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| Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit @ Frost Amphitheater (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Jason Isbell has never hesitated to go toward the uncomfortable and unfamiliar with his music and Thursday night’s concert at The Frost Amphitheater with his full band saw him veering far away from a greatest hits concert and doing a deep exploration of his latest album – Weathervanes. By the end of the nearly two hour set, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit had played ten of the album’s thirteen songs – populating more than half their set. And the crowd – enjoying perfect Bay Area weather in one of the Bay’s most scenic venues – seemed to embrace the new material nearly equally with the more familiar.
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| Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit @ Frost Amphitheater (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
The band followed a pattern of alternating between the more rock-forward and tender songs and mixing past hits in with the new. Taking the stage for the early headlining set promptly at 8 pm under a summer night’s last hour of daylight, they began with two of three new songs. They opened the set with the new “Save The World”, followed by the 2017 hit “Hope The High Road” off The Nashville Sound. From there, the band dug deeply into the new album’s “King of Oklahoma” that tells the story of the easy slip into painkiller addiction and the terrible negative toll it can exact on a life. Isbell was at both his lyrical and guitar-playing best – telling the story with touching vulnerability blended with powerful choruses and dropping in one of the night’s most dramatic and soaring solos. He crisscrossed the stage trading glances and musical interactions with 40 Unit guitarist Sadler Vaden, drummer Chad Gamble and keyboardist Derry deBorja before bringing the song home in a crashing crescendo.
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| Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit @ Frost Amphitheater (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Two of Isbell’s more autobiographical songs followed – though paced very differently. “Super 8” was a rollicking energizer telling the story of a band’s drug and boozed-filled night gone terribly wrong –resulting in the chorus of 'I don’t want to die in a Super 8 Motel.' The Alabama-raised native next strapped on an acoustic guitar for a stripped-down version of “Last of My Kind.” Here, Isbell demonstrated his soft, touching Southern vocals (touching, but not too twangy) with the night’s most intricate guitar work. He kept the acoustic on as he brought it to the present release’s “Strawberry Woman.”
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| Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit @ Frost Amphitheater (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Weathervanes’ “Middle of the Morning” saw Isbell shift from a soft Southern whisper to a song that shouts out frustratingly at the world he wakes up to. Two familiar Isbell hits followed with “Overseas” off 2020’s Reunions album - coming as the sun finally set at The Frost - and saw Isbell launch an intense and soaring solo. Isbell next introduced “Stockholm” by relating that it was nearly ten years ago to the day that the Southeastern album had been released and they were determined to play songs to honor the decade anniversary on this tour (on this night, they played three).
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| Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit @ Frost Amphitheater (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Isbell and the 400 Unit returned to the new album with “When We Were Close” a song that is said to be about his relationship with the late Justin Townes Earle. Both men hit similar places along the rock ‘n’ roll trail with substance abuse. Unfortunately, Earle passed in 2020 from an overdose at just 38 years old, while Isbell came out the other side into a very public sobriety.
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| Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit @ Frost Amphitheater (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
“Death Wish” – the opening song on the new album – saw Isbell and the 400 Unit dialed in on the new album’s most rocking song. The syncopated percussion of Gamble and newly added touring multi-instrumentalist Will Johnson, combined with strong bass of guest bassist Dominic John Davis (filling in for 40 Unit regular Jimbo Hart) set a quick pace to this new tune about the frustration of trying to assist someone dealing with mental illness. Crowd favorite “If We Were Vampires” brought back the beautiful soft acoustic vibe – starting with the haunting intro and weaving into another brilliant guitar exchange between Isbell and Vaden.
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| Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit @ Frost Amphitheater (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
“Miles” best demonstrated the complexity and depth of the new material live. The father and daughter song began with a CSNY Canyon tone before going into a deep Neil Young style-solo trough and then emerging out of that into harmony filled, layered choruses that carried a Sgt Pepper’s familiarity. On this night, Isbell and the 400 Unit crushed the mighty and complex song and the audience roared with approval. “Did you hear the gong?” Isbell asked the crowd after bringing it to a close. “That’s the real deal rock n roll. There’s a rule: If you want to hit a gong once, you have one gong. If you wanna hit it twice, you have to have two gongs. That was our only gong tonight.”
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| Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit @ Frost Amphitheater (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Isbell then stripped the music back down again with an acoustic “Cast Iron Skillet” – a new song that he has said took many years to get to. It intertwined the story of a female family member who is ostracized for dating outside of race and childhood baseball friend who committed murder and “died doing life without parole.”
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| Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit @ Frost Amphitheater (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Isbell again cranked it back up, but this time had Vaden take center stage with “Honeysuckle Blue” – a song from Vaden’s previous band “Drivin’ ‘n’ Cryin.” Vaden’s vocals were in fine form and he unleashed his Gibson ferociously with lead guitar riffs and solos in a song that would have been perfectly at home with the Southern Rock of the 80’s and early 90’s.
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| The crowd @ Frost Amphitheater (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
“I would play for this exact audience every night for the rest of my life,” Isbell told the crowd. Looking up admiringly at The Frost and acknowledging being on the campus of Stanford University, he added “And this venue’s not so bad either. These smart people know how to build stuff, don’t they?” The band then closed the main set with “Cover Me Up” the tender ballad and night’s final tune off “Southeastern.” Many in the audience lustily celebrated Isbell’s sobriety when he sang the lyric “I swore off that stuff.” What started with Isbell playing a quiet acoustic guitar and Vaden dropping achingly beautiful slide guitar accents was kicked into an anthemic ending with Gamble’s thundering drums.
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| Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit @ Frost Amphitheater (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Isbell embraced the same unveiling of the new music principle that he had with the main set in the encore. 2015’s “24 Frames” led things off, but was followed by two new songs to close out the show: the soft “White Beretta” and the rocking “This Ain’t It.” It was a fitting end to a concert that very successfully brought a high percentage of new songs forward to an audience that happily embraced them with open ears and cheers.
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| Deer Tick @ the Frost Amphitheater (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Hours earlier, Rhode Island’s Deer Tick opened the show in the warm 6:30 pm Palo Alto sunshine, also unveiling material off their new album Emotional Contracts. Trading vocals between guitarists John McCauley and Ian O’Neil, along with drummer Dennis Ryan and with groove support by bassist Christopher Ryan, they delivered a well-received Punk-Americana style set with McCauley continually engaging the audience with good humor. New songs “Running From Love” and “Once in a Lifetime” were particularly well-delivered live and though no dates are currently posted, McCauley announced that Deer Tick would be returning to the area with a fall headlining tour.
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