Bye, Bye, Truckers

You gotta respect a guy who draws comparisons to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Flannery O’Connor.

You also gotta respect a guy who can jump off the piece of screaming diesel known as Drive-By Truckers and live to tell the tale.

Jason Isbell left the Truckers in April after five years together, and his debut solo album, “Sirens of the Ditch,” proves that this pony has plenty of tricks.

Isbell is a gifted storyteller, and his own story started at a speck on the map about a half-hour outside Muscle Shoals, Ala.

He grew up among cow pastures in a rural county.

“There weren’t any stoplights or anything out there, and the closest grocery store was 15 minutes away,” Isbell, 28, said from a tour stop in Lawrence, Kan. “There wasn’t much to do besides methamphetamine or music, and I usually chose music.”

Most of his family played music, and they’d gather to pick old-timey gospel and country, “especially before the old-timers started dying off,” Isbell said.

By the time he was 15, Isbell was playing gigs in bars, sipping soda in a minors-only, roped-off corner of the room between sets.

He knew early on he could play for his dinner, and at the University of Memphis he studied creative writing with an eye toward being a songwriter.

The powerful images and thought-provoking lyrics on “Sirens of the Ditch” attest to his skill as a writer.

He swings from one of the finest songs in the growing Iraq War canon in “Dress Blues” to the awakening of teenage lust in “Grown,” setting his short stories to rock and shuffling blues and soulful swaying.

He’ll show off those tunes Sunday night at The Thirsty Parrot, with a rockin’ four-piece band behind him. But alternative-country fans are already familiar with Isbell’s strangely affecting power as a songwriter. He was part of the three-headed, axe-wielding monster that fronted Drive-By Truckers, a whiskey-sodden juggernaut of musical force that sullied the good name of alt-country by dragging it through the mud of dirty Southern rock. Some folks think the result is sloppy and raw, while others call the Truckers the best band in America.

That’s a lot to leave, but Isbell had his reasons. His former wife, Shonna Tucker, is the bassist for the Truckers, and after their divorce they apparently didn’t want to do the Fleetwood Mac thing.

His solo songs, recorded over the past four years from material that didn’t quite fit the Truckers mold, also demonstrate the musical gap between him and the band. His sound is less drunken and more clean and pop-friendly, he replaces some of the buzzing guitar sound with piano and pedal steel. He’s enjoying the freedom of playing in a more controlled band that allows him to roam around sonically, rather than trying like heck to keep the Truckers from running off the road. He describes his Truckers songs as very Southern, with clear, linear story lines told through third-person narrator shifts or unreliable firstperson narrators.

His new songs are a bit more image driven, growing out of single lines that pop into his head.

“I still come from a background of storytelling songs, so that will always be in me,” Isbell said. “But I like to be able to speak in plain language and still be a little confusing.”

details

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit in concert

Opener: Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles

Where: The Thirsty Parrot, 32 S. Tejon St.

When: 7 p.m. Sunday Tickets: $14 (or $10 for KRCC members who buy tix at the station, 912 N. Weber St., before 5 p.m. today). Call 473-4801 or 1-800-748-2727, visit www.ticketweb.com, or buy at the door.