hat
A bullet in his pocket, no matter where he's at
He's trouble, but ain't we all?
Trouble, but ain't we all?"

These lyrics come from the song "Down in the Hole." The Deluxe Edition of "Sirens of the Ditch" contains four previously unreleased songs, including "Racetrack Romeo" and "Crystal Clear."