Jason Isbell live at Wolf Trap in Vienna, VA review

At his show Tuesday night in Cleveland, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit leaned heavily into their most recent album, 2023’s Weathervanes. Half of his 18-song set, including five of the first seven numbers, came from the Grammy-winning album. But he changed things up a little bit the following night in front of about 7,000 fans at Wolf Trap’s Filene Center in Vienna, Virginia.

Maybe we should have sensed something was up when Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” served as Isbell’s walk-on music. Maybe that was a hint that Wednesday’s show was going to look back a little more. But that’s an illusion because Isbell has been using “Wichita Lineman” on this entire tour. Jason Isbell just likes shaking things up. And fortunately, on nights when he chooses to do so, he has an exceptional back catalog from which to draw.

Eight of the first ten songs he played Wednesday were from older albums – whether they were credited to Isbell as a solo artist or to the 400 Unit. He did open with a Weathervanes cut, and in true Jason Isbell fashion, it is the most poignant and controversial cut from the album – the tribute to his old friend Justin Townes Earle, “When We Were Close.” That song, which was publicly rejected by Earle’s widow after his overdose death in 2020, is as emotionally devastating as anything Isbell’s has written. And that’s how he’s opening.

Jason Isbell draws from vast catalog to put on a great show at Wolf Trap

From there, he moved on to several older favorites, “Stockholm” and “Flying Over Water,” which featured the first of the night’s blistering guitar solos. There would be plenty more to follow.

Isbell picked up his acoustic guitar, and new 400 Unit bass player Amanda Butterss (who replaced Jimbo Hart last year), switched to a standup bass, for “Strawberry Woman,” a much sweeter number from Weathervanes, that nonetheless carries the sense of sadness and loss.

This is Isbell’s first tour since he and bandmate Amanda Shire – the woman he credits with getting him sober more than a decade ago – filed for divorce, and you can’t hear a love song like “Strawberry Woman” without thinking about how time moves on and songs, like relationships, shift and morph.

Soon, Isbell would return to his electric guitar with a supercharged “Super 8,” another old favorite that featured rollicking guitar solo number two. Then it was several more of Isbell’s solo originals, including a lovely version of “Live Oak,” which he began by himself, before the rest of the band gradually joined in, and a dramatic “Overseas,” aided by a light show that bathed the stage in fiery red.

But he wasn’t done with Weathervanes by a long shot. When it returned, it was with a titanic version of “Miles,” featuring multiple false endings, extended codas, and sensational guitar work from both Isbell and his longtime bandmate Sadler Vaden.

From there, he closed his main set with four straight classics – his best-known song “If We Were Vampires,” my own personal favorite “24 Frames,” the Stones-like “This Ain’t It” from Weathervanes, the confessional “Cover Me Up,” which got the biggest roar of the night when Isbell sang “ I sobered up and swore off that stuff, forever this time.”

As an encore, the band played their only cover of the night – the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” prompting one nearby fan to think out loud “That’s one of my favorite songs – and I never thought I’d hear Jason Isbell play it.” And then he closed with a twin punch from Weathervanes – the aching beauty of the acoustic lament “Cast Iron Skillet” and the roaring anger of “King of Oklahoma,” which allowed Isbell, Vaden, and the rest of the 400 Unit to rage deep into the night.

Isbell, who has never been shy about expressing political opinions from the stage – and who performed at the Democratic National Convention last month – confined all his remarks to thanking the crowd and praising his bandmates. Derry deBorja’s accordion lent a special Americana vibe to several tracks when he wasn’t playing keyboards. Chad Gamble’s drums galloped through “The Life You Chose” and were positively primordial on “Cover Me Up.” And Will Johnson stayed mostly hidden in the back, playing anything and everything, depending on the requirements of the song.

Isbell was also effusive in his praise of opener Alejandro Escoveda, the legendary Austin grunge/punk/blues rocker who has been cranking out hard-hitting rock & roll for fifty years now. Escovedo fronted a three-piece band that played tracks from his most recent album, 2024’s Echo Dancing, which reworks older songs into entirely new experiences.

From an eerie apocalyptic version of “Sacramento & Polk,” complete with severely distorted vocals, to the heavy jangle of “Break This Time,” Escoveda made old songs seem amazingly fresh. He only broke from the music to address the crowd once, to quote Pete Seeger‘s line about how “music is going to save our planet” before recognizing the victims of 9/11 (the show was on 9/11) with the big piano ballad “Sensitive Boys.”

In all, it was a marvelous night for looking both backward and forward. With artists the caliber of Isbell and Escoveda, there is an enormous store of old songs from which to draw, along with a never-ending thirst to face new challenges. And that makes for quite an evening of music.

The tour continues up into Canada before swinging back south in time for Isbell to take up an eight-day residency at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in October. Those shows will result in his next album – Live From the Ryman, Vol 2, due out by the end of the year.

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