Jason Isbell's "The Nashville Sound" Quiz

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."

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."

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."

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."

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."

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.

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?"

Answer: cotton

The stark image of "oceans of cottons" recalls slavery and oppression. "White Man's World" is a commentary on racism, classism, and the erosion of white privilege. The next stanza continues:

"I'm a white man looking in a black man's eyes
Wishing I'd never been one of the guys
Who pretended not to hear another white man's joke
Oh, old times ain't forgotten."

Answer: Tupelo

In the song "Tupelo," Jason Isbell sings:

"If I get out of this hole I'm going to Tupelo.
There is a girl out there that will treat me fair.
You get about a week of spring and the summer is blistering.
There ain't no one from here that will follow me there."

"Rolling Stone" magazine called this song "equal parts Southern soul and sad-eyed folk, the soundtrack for slow Sunday afternoons."

Answer: roof

These lines can be found in the first stanza of "If We Were Vampires":

"It's not the long, flowing dress that you're in,
Or the light coming off of your skin,
The fragile heart you protected for so long,
Or the mercy in your sense of right and wrong.
It's not your hands searching slow in the dark,
Or your nails leaving love's watermark.
It's not the way you talk me off the roof,
Your questions like directions to the truth."

"Rolling Stone" magazine says the song "shatters the love song's familiar mold, focusing not on the never-ending power of Isbell's affection for Shires, but the pair's limited time together."

Answer: the tiger

The song begins:

"Another life but I still remember
A county fair in steamy September
In the year of the tiger 19-something
I was broke and you were unbroken
A little jokes to keep it unspoken
Even when I knew you were the last one."

In the Chinese zodiac, the year of the tiger is the third year of the twelve-year cycle and in the 1900s would have fallen in 1902, 1914, 1926...on through 1998.

Answer: Walton's

"Daddy said the river would always lead me home
But the river can't take me back in time
And daddy's dead and gone
In the family farm's a parking lot for Walton's five and dime
Am I the last of my kind?
Am I the last of my kind?"

The song paints a picture of a world that has moved on and a narrator who feels very much out of place in it. He doesn't belong in college, where "They laughed at my boots, laughed at my jeans / Laughed when they gave me amphetamines." He doesn't fit on the city streets, where everyone walks by people "like they ain't even there." But his past home is "a lonely and faded picture" in his mind.

Answer: Winston

While the old men played guitars and smoked Winston Lights, the old women harmonized "with the wind." These lyrics come from the song "Something to Love," which paints a picture of the singer's childhood and is addressed to his own child:

"Tonight we're lying on a blanket in the yard
Wind is cold, the sky is dark, and the ground is hard
But your momma loved to count the stars at night
So if I get a little chilly that's alright
I hope you find something to love
Something to do when you feel like giving up
A song to sing or a tale to tell
Something to love, it'll serve you well."

Answer: the Cumberland Gap

The Cumberland Gap passes through the long ridge of the Cumberland Mountains in the Appalachian Mountain chain near where Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky meet. Jason Isbell performed "The Cumberland Gap" on an appearance on "CBS This Morning." The chorus of the song is "maybe the Cumberland Gap just swallows you whole." Woody Guthrie also had a song title "Cumberland Gap," though the lyrics are quite different.

Answer: 400

Jason Isbell's band, the 400 Unit, is named after a mental treatment facility in Florence, Alabama. The 400 Unit consists of Jimbo Hart on bass, Chad Gamble on drums, Derry deBorja on keyboards, Sadler Vaden on guitar, and Amanda Shires on fiddle.