Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires Celebrate Reunions, Pandemic Style

Friday night, Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires walked onstage at the mostly empty Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, hamming it up and pretending to receive the thunderous applause from a crowd that wasn’t there. Isbell noted wryly that the view from the stage looked “a lot like all the CD release shows we did before Southeastern came out.”

Before the 2013 album he mentioned, which was his commercial and critical breakthrough, Isbell was still drinking and was still mostly the beloved secret of a niche audience — a generational talent flying below the radar of the people who hand out such titles. This time, the reason Isbell and Shires were playing in front of no more people than it took to run the sound and lights was quite different. Thanks to the closing of public spaces to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which began right around the time the Germantown-area venue was supposed to have its grand opening, Isbell and Shires christened the venue with a livestream, giving an acoustic duo performance of Reunions, the characteristically excellent new album Isbell recorded with his band the 400 Unit and released earlier that day. In lieu of buying a ticket, fans were able to donate money to support Isbell’s touring crew and MusiCares' COVID-19 relief fund.

After the pair played through the record’s first three songs — “What’ve I Done to Help,” “Dreamsicle” and “Only Children” — Isbell shouted out David Crosby, who sings background vocals on the album opener. Right after recording the track, Isbell had to fly out for a benefit concert, leaving Shires and Crosby in Nashville. Shires told a story of taking Crosby to dinner in East Nashville and watching in awe and admiration as the legendary singer-songwriter lit a joint in the restaurant. 

After “Overseas,” which maintained its power in an acoustic setting via  Shires playing the indelible guitar riff on violin, Shires raised her glass of wine to her husband and toasted his “awesome” new record. Isbell acknowledged it’s “weird as shit” to release a record in the middle of a pandemic, when record stores are closed and tours are canceled. But he said it would have felt weirder to delay the release of Reunions. Albums, he said, reflect the period of time when they were made, and he couldn’t sit on this record until the world went back to something-like-normal. 

The couple played through the rest of the album, at one point playfully referring to the recent New York Times story that documented the toll its creation took on their marriage. As she introduced “St. Peter’s Autograph,” a song written after a close friend of hers died by suicide, Shires encouraged folks struggling with loneliness or depression to reach out for help, sharing the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (which is 1-800-273-8255).

“I want you to know, if you don’t know it right now, you are worth it and you’re valuable and nobody wants you to go out like that,” she said. 

Next up was the recovery anthem, “It Gets Easier,” and Isbell offered his support to people fighting to stay clean and sober while under quarantine: “We’re rooting for you.” 

The songs are still brand-new, and given the circumstances, Isbell hadn’t played many of them live. Two or three times throughout the set, he stopped a song to request a do-over after a missed transition or misplaced a lyric. 

“Sometimes in the middle of a song, I will try to do something to demonstrate to you all that I’m not just playing to backing tracks,” he said. 

After playing the album’s heartfelt closer “Letting You Go,” dedicated to their young daughter, Isbell and Shires re-emerged for an encore that you might have missed, since the stream seemed to indicate that the show was over. They signed off, for now, with their cover of Warren Zevon’s “Mutineer” and the fan favorite “Cover Me Up.” The latter song hits a bit differently now than it did when Southeastern was released, as so many of us find ourselves locked inside, waiting for a worldwide fever to break.