Jason Isbell at The Pinnacle, 3/22/2025
There’s something soothing about watching Jason Isbell alone onstage, adjusting his water glass restlessly between songs.
Though the North Alabama native is no stranger to performing in Nashville, it’s rare to catch him performing sans his formidable backing band The 400 Unit, or in a venue that’s not the Ryman, long the home of his multinight residencies. But the songsmith has been trying something a little different to celebrate an album that’s a little different. Following the release of his solo acoustic album Foxes in the Snow, he set up shop for a four-night solo engagement at The Pinnacle, the recently opened venue in the Nashville Yards development.
Saturday, during the third night of the An Intimate Evening With Jason Isbell run — the fourth and final performance is March 28 — the master storyteller took center stage on a wooden chair. Using just his voice and acoustic guitar, he regaled a hushed crowd of roughly 4,500 with tales of love, failure and lessons learned. After briefly quipping about the novelty of a show in Nashville on Saturday night, Isbell strummed the opening of “King of Oklahoma,” a standout from his most recent record with The 400 Unit, 2023’s Weathervanes. This band-free version put Isbell’s dexterous picking and piercing vocals at the forefront, making the song’s narrative all the more heartbreaking. Rather than careening from one song to the next, Isbell filled many of the short pauses with witty anecdotes about each song. “King of Oklahoma,” for instance, was written on the set of Killers of the Flower Moon.
Jason Isbell at The Pinnacle, 3/22/2025
“You don’t have to watch the whole thing,” joked Isbell. “Sturgill blows me up somewhere in the second hour, and you can just cut it off.”
Then came the first songs of the night from the new album, “Bury Me” and “Foxes in the Snow.” The audience remained silent, saving brief cheers for the split second of recognition at each song’s opening line. You could see the crowd mouthing along silently, seemingly so as not to interrupt.
The set combined new songs with catalog classics as well as some mementos of Isbell’s tenure with Drive-By Truckers. Each night, a new selection of deep cuts — “the ‘bust-outs,’ as they call them in the community,” said Isbell following the The Nashville Sound song “Tupelo” — made their way into the rotation.
He painted pictures of bittersweet Southern summers in Reunions song “Dreamsicle,” recalling an intimate tidbit about the song’s namesake sweet treat after the final chord.
“My grandmother always had those Dreamsicle popsicles, but she never had the ones that had sugar in them,” Isbell said. “They were always sugar-free. ... And me, as a small child, had to deal with sugar-free popsicles. And I didn't have diabetes or nothing.”
Jason Isbell at The Pinnacle, 3/22/2025
As the set went on, Isbell swung the pendulum back and forth between the present and the past. The audience erupted as he belted the opening lines of Weathervanes’ “Middle of the Morning.” The gentle new ballad “Gravelweed” came next, which he segued into a cover of Bon Iver’s “Beth/Rest.” He then leaned into longtime fan favorite “Alabama Pines,” recounting the good, the bad and the ugly of his hometown.
“I start out writing a love song for the place that I grew up in Alabama,” Isbell said. “Sometimes I’ll make it, like, halfway through, sometimes it’s the last verse. But eventually all that shit that’s not so lovely just finds its way in the song.”
Isbell finished the set with Foxes’ “True Believer.” It’s a raw and sometimes jolting look at moving on after a relationship, and he earned a howl from the crowd as he sang, “But I heard God in the Ryman / I crawled out of the grave.”
After Isbell made a quick exit and the crowd delivered a standing ovation, stagehands brought out a second chair and microphone. The audience stayed standing as Isbell returned, breaking the reverent silence to cheer as he introduced his friend, folk champion David Rawlings.
The guitarist, singer and record producer joined Isbell for a three-song encore that kicked off with “Ride to Robert’s,” a song about trying to nurture love that features the venerable Lower Broadway watering hole in a supporting role. Rawlings plucked his trusty 1935 Epiphone Olympic, nodding along as he elevated Isbell’s strumming.
Jason Isbell at The Pinnacle, 3/22/2025
Rawlings remarked on their performance, whispering “hot stuff, hot stuff,” into the mic before they swayed their way into a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country.” Then a few seconds of jamming resolved into Isbell’s “If We Were Vampires.” There was a roar as the audience recognized the opening notes, but it died away quickly to let the Grammy-winning ballad unfold.
When the song was over, the crowd stood again and released the full force of the appreciation they had been holding in throughout the show with thunderous applause. Isbell and Rawlings exited as silently as they came.
The Spin: Jason Isbell at The Pinnacle, 3/22/2025
The songsmith gave his third of four solo performances at the newly opened venue
Jason Isbell at The Pinnacle, 3/22/2025
